I’ve often been asked why water plays such an integral part of many of my artistic creations. In fact, it represents one of the most common inquiries when I’ve had the opportunity to speak with individuals who are viewing my work in person.
Water indeed factors as a seminal component when speaking of not only my creative but also my philosophical view of reality. It’s not just a constituent part of my biochemical and environmental surroundings. Instead, it serves as a metaphysical catalyst for many of my cognitive processes in the artistic realm.
Even more particularly, the symbolic, transcendental, and literal applications of water’s presence (or essence) represents a core component of my artistic expression.
Leonardo da Vinci declared that “Water is the driving force of all nature.” Furthermore, each one of us is aware of the fact that water can and does represent distinct and profound properties associated with all life on earth. It epitomizes not only the foundation of our physical and chemical makeup, it also evokes a distinguishing aspect of cleansing and healing as well.
All world religions have incorporated water in some integral manner. Water has been used as a symbol for birth (or rebirth). Water has been utilized as a symbol for death. Water has also been used to connote a cleansing and/or clarifying agent. Additionally, water has been symbolically utilized for millennia as one of the key components of the origin of life itself (think of the womb and how each one of us is literally born first into and then out of water).
Without water there is no life, both literally as well as figuratively.
“Immersion” represents a number of such themes. The colors, tones, and hues not only represent those which are familiar to me as a resident of Alaska and its often breathtaking studies in water, but also those specific motifs noted above.
Inherent in this work is also one of the most fascinating and one of my most cherished concepts as it pertains not only to nature but to life itself, an idea which was brought to my attention many years ago:
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” — Heraclitus