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Tom Taffel's Abstract Expressionist Paintings
On January 27, 2020, I enrolled at San Francisco State University, in Professor Chris Finley’s advanced painting class:
“The Expanded Field – Finding Your Voice,” ART 530 (Contemporary approaches and concern in painting practice).
The nine Surreal oil painted canvases below measure 16" x 20"
Defining My Work
I AM THE WORLD THROUGH WHICH I WALK
I no longer see the world, as I was analytically taught, (and then taught my students to do), through a camera lens - limited to tones of black, white and color; but through an enlightened, reimagined, unrestrained, inner vision of unfettered awareness. I have painstakingly shed my camera-bound thinking for texturized, volatile, oil painted images on canvas.
My “meta-vision,” approach to seeing beyond and above the obvious appearance of things, enables me to re-evaluate conventional intrinsic imagery. Subsequently, my metaphysical approach has enabled me to look beyond physical appearances and representations to see a different reality; cause and effect.
Borders - Boundaries - Edges Unlike the objective motion picture’s “point of view,” my paintings are 97.9% subjective; placing you, the viewer, in the action - directly involving you in the essence of raw emotion, explosive excitement, and effusive movement.
In my defenselessness, you will find safety, tenderness, protection, significance, peace, joy, power - as well as frustration, anger and rage. Should you wish to question what I was thinking when I was painting, a word of caution, I don’t think when I paint - I listen. I paint as the brush moves me, as the brush guides me. I simply listen.
As a devoted aficionado of ballet, opera and symphony, I see (and understand) with my eyes and ears. I want you to feel my art; see my paintings dance and hear them sing. I hope to saturate your senses with unrestricted abstract expressionist Modernism ~ directly from my heart to yours.
Walk with me through my abstract expressionist view of the world . . . not as I see it, but as I saw it.
I hope my truth, integrity and authenticity, portray my worldview and offer you fresh insight, inspiration and appreciation. With undaunted perception and awareness, analysis and synthesis, I unhesitatingly strive to resolve things into thoughts, and then transform them back into primal emotion, rhythm, movement, color and form.
Borders, boundaries and edges predominate and characterize my work; they are inherent in every one of my paintings. Friendly boarders; permeable boundaries, transmigrating and vibrating edges, wander about and shift, while other boarders appear unfriendly, rigid, unyielding, relentless - in spite of the viewers’ desire to unite and unify them. Some edges purposefully take you in and out of focus.
~ Tom Taffel ~