Defining  My   Work

I  AM  THE  WORLD  THROUGH  WHICH  I   WALK

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, engage and move you.   With undaunted perception and awareness, analysis and synthesis, I strive to resolve things into thoughts, and then transform them back into primal emotion; rhapsody of rhythm, movement, color and form - in a significant and meaningful way.

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 a reimagined, unrestrained, inner vision of unfettered awareness.   I have consciously and painstakingly shed my camera-bound thinking for texturized, volatile, oil painted images on canvas.

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 raw emotion, heart-pounding, explosive excitement, dissonance and effusive movement.

My “meta-vision,” approach to seeing beyond and above the obvious appearance of things, compels me to re-evaluate conventional intrinsic representational imagery.   I hope my metaphysical approach encourages you to look, (and see), beyond physical appearances and representations to see a different reality - a different cause and effect.

Borders, boundaries and edges predominate and characterize my work.  They are integral to my paintings.   Friendly borders; permeable-pulsating-boundaries, transmigrating and vibrating edges, wander about and shift, while other borders are unfriendly, rigid, unyielding, relentless - in spite of the viewers’ desire to unite and unify them.   Some edges radiate, purposefully taking you in and out of focus, while some seem to float in space.

In my defenselessness, you will find safety, tenderness, protection, refuge, significance, peace, joy, power and purpose - as well as frustration, anger rage, chaos and tragedy.   You may be wondering what I was thinking as I was painting .... well, 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 listen and wait .... wait and listen.   That may explain the lack of intellectualization and the abundance of raw emotion.

At the very beginning of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
Basil Hallward, (the artist), tells Lord Henry Wotton
. . . speaking of his art . . .

There’s something mystic about it.
I don’t know how to explain it.
It’s as if a power outside of myself were guiding my hand.
As if the painting had a life of its own, independent of me.

As a devoted aficionado of ballet, opera and symphony, I see, (and understand), with my eyes and ears.  And so, I want to engage you .... 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.

~  Tom Taffel   ~