"Woman Sitting in a Park with Her Dog, 2024

This work is an exploration on empty minded and improvised abstraction that was livestreamed on the artists YouTube channel. This work explores a few major ideas for the artist: 1) Overcoming figurativeness - During the livestream, the artist ...

This work is an exploration on empty minded and improvised abstraction that was livestreamed on the artists YouTube channel. This work explores a few major ideas for the artist: 1) Overcoming figurativeness - During the livestream, the artist discusses some of the challenges that came about when working with less tangible figurative concepts. The mind wants to "make sense of things" and think in "words" but there is a part of the artist that wants to just leave a mark and this art explores the contention between the two minds: the "word mind" (face, tree, house) and the "visual mind" where using words to define them would unintentionally contradict the idea. 2) Empty mindedness - The artist has collections of works where he begins without a concept or idea of what to paint and begins by seeking a visual concept rather than totally figurative idea. There may or may not be a motif in some works over others. But starting a painting without a purpose other than to paint and express and find what comes of it. 3) Exploring what isn't always obvious - as in the title. For abstraction, the artist seeks to overcome trying to "make sense" of everything they put down. The title is a play on this concept that forces one to explore the idea of whether there is a woman, a park, or even a dog in the painting in the first place, or if it even matters, particularly for this abstract work.