James bellaney Artist statement 2011

James Bellaney Artist Statement Process is the chief aspect of my work. Even if the work turns out to be bad from my point of view then it would be like having an inevitable bad moment in life, that it is what it is and the best thing to do is learn from it. The process can be seen as an expression originating in a combination of aggressive and delicate marks and forms. Paint and painter are friends who have an intimate relationship, often struggling against each other, like so many relationships, but sync together to make a harmony of brilliance, action and even horror, revealing each other’s truths and histories through the contrast of their interactions. I find paint a medium for transcendence, I love its hypnotic elements, the way color and the mediums, especially house paint, react against another. I situate my work within the western history of painting and Maori spirituality. I am fascinated with the immediacy of abstract artists such as Clifford Still, Robert Motherwell and the temperament and energy of Van Gogh and Pollock that goes into their work. Other more contemporary artists that I find interesting are Katherine Grosse, Bill Sampson, and James Robinson, Dale frank, Tony Tuckson, and Judy Watson.

I am of Maori descent which means I cannot help but identify with a spiritual connection to nature, and its creation. I explore the analogies in abstract imagery of the Maori concept of 'IO' ( the Great Nothing and the Great Everything that means that from nothing comes everything) within my work. The creative acts of IO: that is, Te Korekore( of potential being), Te Po (the world of becoming)and Te O Marama( the world of being), and more, all co-exist within each organism, each one having a relationship with the other. Color and form in my paintings to the first and last mark all have similar relationships,

Artist statement of theory, aesthetics and political anylis

James Bellaney

. Theory I am not interested in presenting the real, but taken from Greenberg’s theory that painting should be paint and surface, and not hiding the fact that they are made out of such materials. .The surface is a place to orchestrate colours and forms in a compositional format announced by the frame of the canvas that enable a genuine sensory experience. My main theory is aligned with nature, and the metaphorical use of creation and my process in painting. Automatism stands for organism and my intuitive abstract imagery as an analogy of my Maori connection to the process of creation of nature. I connect well with what the surrealist philosophy contributed to the arts with automatism and the goal of liberation, my work does not depict hybrid animals or have the anxiety of Magritte’s dead flying birds but as in the clouds passing, my paintings allow the viewer to experience a process of metamorphism (what they see today they may not see tomorrow). Political In art today the imagery used in paintings is conceptual based. And for me this lacks enough ambiguity to keep me interested. Gerhard Richter’s portraits, blurred, but of people he knows or has known personally to tabloid photographs of high profile people to make each subject as important and unimportant as each other, that’s what I see, it wears off, I find his abstracts far more interesting and helpful. I find the portraits or symbols and signifier s or, putting it bluntly, boring, for me they do not hold enough ambiguity. And the fact that I have to look at some image of a pop idol or pop something or someone I might as well go back to the images of Jesus in persecution. Nothing much has seemed to change from the religious domination in art to consumerism's hierarchy in pop art to conceptual art. I see Painting that comments on the political suppression by the dominating factors in our society or cultures as not helping or up heaving any political stance. I don’t believe art changes the world. Picasso’s Guernica, 1937 as now holds a strong position in history painting with the bombing of Guernica, but didn’t change the situation. I line my painting with that of passing clouds or the allure of a bomb fire or moving water, my work is based on the process, being not of this world, but of the human minds capability to be in itself within the moment. I paint abstractly for the reasons of my surroundings being already over thrown by imagery, basically I feel there is enough out there already. And that the images portrayed are neither helpful nor honest (i.e. the fashion images that portray beauty or the sports icons exploiting to sell). My paintings are able to work against the norm of what a picture is, and could help de code the viewer of the mass imagery that has built up our a narrow perception of what we have coded our minds to see instead of just being, which has been lost in our fast moving civilisation. Painting has the ability to stay still while everything else is moving In the high tech world today with more responsibilities than ever there is still a place for autonomous art Aesthetics My idea of aesthetics is still aimed on beauty and the sublime and how chance, because nature I find naturally beautiful or sublime both positive qualities, is a process of nature, which is why I am attracted to the idea of using chance in my works because, even though chance applications over practice become predictable, offer excitement and allurement, which is a grasp away from the images that hang over us in the back of our minds. Imagery gets read in wrong ways, beauty being the main goal of achievement in art as a truth. Which when compared to media exploitation of women or sports hunks aesthetically beautiful but cannot be trusted in determining if that subject is good or not is not surprising. My art does not challenge the ideas of beauty but give the viewer a sensory experience similar to a sunset or bomb fire; it’s an escape away from the images that have been photoshoped to rid of the so called human imperfections.

Beauty and the Beast.

It had dreams of warmth and comfort
by a lady
that one source of affection
between the beast and decay.
dreams lost when.
woken up.
by selfish deeds of kin
turmoil in mind
silient cries
intwine.
the roaring tautuku
echos time
spoken to
whislting past, to slow,
unheard
just a chill
on bone
oh lady
forgive
the beast
with its burdens.
Beast maybe,
but love is true,
It weeps,
the sound of a wolf
no pack to hunt
soothed by roaring sounds.
cried to decay
It trust not one
for all it lost
it trust not you
reluctantly,
Lady, Beauty, Love of his.
With pain,
more anguish, with bitter twist
better descrbed,
how past echos cry
in that poor beasts mind.
it loves you
it loves you
that beast with burden of kind.