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.