Artist Statement

My paintings are built on a series of layers, colors, and marks along with an exploration, a search, a digging for clues, of changing course, of leaving behind and a discovery of something new. It’s a practice of distillation and finding what is essential, potent and meaningful, and letting go of what is not. It’s a series of questions and responses.

People often ask me what inspires a piece. My work is very intuitive, and my best work happens when I’m having an active conversation with a piece, when I’m really listening, letting the piece tell me where it needs to go. Each painting takes me on a journey. It’s exciting to create a painting that’s not tied to any visual image. I never preplan a painting. Planning for me inhibits the process and I need to have many options open to me. I work within the active dialog I’m having with the painting. My paintings are meant to invoke their own persona and therefore influence the viewer in different ways. I paint without fear and without intention and my multilayered abstractions are created spontaneously and “from the heart.”

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~ Viktor Frankl

The eye not told what to see, sees more….Brian Rutenberg