Artist's Statement

I started climbing mountains for what I could do to the mountain, conquer it. I soon learned that the best part of climbing was what the mountain did to me, giving me incredible focus and aliveness. At first, I painted for what I could do to the painted surface, but now I paint for that which is created in me by the act of painting. The world of me, my adventure of passion, color, untamed edges and unconformity, flows from my brush. Painting has become my experience of Thoreau's "In wildness is the preservation of the world". And just like climbing, I am truly alive when painting, feeling the frisson of working on the edge of ruin, striving for the one stroke that expresses it all without need of reworking.

I protest the ordered and polished surface. I cherish rough, even rugged surfaces and so choose materials and methods that give an irregular matt surface to my work. I gently force you to see paint as paint one moment, then the painted image the next, as alternate valid realities. Fooling the mind rather than fooling the eye with subtle clues to set your vision of reality free to invent.

These images are born to the world as a gift to you, the viewer, to provide for you a retreat from the madding crowd. I give you a place of quiet where the psyche adjusts to a slower and more emotive pace. I give you a space of focus for your needs, your wants and your emotions to surface in the strokes of light and color, out of the world of you. It is from the world of you that my creation becomes complete. Without you, my work is one hand clapping. Only you can see the completed work of art and it is a different work for every viewer. And that makes me glad.

January 25, 2003

Copyright 2001-2008 Rosemary Sylvanus Antel. Email: RAntel@seanet.com
Art Gallery database last updated: Friday January 25, 2008.
This page last updated: Friday January 25, 2008.
Site design by RainPlanet.