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Artist Statement

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Gestural action, abstracted figures in landscape, and all over painting...these are all part of my art making process. I have for a long time been open to the emotive quality of color and the physical substance of paint. Aesthetic experiences have become something of a catharsis and often I create artwork not in a balanced frame of mind, but after troubling current news. In 2001, I began to systematically study abstraction in its first modern form and to apply this understanding to contemporary painting. Reading Wassily Kandinsky's and Paul Klee's books and theorizing abstraction, my paintings started out with dashes and lines then moved on to include more cubist like planes. I emulated Picabia's and Duchamp's work in this manner. Then, I intuitively created biomorphic forms much like in a surrealist manner.

Form, color, and movement are now brought into play in creating my artwork, all the while referencing my current awareness of the world. I allow different aspects of these styles to emerge in a semiautomatic process. I use gestures and images in a give and take way, and evaluate the work at stages. Accidents and chance are certainly essential to this process. In these occurrences images materialize. Often the results of my painting are related to forms I studied in a graduate school class, The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Horrible. All of these possibilities guide me.

       

Frank Wesley studied Art at Western Kentucky University and The School of The Art Institute of Chicago

Frank Wesley's website is  aroundshadow.com

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