"The Seeding Soul and the War Machine"
Acrylic and cannibalized painting parts on canvas. 2017 R.B. Pruett |
They wanna count you, classify you
Stamp a number on your head Aggravate you, allocate you Every day until you’re dead They sanitize and organize you Till you fit in the machine Hypnotize you, terrorize you Till you’re lonely scared and mean Indoctrinate you, fill-with-hate you And nourish you with lies Calibrate you, automate you And march you off to die by Richard W. Bray |
Artist Statement
I'm interested in organic forms and the reconstruction and cannibalization of my paintings to produce new images. I feel the need for continual physical and metaphorical deconstruction of my paintings as I deal with personal failures, current social, political issues, and the onslaught of contemporary art. I am interested in the layered and amorphous qualities of paint that accentuate the tactile sense of vision. There is movement and tension, an internal force that pulls things toward figuration.
For me painting is the primal impulse to mark. It’s a visual record of the mind, the body, and the human spirit. It’s about a need to both create and to destroy. Maybe it’s out of sheer frustration that I paint: maybe it’s out of a need to violate or to contradict, or possibly, it’s simply about the pure enjoyment of mark-making: maybe it’s the mystery that painting holds, either way, there is a strong feeling present and I feel compelled to react to this feeling.
My work is a response to the physicality of painting, a love of materials, an appreciation of process, and to the seduction of surface. The paintings allude to the beauty of decay, to violation, and to vulnerability. They are excavations, a conglomeration of surfaces layered with a variety of materials. From these materials figurative images are often unearthed. They are surfaces that attempt to reveal a sense of time and a certain kind of depth, a depth that is both physical metaphorical through build up and layering as well as emotional depth through destructive scarring, removing and cannibalizing. In the end the works are about a search, a search for truth and a search for personal revelation through the act of painting.
R.B. Pruett
I'm interested in organic forms and the reconstruction and cannibalization of my paintings to produce new images. I feel the need for continual physical and metaphorical deconstruction of my paintings as I deal with personal failures, current social, political issues, and the onslaught of contemporary art. I am interested in the layered and amorphous qualities of paint that accentuate the tactile sense of vision. There is movement and tension, an internal force that pulls things toward figuration.
For me painting is the primal impulse to mark. It’s a visual record of the mind, the body, and the human spirit. It’s about a need to both create and to destroy. Maybe it’s out of sheer frustration that I paint: maybe it’s out of a need to violate or to contradict, or possibly, it’s simply about the pure enjoyment of mark-making: maybe it’s the mystery that painting holds, either way, there is a strong feeling present and I feel compelled to react to this feeling.
My work is a response to the physicality of painting, a love of materials, an appreciation of process, and to the seduction of surface. The paintings allude to the beauty of decay, to violation, and to vulnerability. They are excavations, a conglomeration of surfaces layered with a variety of materials. From these materials figurative images are often unearthed. They are surfaces that attempt to reveal a sense of time and a certain kind of depth, a depth that is both physical metaphorical through build up and layering as well as emotional depth through destructive scarring, removing and cannibalizing. In the end the works are about a search, a search for truth and a search for personal revelation through the act of painting.
R.B. Pruett
rbpruett1357@yahoo.com
instagram@rbpruettart
instagram@rbpruettart
