Since graduating from the Emily Carr College of Art in 1981 with a major in sculpture, I have sought to break away from the endless search for new forms. I view an artwork as a sublime form of communication and our cognitive system as a fine natural computer that instinctively perceives the message embedded within the art form.
In the visual arts I hold that this cognitive code is very direct and distinct from the form and craftsmanship of the artwork, which is why I choose subject matter where this separation is most evident. Using ordinary, recognizable objects eliminates the resistance that abstract art induces in the viewer, for painting and sculpture cannot be an end in themselves. Instead, they must transcend harmoniously created objects to promote a kind of spiritual communication.
There is a highway running from Athens to Rome, and onward to Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, and London. Beyond, it bridges the Atlantic to New York, thence to Boston, Toronto, and Montreal, and to Washington and Philadelphia, and west to Los Angeles and San Francisco, ending in Vancouver, British Columbia.
This is a spiritual highway, with each new destination a further departure from Western civilization’s founding ideals. There are twists and turns in the road. In Romanesque and Gothic times the road seemed almost lost, as we see in the Romanesque and Gothic dehumanization of the arts. Fortunately, Giotto di Bondone stepped onto the smooth surface of this almost forgotten highway, making everything sensible, humanistic, and beautiful.
But then came a catastrophe without parallel in human history: the 20th century and its so-called art. Two totalitarian ideologies and the corrosive effects of drug culture pushed the course of history away from mainstream Western values, instead surrendering to the masses, with their common taste and vulgarity. A small elite promoted and created the total degradation of traditional art forms.
Art is a human activity, a communication between one human and the next, and its subject matter is humanity. Replacing human presence with abstract relationships of colours, lines, and other basic visual elements is a willful conspiracy of snobs and self-serving liars. I hope that as we make our way through this challenging century a new generation of artists will pick up the pieces, rebuild the highway, and create art that imitates neither the Greeks nor the Romans, the Renaissance nor the Baroque, but rather manifests a new art with man again in the centre.
The humanization of mankind is not finished. Rather, it is a project whose end is still far, far away.