How can Art in an 'Age of Alternative Facts' and 'Multi-Linear Realities' express a 'Universal Truth' and lead us out of a 'State Of Nature'
You have to be an abstract expressionist in order not to feel sorry for yourself.
Chris Ramensky 2020
When I explain my process I often relate it to Sport.
Imagine a game of tennis:
Although it's not a ball bouncing at you, it's a red.
We don't hit a top spin lob, we activate the picture plane.
In stead of struggling to overcome 3 match points, we might wrestle with 3 point perspective.
The joy, the beauty is that at the end of the match - at the conclusion of the painting - we are witness to the pursuit of creation, the 'manifestation of will'.
Working in Mixed Media (predominantly oil and acrylic), starting with a figurative drawing on paper I collage that drawing onto board or canvas. Sometimes collaging multiple drawings together, and then coming in with paint and pen layer upon layer upon layer.
I'm really passionate about Surface. It's chunky, Textural.
I like to work the Painting until it can't really handle any more, or it gets to the point that I am going around in circles - while simultaneously maintaining a balance of composition and metaphor.
In this way I am both the Conductor and the Journeyman.
My Painting/Mark Making philosophy departs spontaneously from the ideal 'photographic' representation to embrace the subconscious expression of will. A manifestation of intent.
It wells from the deeply personal in terms of subject and object (as the sum of my own experience dictates), the challenge therefore; to convey a universal truth.
The 'truth' as it were is the innate human ability(necessity) to create.
My work is simultaneously Metaphorical, Allegorical, Representational and Literal.