The predator's trajectory

"In Geometry the existence of the point precedes creation of the line.  This is evidenced in the natural world as the seed begets shoot; birth begets lifeline; destination begets Journey, and a celestial body begets a line of gravitational force with all other celestial bodies. In this piece the prey begets the predator's trajectory and purpose."

Get the point or I'm dropping this celestial body on you...

The Hegemony of Lust

"What starts out as vision soon becomes corroded into a hegemony of lust, leaving only a sense of chaos and the possibility of a new synthesis.  As spatial impressions become clarified through emergent and diverse practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the inaccuracies of our condition."

So -- are we talking domination and submission?  Exactly what inaccuracies are illuminated here?

Freeze framing the everyday

"I love the fleeting freeze frames of the everyday..."

Gives new meaning to the phrase "frost heaves..."

No Exit

"...discovering where and when the sense of inside and outside produce or annul themselves; the curiosity of an endless approach to the beginning, to the place where biological and psychical existences unite/divide..."

Didn't Sartre write a play about this one?

The thrust to restore lost unity

"My flowers speak of nostalgia for a lost unity, for the detachment from the totally indistinct needed by the intelligence to exist, to individuate."

To merge, or not to merge;
that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler
in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows
of Insensitive Critics,
Or to take arms against
the Sea of Rationality,
And by opposing drift away:
to die, to sleep in some lost Unity;
and by a sleep, to say we end
the heart-ache, and the thousand
natural shocks that art is heir to --
'Tis an Individuation
Devoutly to be wished...

Good vibrations

"the fascination of color, the primitive pleasure of vibrating to its frequencies..."

Like the colors of a frappe

"...the television aesthetic made of worlds that blend into one another endlessly like the colors of a frappe..."

Ooh, I love this one -- and now I'm realizing I love these because they offer such a terrific opportunity to show off my own bad art. Turns out I can illustrate just about ANYTHING!!!

 My husband took one look at this image and went, "Blecchhhh!" -- which is pretty much how I responded to this statement...  I mean, when's the last time you had a frappe that had more than one color in it?

A sliver of recognition

"A shiver of recognition passes through me when I create an image of the West that had always existed, if only in my subconscious."

Hmm.  Was that shiver?  Or sliver? And I believe the tense used here may be past, imperfect...

Prisoner of the real

"I am writing with light the action trying to find out the reflection of the answer. But I am possessed by my photo, by the limit of the real which I must transcend in order not to become its prisoner."

Words fail me... but perhaps that's because I am imprisoned by the real...

Somewhere beyond our Ken...

Extreme de-focusing enables me to blend and distill hues, creating rhapsodies of color that are meditative pieces--glimpses into a space of pure color, beyond our focus, beyond our ken.

This one's not that bad until you get to the part about ken. The real question is -- is it beyond Barbie, too? How about Midge? Maybe the space of pure color exists somewhere midway between Midge and Skipper...

Welcome!

Artist statements are always a challenge to write, but some people really have a wonderful way of saying absolutely nothing and sounding surprisingly, convincingly deep. I've known this -- and been collecting bad examples -- for years, but when I saw the above quotation from Calvin I knew the time had arrive to take them public.

I'll try to limit myself to one example a day, but there may be more if I uncover something truly inspirational. I'll add art from time to time to add color to the page, but I promise not to make fun of other people's art; I'll just offer my own bad paintings and photos.  I have plenty!

I do want to say that there are some delightful artist statement generators on the web; feel free to explore and create your own bad artist statement.

http://www.artybollocks.com
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/12/artists-statement-generator.html

http://kyleclements.com/generate_statement_1.html

If you find any particularly egregious statements to share, feel free to email me at woodenhue@gmail.com. And enjoy!