ARTIST STATEMENT

David Ouellette

Every work is like a portrait, detail and care given to sentiment as well as to form.

There are inspirations and then there are influences.  Nature gives us inspiration as we feel the tie between our self containment and the endless variety found in the vast sea of time and space.   We reach out and identify with or are enriched by our experiences in  Nature. I sometimes refer to us as time-crest riders.   Influence is often found in the lives and work of  other artists that have contributed so much with a wealth of creative ideas, that is the interpretation and execution in a unique and meaningful way.  These influential forerunners range from the anonymous artists of Lascaux  to the local and contemporary associates of today.  There are of course specific and monumental artists that had special sway. For example my surface textures owe much to Hans Hoffman, Van Gogh as well as Titian and Corbert.  There is a particular beauty found in the oft missed scumbling technique in the painting of Paul Gauguin.  Going back to Nature for a moment, it is interesting how one can be inspired in the studio, as differentiated from the experiences one gains from the world at large.
 With ones paints and tools during the act of painting,  the materials are part of nature in the act,  they are the substance of which the artist manipulates and transforms the medium into the message.  From the world and environment around us to the intimacy of ones immediate space, the artist works with sustained study, and gestural strokes and compositional plans, and chance elements to render an object of art, material and spiritual.

The German philosopher and poet, Goethe, called architecture “frozen music” One can look at a dancer, the flight of a bird or the rumbling energy of a storm and be moved to create.  An artist may  want to bring those unique forms of motion into the realm of the visual art. These  triggers may also come from a broken heart, overwhelming love, or any of the frailties or the exuberance humankind may be heir. The art historian Ernst Gombrich say the artist “cannot transcribe what he sees, he can only translate it into the terms of the medium.”  Thus, the medium is a key factor in the artists form of expression or, to the extreme where we have heard that the medium is the message.  



I tend to develop works with an energy and intensity and a power in abstract form that presents themselves almost as a story, if you will, with characters, plots and subplots, beginnings, ends, all of which can be read by the viewer, however which is subject to their own interpretation and imagination.  All my works carry the signature of approach and manner of handling.  The starting point might be quick to come or slow to evolve; either way the result must ring true.  There is an instinctive gauge that measures the design with form, with color, with strokes and the textures that culminates in what I feel is a complete statement.  Michelangelo said his eye was his only measure.  I mentioned the importance of the medium, and the tools for that matter, but most assuredly, for me, the paint.  In most cases I
use enamels: fluid, glossy and quick to set up.  There is an immediacy that is inherent to the enamel paint medium.  I also am able to engage the various colors and tones while they are in the liquid state, or adjust their character with the controlled use of solvents, where gravity is a factor.  Nature in the studio.  Philip Ball in his book, Bright Earth, notes: “No wonder philosophers and linguists so love to debate color - it tempts, and eludes them at the same time that it promises wonders and deep secrets.”  

In the realm of the senses, color plays a meaningful role.  It can charge us fire red, or calm us aqua blue. When many colors are orchestrated together , along with form and structure, texture and gesture, a statement , a sensation will have been achieved.  “If music be the food of love, play on.”  “We crown our lives with the gems of color.”