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Contact/bio |
Raphael Umscheid
Artist’s Statement
I have always been attracted to water and its soothing, tranquil properties. The pace of modern life can be overwhelming, but, for me, water always seems to slow things down and allow focus. The medium of painting attracted me because of its mimicry of water’s movement and transparency. The meditation that the process of painting entails is typically not reached in normal, ‘real’ time. When I’m painting, color and the ability it has to alter one’s preconceptions regarding an object, is very important. I love the thought that a fire engine painted any color other than red is just a large, noisy truck. Likewise, a slight shift in the colors used in a painting can alter or completely change the meaning or message. It is this play with ‘reality’ that I crave. Today, countless images pass through our corneas daily and there is no time to savor them. I want to adopt some of these throwaways, to dote on them, and to decipher something encoded within them or, at least, to have fun rearranging the code. |
