Vincent Dion

Vincent Dion

Artist statement  for works on paper

My purpose is to create symbolically resonant artworks that are neither abstract nor representational. This is work generated by a need to explore elemental emotions while balancing and reconciling the contradiction of making work that is both peaceful and energetic.  These paintings are essentially metaphorical still lives.  For me, they are image driven and rely on a search to understand and convert representational imagery into abstraction.  The marks and images can evoke many objects, such as crosses, stars, nets, clocks, industry, organic and inorganic structures or vessels.   These in turn function as symbols for cemeteries, eternity, the passage of time or the duration of loss.

I start by limiting my choices of colors that reference random objects.  My use of imaginary imagery, forms, figure-ground interchange, and the integration of layers both opaque and translucent record a compilation of thoughts.  I depend on a combination of controlling the medium with an image in mind and simultaneously submitting to the mercurial nature of reconciling spontaneous actions.  The deliberate discipline of my formal process demonstrates energy at sober and variable speed, without specific scale of the psychological space depicted. I resist the practical need to get done and let each piece evolve on its own schedule.  I efficiently try to get to the point where no point exists.   Subsequently, I work on many pictures simultaneously.  I stop the work on each picture when it looks unintentionally intentional.

The works on paper are one of a kind, but they have the appearance of being printed by several types of printing methods including silkscreen and woodcut. I am fascinated by processes that are not at first self-evident. I think that one key for an artwork to be successful is to be mysterious in its methods, materials, content, and or physicality.

I have enjoyed decades of interest, education, and experience in the following activities:

 painting, sculpting, decorative arts, art handling, exhibition design, construction, photography, graphic design, furniture design