Cannibal III

My concerns with abstract painting are twofold. First is with abstraction as a visual language - how post-modern abstraction has lost its potential for meaning since photography, video and the computer have become force multipliers in the field of representation. In this light, I am interested in the dichotomy between an abstraction of disenchantment , and the ability of color and form to inspire great depths of feeling and thought.

Second is with my own work, my aim being to inspire an initial response which is visceral and intuitive, rather than intellectual - a sensation that relates to the way we feel in our own skins. Painting for me results not so much in a picture as a direct imprint of duration, exposing the process of building up all the layers of color, and with it, all the layers of time expended.

"Cannibal III" was inspired by a late Guston painting entitled "Painter's Forms II." Guston paints a huge gaping mouth on a table spewing out a gangly mess of limbs and shoes, bottles and tools - all the things which ultimately become the iconic forms of his later work. My painting becomes like the mouth in Guston's piece, spewing forth the vernacular forms of my abstracted painterly world.
-Leslie Wayne