Statement

As children you were likely subject to maxims, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” or “treat people the way you want to be treated,” and you understood these things enough to say okay and move on. However, no matter how much you care for your parents, your teachers, and their adages, the moment you fully internalized those things was likely a set of happenings rather than words. For instance, you accidentally say something hurtful to a close friend, and they cry, which has happened before, but now you’re old enough to recognize those tears and relate them to your own. So, you get an awful feeling in your chest, and then you begin to understand how to manage your words. Adults are not much different, other than that we have seen more.  

Art can be viewed in this same scope. Most people can state a general point covering a wartime photograph of injured children amongst rubble. This is an important foundation, a mode of communication, and a proper tool to see the world as it happens, much like the words of a parent. On the other hand, there is abstracted or vague art, which then takes up the role of subconscious processing. When the intention of the artist is not immediately apparent to the viewer, any conclusion they come to becomes their own.

Art is to adults what sticks, rocks, dirt, sports, and playdates are to children. I believe in pictures, objects, videos, and so on, that serve as material for people to process the world from their subconscious to their conscious mind. Things that serve as a place to go after understanding something fundamentally.

Sculpture with Dan Coughlin. Lost this year to black mold.

My grandfather’s Chest, a Manequin.

In Ireland, a person’s environment, their land, is akin to themselves.