"I am interested in the
relationship between abstraction and landscape painting. Norbert Wolf has
argued in an essay about landscape painting that this genre stands “closest to
pure painting in its concentration on color and light.” I believe that in
many ways abstraction owes a lot to the landscape genre, with its application
of paint and interest in the nature of color and light. I
also work from painting’s history. I believe that we have always borrowed from
the past to redefine or rediscover our existence. I start with a painting from
history and then begin to abstract from it until I find something new about
color, space or paint. With my paintings I try to master the medium, but more
importantly, I try to pick paintings from history that will help me to discover
how history speaks to the present. Art is not a decoration but a declaration of
one’s self-understanding of place in this world."
Wes Sherman, June 2009 | Works
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