In the century since Kandinsky blazed the trail for non-representational abstraction, there has been considerable theoretical debate about the validity and meaning of abstract painting. I have no interest in these discussions. I can only express my profound gratitude to the masters of 20th Century abstraction - Kandinsky, Miro, Klee, Mondrian, Pollock, Rothko et al - for allowing people to appreciate it today.
If I had to pigeon hole my current work into an art history genre, I would probably say ‘abstract expressionist.’ For now at least there is a certain free flow of form and colour, which is evocative of the abstract expressionist style. I am not sure, however, that I subscribe to the theoretical aspect of it. Abstract expressionism is often presented as a Byronic outpouring of the soul. The violence and movement of the images are supposed to be the unmediated expression of the tortured genius. There is a kind of deification of the artist as cultural hero with the painting intimately bound to his (and it is invariably a ‘his’) personality.
I do not feel this way about my work. My feelings, my intentions, my interpretation are almost irrelevant. Perhaps it is because of the different media and techniques I am employing. With oil on canvas, even when splashing it directly out of the can, ultimately the artist has a reasonably high degree of control over the image. My work is not like that at all. The steel is the key. It bends, it rusts, it heats up. It provides an impervious surface for oil and water based substances to mix together in alchemical ways. I hardly ever use a brush - my heat lamps are far more useful. Sometimes, if I do not like how a piece is going, I will set it on fire with gasoline or leave it outside in the rain for six months and see if nature can improve it.
The use of steel also enables me to add structural, 3D and collage elements, which would be difficult to envisage in the traditional “oil on canvas” format. I can stretch wires and string across the frame to create geometric patterns in relief. I can incorporate screws and other hardware into the image, at the same time as I use them in the artwork’s structural support. Through these methods, I can start to blur the boundary between painting and sculpture.
Much of the texture and complexity of the images are the result of natural processes such as gravity, oxidisation and evaporation. That is probably why many of the features resemble satellite imagery - they are the same natural forces, which shape the surface of the planet, at work in the microcosm of my sheets of steel. Consequently, I do not feel myself to be making an expression of my thoughts or feelings. If anything I feel like an explorer of an uninhabited country. I come across a feature of my surroundings and name it after something familiar, but I cannot take full credit for creating it.
Having said this, I do have standards, even if it is hard for me to articulate them. I may not control every detail that emerges, but I make decisions about colour and heat and reactions I might try to achieve. The process is extremely dynamic with timing paramount; so this is ‘action painting’ to an extreme degree. When Jackson Pollock or Pro Hart threw their cans of oil paint onto a flat canvas, walked and rode bicycles over it, that set a new standard for dynamism in the painting process. Notwithstanding this, however busy and chaotic the final image looks, there is no chemical reaction occurring between different coloured oil paints or between paint and canvas. Dale Frank takes the matter a bit further with his swirling patterns emerging from his unconventional mixing of oils and varnishes. In my work, the steel substrate is itself alive. It’s like cooking a complex meal in which ingredients have to be added in just the right amount at just the right moment. However in my case there’s no recipe - it’s all intuition.
What am I trying to achieve? A thing of beauty. Something which you can stare at for hours and every time you look at it you see something you didn’t see before. To me this is art which is free of ideology or didactic intent. I do not condemn art which tells a story, represents an idea, expresses an emotion, tries to persuade or exposes injustice. My poems are often confessional and sometimes political. But my abstract paintings occupy a different space.
If there is an ideological dimension to it, it is about freedom and equality. Freedom precisely because it is free of ideology and any explicitly representational form. The audience can take whatever meaning or pleasure they like in it. Freedom also because in creating it and in developing the techniques to create it, I have been free to experiment and have not been answerable to anyone else’s ideas about what constitutes ‘real’ art or ‘correct’ technique. Equality because sometimes people come to me and say ‘I haven’t been taught anything about art and I don’t know what I am supposed to see in this’ and I say to them ‘See what you want to see in it. If you find it beautiful that’s all that matters.’ You do not have to be an expert to appreciate the beauty of nature - it is the birthright of every human being - and that is how I feel about my art.
I would like to think that my paintings have value as objects in their own right simply because they are beautiful or interesting to look at. As the product of an individual artist, with a unique set of skills and aesthetic sensibility, they are also necessarily rare. Furthermore, insofar as they are partially the result of chemical reactions and natural processes, they are impossible to reproduce, except as a giclée.
I named my paintings to give the viewer an insight into what I see in these paintings. However, I do not claim any authorial privilege in providing the definitive interpretation. Two people look at the same cloud and one sees a face and the other a castle. So it is with these paintings. I created them so that gives me naming rights. But sometimes a buyer will show me something in one of my paintings that I have never noticed before, and nothing could give me greater pleasure than this.
Simon Wilde
自康丁斯基为非具象抽象艺术开疆拓土以来的一个世纪，有关抽象绘画的意义和真实性的争议层出不穷。我并不想参与到这些讨论中。我只想对20世纪杰出的抽象艺术家们表达我真挚而深刻的感激。康丁斯基、米罗、克利、蒙德里安、波洛克、罗斯科等等，是他们使得人们今天能够欣赏和领会到抽象艺术的美。
如果一定要把我现在的作品归属到一个艺术流派，那么抽象表现主义是较为适合的，因为我作品中形式和颜色的自由流动正是抽象表现主义所能激发的。然而，抽象表现主义作品中激烈汹涌的图像通常是一种未经深虑的、拜伦式的、对深受折磨的艺术家灵魂的宣泄。艺术家本人更是由于作品和其个性的紧密相连而被神化为文化英雄 。
我的作品不属此列。我的感受、意愿和解析都与作品毫无干系。这可能取决于我所使用的独特的媒介和方法。油画创作，即使是直接把油墨泼洒于画布上，画家始终对最终成品有着高度的控制权。我的画布是黑钢，它可弯曲，可生锈，可加热。它能为油墨和水彩的化学反应提供一个不可渗透的平面。我使用画刷的次数甚至比不上我使用加热器的次数。有时候，如果我对创作中的半成品不满意，我也许会浇上汽油烧一会，或者放在露天风吹雨淋几个月，看看大自然的力量能不能改善它。
对黑钢的使用让我可以在作品中添加结构的层次性，多维感和拼接感。这些都是传统的布面油画难以实现的。我可以在黑钢上打孔，穿插连接铁丝和棉线，形成几何图案的立体雕塑。我可以将提供结构性支撑的螺丝和五金用件也结合到最后的图像中。我的作品因为这些独特的方法而模糊了绘画和雕塑的界线。
很多作品中复杂的纹路和质感是由诸如重力、氧化和蒸发等自然反应导致的。这也解释了为什么很多作品中的元素类似太空卫星照片。这些塑造地球表面形态的力量，在钢板上塑造了一个微观的世界。因此，我不觉得自己的思想或情感主宰着作品的走向。或许我更像是一个探索处女地的使者，仅以所见所闻中类似的元素为其命名。我并没有创造，我只是发现。
话虽如此，我还是有必要解释一下我的标准。虽然我不会去精确地控制作品呈现出的每个细节，但是，通过控制颜色、温度、时长和化学反应，我有可能获得期望的效果。整个过程的不可预测几乎到达了“动态作画”的极致。当杰克逊波洛克或普柔哈特将一整罐油彩扔到平铺的画布上，在上面走动，骑自行车，他们为动态的绘画过程制订了新标准。然而，这些最终图像虽有纷乱复杂的形式，却缺乏不同色彩之间、画布与油彩之间的化学反应。戴尔弗兰克创新地混合了油墨和釉彩来得到旋转图案。而在我的作品中，钢板本身就是活体，而我的做画更像是烹饪一顿极其复杂的大餐，所有的原料都必须以精准的数量在精准的时刻加入。唯一不同的是，我并没有可以参照的菜谱。我的创作全凭直觉。
我最终的目标是创造美，可以让你凝视良久回味无穷的美，可以每次重温又有新的发现的美。艺术的初衷本不该拘束于理论或教条。艺术可以讲故事，表达观点，抒发情绪，体现或改变偏见。写诗时的我会充分地自我表白，立场鲜明，但画画时的我截然不同。
上升到理论层面，我关注的是自由和平等。自由是因为作品脱离了明确的表达意愿。观众可以自发地、自由地去发掘作品中的意义和乐趣。同时，我得以自由地创作和尝试各种创作方法，而不去想什么是真正的艺术，什么是正确的画法。平等是因为时常有人跟我说起，他们从没受过正规的艺术训练，因此对自己鉴赏艺术作品的能力缺乏自信。我对此的回答是，去感受你想感受的。只要你觉得美就足够了。我认为，欣赏美的能力是与生俱来的本性和权利，人们并不需要为此成为专家。
我倾向于认为我的作品有其自身的内在价值，因为且仅仅因为它们的美。它们的这种美又必然是稀缺的，我的独特绘画方法和审美敏感度都受限于我手中的时间和脑中的灵感。同时，因为形成这些作品的化学反应和自然力量无法复制，每件作品都会是独一无二的。
作品的标题和说明只是基于我的所感所见所闻。我并不觉得这些文字所代表的对作品的解读是唯一正确的可能。两个人看同一片云彩，可能一个看到一张脸，另一个看到一座城堡。我的画也是这样。身为创作者，我有幸为其命名。可当有观众带领我看到了自己作品中被忽略的可能解读时，我亦是无比高兴的。
西野
