Claire Seidl

Statement

In my abstract painting over the last three decades I have developed a kind of visual thinking that includes emotion and feeling, and a human response to paint and its qualities rather than one that is solely intellectual. This means I have no preconceptions when I begin a painting or even during its evolution. When I am painting, I do a lot of looking to see what has changed and to intuit what might come next. Over time, I have developed a visual language and vocabulary that continue to grow and change, as all languages do.

As I've become involved also in photography, my paintings have veered away from associations with nature and landscape. Because of its more tangible nature, photography has provoked my paintings to become more personal and expressive, and at the same time, clearly more abstract.

My paintings can be seen as sheer movement and color. Forms and lines appear, disappear, overlap and join together to create other forms, to form the whole. Layers of paint create layers of space that can also give off multiple readings: as pure abstraction, as metaphorical space or inner space. There is color with its attendant associations. There are moods and secrets. There is darkness in the paintings, and light; speed and stillness; strength and softness.