"I was… pondering the idea that a few simple and repetitious psychological motivations may guide almost everything we do/think/say. I wondered if identifying and understanding those essential motivations could be the key to understanding ourselves/humanity."

MOTIVATIONS
Life as we experience it is a complicated layering of simple repeated patterns. For example, I search for affirmation, acceptance, meaning and purpose in almost every interaction with my surroundings (people and things).

CONSTRAINTS
I was really inspired by the central theme of a book called “Creativity from Constraints”—that having a million options stifles creativity and that creativity is “unleashed” by having to overcome obstacles / constraints. So for this project, I made a constraint: I was not allowed to actually touch the surface being painted.

RESULTS
I ended up developing a way to control pouring the paint in very fine lines, and this repeated circling pattern emerged. I was halfway through the process when I realized that I was visually expressing the concepts that I had been pondering: simple repeated patterns (motivations and actions) making up a unique and complicated final piece of art (person / life / group of experiences).

I employed these techniques to create my superspecial editions of BORED sketchbooks, "White on Black" and "White on White".

Back to artists