Blog: Freedom – the no hands approach to making art

Remember when you could ride your bike and it was your vehicle to freedom, your means to get away and journey to places that only you, well you thought only you, knew about? Remember the joy and the fear of starting at the top of a hill, and gliding down going faster than you could ever possibly imagine and putting the brakes on just before the bottom so you could control the outcome? Remember peddling so fast that you could let go of the handle bars spread your wings and fly as free a an eagle?

No hands – no hands. For me that is freedom. I haven’t been able to move away from calling my work abstract expressionism even though the concept of the abstract has morphed into nothingness and no longer offers me the “no hands” approach to my work. When I discovered that the notion of the abstract was nothingness I became to rethink just what does that idea of the abstract mean to me. It means it is the conscious process of forming and idea, a concept from within the fluidity of process, from the fluidity of making art. When the abstract becomes an idea a concept I have placed my hands back on the handle bars of my bike and I control the journey, the bike ride at the bottom of the hill. At that point I am expressing, taking those very personal ideas and concepts that emerge from the fluidity of process, and make them speak. Shout really – look mom no hands. That for me is freedom. To take a “no hands” approach with the ability to apply my own breaks when I need to.