Artist Statement

 It has taken 50 years for me to finally understand one basic truth about all art: people get out of art what they bring to it. No matter what I’m trying to “say” with a piece, it will always be perceived through the life-lens of the observer. Everything they have ever seen or done has created a filter through which they now experience life–and art. Each person experiences the work differently, and it is as though my art–ANY art–can create a door where no door had been. And if the art resonates through the life-lens of the viewer, the door will open. That door leads not out to some alien place, but in to “self.” When a person is fortunate enough to find a resonant piece of art and to open that amazing door, there is no end to what they can learn about themselves.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

When I was a child, I would look out through my bedroom window, nose close to the old metal screen, smelling the dust of the day overlaid by redolent darkness. I would stare into the night and think about being inside and outside, about being large and small, about when and, mostly, about why. There must be answers there, I would insist to myself, and I felt that I could find them if only I knew how to form the questions. If the questions could transcend my words and, somehow, find their own magical shape, they might themselves shape the answers and I would be able to see and understand. I tried to place cold brass handles on the edges of infinity. I tried to unwind the noose of time and spread it out before me so that nails could be placed just so--here, and another here--that I might measure a life along its length and find the place where time began. My young mind would fashion arrows of light and fire them into the darkness one by one, night after night, always to see them wink out just beyond in the void. It was always there. You must know. The precipice marking the abyss seemed always just at my feet, and the void itself, the abyss, forever dark, forever unforgiving, forever cruel, whispering, seemed to trace the arc of my arrows back through my eyes and watch me from inside watching it: neutral. That may have been the worst part. The abyss didn't care, it merely was. I would tremble in fright and rage and fall within myself, and the void would follow me and I would be consumed.

Now, as a man, I continue to live with the abyss just there, beyond, and a little within myself as well, a residue from those nights so many years ago. And as a man I now seldom fashion arrows of light because I know too well the danger. I dare not show the void a way back into my mind. I am no longer shielded by childhood. I cannot move so swiftly in retreat nor bend without fear of falling.

If you look closely into the eyes of the faces I paint, you may see that they have also faced the abyss. Some have found the magic forms for their questions and may have even given shape to the answers. But all are vigilant. All have heard the whispers. And they all know that the darkness still waits. And doesn't care.

--Lawrence