I paint about the quiet intensity of a person in a room.
And from that stillness comes an outpouring of paint and a bombastic accumulation of gestural flicks and marks. The heavy paint build-up is not so much an investigation of texture per se, but rather, the result of an aesthetic that doesn’t allow for erasing, only the layering of changes. These paintings can be likened to unpolished manuscripts that include both the final version and editorial corrections; the revisions and crossed out phrases are part of the finished work. My intention is to arrive at beauty through unlikely means.
My decision to paint figuratively evolved from three instincts: the search for a lucid and comprehensive vehicle for communication, a general skepticism about the coherence of symbols and visual semantics (at least, until the fog of post-modernism blows over), and the simple pleasure of sitting with another person while making images.
August Hoerr lives in Huntsville, AL.