It has been a luxury for me to paint the movement of water and the movement of dance for fifty days. I worked on location and I allowed my eye to alternate between focusing and wandering. Surprise came to me as I joined with the motion of the sea, and/or a community of dancers and let the brush land where it landed. I absorbed the movement in my body and improvised with the water and/or dancers.
I added transparent layers of movement creating the history that exists in the moment. Painting can be a ritual for me. There’s something about laying out my colors and mapping the forms and movement that is an invocation. I never know what I invoke until it happens. I like the tension that is created when expectation and the unknown tease each other. My work spawns from my duel practices of being in the moment as I paint directly from life and from my practice of deep dance improvisation. As I strive to capture motion and be the motion, I hope to engage the viewer in some aspect of the intimacy of creation.
Andrew Purchin, July 20, 2010