The Whole Picture

Self-Portrait, Berlin 2008. Oil on linen, 24x18 inches.

Lately, I have spent time meditating on my life. It is amazing that our minds hold so much information . . . and we are only able to access bits of it through memory. Why do some episodes stand out more clearly than others? I am depending on long-term memory when I look back at the beginning of my life. The complexity is unfathomable. I imagine that every smell, touch, sound or even ray of light is encoded in my brain, yet I only access a fraction. Before I learned language, I was gathering information from my mother and father and surroundings. Has this formed me into who I am? Of course, my unique biology, what I am genetically, influences the way in which I perceive. I am of a sensitive nature, and learn especially through sensory experience.
So far, I have gone through my memories from birth to the beginning of college. I am trying to see who I am by looking at the movie of my life . . . and watching myself from the beginning. I don't want to censor anything either . . . but see the whole picture as it has emerged. I am an artist, and as I see the artwork that has been created thus far, I can take my brush in hand, and then more confidently paint the future as it is meant to be.

All Improvisation

"January Jazz",  final version, 20 x 16 inches, acrylic on canvas, January 2015

To make an abstract painting is different than painting from life. There is no subject matter except the painting itself.

"January Jazz" beginning version

I paint both from nature and abstractly. In the last couple days I made the painting depicted here. I did not know what the outcome would be when I began . . . it was all improvisation. What informed the progress was work that I have done in the past with scumbled, open areas that are punctuated by rectangles or squares of pure color, that float in the field. The pictures are dynamic in the way space is created by color and shape alone, without reference to a particular subject.

"Moroccan Drift" early 2014. oil on canvas, 24x18 inches
 
Click for more abstract paintings by Steven Boone

The Disappearing Passage

A motif has captivated my imagination since my earliest days as a budding artist: the disappearing passage. As a boy, I sometimes would sit at my school desk with my pencil and draw on paper a horizontal line, and then make a road that steadily grew slimmer, until it disappeared at the horizon. Those simple lines gave me great pleasure and left me satisfied. Perhaps, it was my path into eternity.

Now, a half century later, I continue making images that lead the eye into a central location and end in ambiguity. Often, in the beginning, it is an unconscious attraction and only later I see that I have come to familiar territory. Most often the road or path seems to begin underfoot, and travels to a place of disappearance. But it can also be a river or a street . . .

It is as if I am in dialogue with time and travel, and I love symbols of issuance and continuity, even as they go to the mysterious place of vanishing.