michaelj817's photostream

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." -Orson Wells

I am a student at Butler County Community College and have exhibited work in the 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 BC3 group exhibits. In April of 2007, I exhibited work in Lawrenceville’s Annual Art All Night in the 2007 Hoyt Institute Mid-Atlantic Juried Art Exhibition in New Castle, and completed my first one person show, "Recent Works by Michael James Ward" at the Mary Hulton Phillips Gallery. Recently accepted into the 2008 Hoy Mid-Atlantic Juried Art Exhibition and receiving a Merit award, in the spring of 2009 I will also be participating in a group exhibit at Agora Gallery, which is located in the Chelsea gallery district of Manhattan in New York City.

I am often asked why I do not sign my work. When I see a signature on a painting, I find it incredibly distracting. If I go to see a film, I want to suspend my disbelief for 2 hours, and lose myself within the film. I view my paintings in the exact same fashion, and while I am looking at one, wish to lose myself within the piece completely.

I approach each new piece, as a director would a scene in a film. Everything must be blocked out and rehearsed before it is put to film, and i work in the same fashion, sometimes rehearsing a painting in my head for months before I ever pick up a brush. However, sometimes the rehearsal process is limited, and more akin to an impromptu improvisational performance. Every one of my paintings tells a story and is filled with characters from deep in the recesses of my psyche. In some paintings there is one standout star, and others feature ensemble casts of characters. These characters sometimes make cameo appearances in other paintings, but they are all individuals with their own tales and histories, yet at the same time they are each a facet of my own personality.

You cannot compare Babe Ruth to Barry Bonds. When all is said and done, and I am dead and buried in the ground, I want to be thought of as someone who helped resurrect painting back to a level of respectability for my generation. Minimalism and Art Deco are dead, and I want to show that meaning still resides in painting, and that there is still work to be done. Art is not all about CGI photoshopped images for the media and by the media, but instead holds a much greater truth. However, it is up to each of us to locate our own truth, and it is in each and every one of us. There is nothing wrong with CGI, but don't give in and be a whore to it. Instead, be your own artist.

My best piece is the one I haven't yet begun.

"Truth is beauty and beauty is truth." - Robert Motherwell