Each painting is a surprise. I approach my work with the attitude of an explorer searching for composition and the perfect intersection of colors. As I work, the sense of scale vanishes and I am compelled by the internal resistance of the work itself to do surprising and unforeseen things. These moments are exciting! It feels as though all manner of things are happening from a fixed point of reference. There is a center of energy, of color, spinning like a centrifuge out to the perimeters. Dualities are felt, urban to suburban, pockets of activity and pockets of ease. There is density and transparency. I work until a balance is struck between movement and point of view. My works are fragments of motion perceived, not in an organic totality, but in a synthetic space of experience. Besides the gradation of color and flicker, there is an undercurrent, a rumble of something behind and beyond the image.
The result I want is a pure experience pasted together on a canvas. A glimpse of what one sees and feels when one is not really looking. It is about vital interior energy and mystery.
I search for compositional device, a sense of pulling inward and pushing outward, of gravity and release, of capture and escape. In either direction, the movement is an inexorable and organic exploration of the moment. It is a stop-and-go motion. I look at painting as the culmination of these tasks, the poetic foregrounding of what sits in the head’s background. I am interested in luminous and shimmering colors, using color vitality in ways that reflect our own times as well as the sheer pleasure of painting itself.
Saule Piktys
