"...an encounter between persons and forms [is] in truth an encounter between persons - the maker and the receiver." (from Susan Stewart's "The Open Studio")

That was the opening to my first artist talk that I delivered to employees at Daimler Financial on Thursday. It was an amazing opportunity to reflect on the developments in my art and life over the past few years, and share my passion for art. It affirmed to me once again that being a viewer of art is in itself a creative exercise, and that the experience of art is a dynamic conversation, and hopefully connection, between artist and viewer.

The employees' response to the talk was amazing - the best compliment for me was that they appreciated how "accessible" I was. We talked about how a lot of artists try to build an aura of artistic "genius" by deliberately making themselves inaccessible. It is as if "accessible" in the art world has come to be synonymous with "mediocre". (I began to discuss this idea in my earlier blog posting "Over-Exposure".) But every time that I speak to people who love art and yet don't have a background in art and art theory, I am constantly struck at how much they want to understand more, and how remote the world of art seems to them. Does it really have to be that way? I work hard in my own practice to engage with the more complex ideas that the experience of art raises, but I am cautious to not make the visual experience of my work alienating. I want those viewers who are not necessarily familiar with the references and theories that I'm grappling with to still be drawn in - seduced - by the beauty of the image, the sensuality of the paint, and the ambiguity of the distortions. I think of it as my Sesame Street theory of art - I want my work to connect with "the kids" just as much as "the parents". Because until relatively recently, I was one of "the kids" too.