SHON ANDERSON - Artist Statement

My paintings draw upon the spaces I experience in daily life. Outcroppings of nature within the city and public places such as train stations have been a preoccupation of mine for some time. There is a tension that exists between public spaces, their architecture or implicit function, and the individuals utilizing these spaces. One must rely on cooperation and civility to take advantage. The social obligations required can, however, leave little room for individuality and self-expression. There is always a great desire for people to claim, divide, and shape the world to suit their own ends. With this work I too am claiming, dividing, and shaping the world, but in an imaginary way.   I use heightened colours, cropped scenes, and superimposed images to relate a personal interpretation of the subjects. Painted in oil for maximum colour saturation, these works are made to evoke the subject, but transcend their location and specific function. By zooming in to see the individual leaves of a tree or pulling back to see lights twinkle and cluster, I can experience some of the ephemeral or undervalued aspects of these landscapes. Nobody, including myself, may claim something such as an intersection of a street but we may all experience our own version of it, and give meaning to what is objectively unchanged and meaningless. Our world is a beautiful and humbling complex of people and things. This fact may move some to ecstatic religious experience, but I choose to look closer and bask in the world's inscrutability.

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