GARY YELEN

It’s difficult to explain motivation, inspiration, and most importantly, imagination.

The motivation is multifold , like most artists it is a pure need to create, to make sense of things, and a way to express these things.

For me it is not an intellectual process - or a need to be cathartic and spill my guts over canvas or paper.
I suspect it has more to do with my parents, as new immigrants/refugees. The struggles to give of themselves, for their children, so they could have what they themselves may have been deprived of.

 So I look to bring joy and hope and empathy through my work. Almost as a duty, to uplift from the mundane, to evoke possibilities to challenge preconceptions. To give a little back and hope others can gain a little from the works also.

My inspiration is of course my environment. The aesthetic beauty of the  landscape I am privileged  to live in. Knowing all the time that deep within that landscape there is mystery and violence, but I choose to project and look for and then paint or sculpt the mystery  hidden from my eyes but buried within the concept of an alternate reality.

Imagination is a hard thing to grasp and comes from many quarters .Daily events, news, changing weather, conversations, a word, a whisper, a mistake. Loss, guilt, and sometimes from nothing - just a doodle, a dot, a splash of colour, basically it is infinite.

But most important to me anyhow, is time, space and an inspirational partner and the privilege of living here.

So says Getzel Gary Yelen