Lake Roberson Newton

Artist Statement

Art as an idea and Art as an action. In the first case certain things are denied, a sensation has been converted into concept; in the second case, matter has been transferred into energy involving space and its elements. I see my work as straddling these two sources. It is a balance of the mental and the physical, the territory of ideas and the territory of materials and places. At the heart of this work is a desire for a direct engagement with one’s surroundings in order to create an inventory of experience. It is about being a body in the world and about measuring the world against oneself.

As I see it, the real challenge, as it always is with the artist, is to humanize life, to formulate it for someone else, to render its interstices, to try to tell a truth, to show how life is lived, and therefore to affirm life. But somehow reality does not tolerate its own reflection; rather it seems to reject it. Thus, my firm belief is that only a different reality, whatever it is, may be substituted for the reality one wishes to convey.

I consider a work of art illuminating whenever an artist’s view of reality does not double my knowledge of the world, but a difference between our respective perceptions occurs. The smaller the difference, the more intense is its effect on me. Thus, it’s less about a precise representation of reality than the formulation of the representation of the world. From this viewpoint we can talk about the artist as an author who- on the basis of facts and by means of a minimal shift of perception- creates a fiction in close proximity to reality. In the best case, an artist describes not only the situation and objects, but endows them as well with a deeper meaning and lets them transcend themselves with a disturbing and visceral force. This is a powerful trait of art as it deprives us of convictions and poses more questions than it answers.