Richard Yates – Statement About Artworks
My works over the
past 30 years derive from visits to remote or unusual locations.
Most often on the prairies, I find a place where something of an
unusual event had historically or metaphysically taken place which
gives me a sense that there had been about that place multiple
aesthetic, or even spiritual, decisions made there. I can build
later in memory on this place and examine or visually speculate and
so generate visual images. Sometimes my nighttime dream symbolic
images may augment and broaden the process. My “pond”,
bird/flying dream, farm field pattern markings images all come from
vision quest-like discover trips in nature somewhat akin to a hunting
trip. If the intent is right and animal will present itself to the
hunter sometimes as an offering. One of the most unusual events to
be “placed in my path” was of learning of and locating a group of
11 circles of a “crop circle” formation and reflecting on this
event in a print. Often the sourcing, or building the foundation of
the artwork in nature, or place, can be something of a revelation.
Other sources I have visited are native prairie medicine wheel sites,
megalithic standing stone sites in Europe like Avebury, Stonehenge,
those on Malta, and at Carnac. All are powerful “organic” earth
sites significantly placed and aesthetically rich and, interestingly,
seem to be meant to be seen from above. Thus, many of my works have
sense of a “birds-eye view”. Or that of a “flying dream”:
powerful senses of faith, intent and unity --- all seeing.
Interestingly, some of the art of the Russian Revolution in the
constructivist and later suprematist movements had a similar “birds
eye” view reflecting a group of ideal or utopia which was
unfortunately undermined by ruthless power politics. I think this
ideal utopia --- a mixture of spiritual question, ideal aesthetics,
earth/nature appreciation is reflected in some of my artworks.
I also enjoy loading
and compressing the composition. Somewhat like squeezing and folding
the image into the rectangle format, as if the rectangle format were
pregnant and near to term.
Some of my summer
2001 images are small Italian hilltop town views of colorful
imaginary landscapes in oil on small panels. More recently I painted
small intimate and colourful images of imaginary pond fish and frogs,
odd cats and dogs in a light-hearted way. Plus some landscapes from
memory.