ARTIST STATEMENT 

Working directly from life, wrestling wild forces, I find the challenge in painting is to materialize a state of intense pantheistic awareness. With raw attention to nature, painting is a physical, mental, and spiritual struggle that leads to a deep level of contemplation.

 

Rapid response to the ever changing vista engages a certain automatism which endows the work with an energy conjured up from the depths of the unconscious. Beyond the immediate optical decisions are invisible elemental powers that give rise to abstract impulses.

 

The process of life, death, and rebirth is imprinted on all of the universe and is reflected in the silent witness of my work. To extrapolate from the words of Saint Paul: "Now we see in a glass darkly, but when we see face to face the function of iconography will cease".

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John Torina. 

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