“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

— WILLIAM BLAKE

Seemingly random juxtapositions of color, texture, movement, space, and structure convey to me Blake’s view of the nature of being and experience. My work is a reflection of how I see the world before any conscious attempt to order it.

A fleeting visual reference, a uniquely weathered surface, or even an odd scrap of conversation could spark an initial direction or suggest a color palette. Yet the process of creating each piece is entirely intuitive to the point that, after the fact, I don’t often recall how it happened—just as when one cannot remember the twists, turns, and intersections that were most certainly part of the drive home.

In my 3-dimensional work I take painting in a new direction, allowing the activated surface to break free from the flat rectangle while resulting in works that are still primarily paintings. I’m left with the sense that I’ve created something that is both rigid and in motion, that I’ve captured something in flight.

By taking a purely process-driven approach to the activity of painting, I am able to explore the physical properties of media in the absence of any contemporary cultural noise. However I do not entirely reject the narrative or symbolic. I just ask the viewer to find meaning as I have, not in social commentary, irony, or romanticism, but in transcendence, in the infinite.

—K.C. Madsen