Tree Stokes

Artist Statement

A Mark is a Moment
This series of paintings is a distillation of an awareness I experienced during my years working with transparent watercolor. I primarily painted direct marks of puddled color. As I painted, I felt that each slow-drying puddle held its moment. The final dried mark expressed its moment in the characteristics of the pigments used and the initial flow and direction of the brush mark. The brush marks themselves mesmerized me as I watched them dry, like time locked in amber.

In this series of paintings, the brush marks themselves take precedence and build their own image. They are a visual record and expression of subjective moments. They are the color of moments. Each brush mark occupies its own space in time, in harmony with the others. The marks sometimes collect as fractals. The completed image they become is their shared space in time within the boundaries of a painting, like the birth of a universe.

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