Andrew Purchin, Painter

                                                                                   Photo by Jon Kersey

The ideal condition for my creative process is when all of us are deeply present and thus are aware of the sensations we feel inside and attuned to one another and all the qualities in our environment.    By asking viewers to move to visual art, I hope to create a field which is both kinetic and immediate so that I may go even further into my creative process.

Lisa Hochstein’s collages in the exhibit “Undoings” bring me into a textural and visual field which leads me to endless discovery.  I’ve invited Lisa to participate publicly in finding the movement in her creative process as a way to support my painting practice and to bring all of our attention to the beauty of the making.

I invite viewers to immerse themselves in movement, which is my primary subject matter.  One option is for museum goers to find their own movement through being in touch with their bodies as they view Lisa’s collages.   Another option is to observe and imagine being me painting the movement.  Yet another option is to imagine being both me painting the movement and being the movement at the same time.

My work spawns from my duel practices of being in the moment as I paint directly from life and from my practice of deep dance improvisation.   In the deep dance practice, I work to stay present in a microscopic way, sensing my bones, joints, muscles and cells and how sensation and movement connect. From that point I sense the other dancers’ presence.  A soft peripheral receptive vision is important to be aware of the other dancers as we collaborate with our bodies.  I use my body like a paintbrush carving the space.  When I paint on location, I dance directly with the world as it passes by.  Today, you the viewers are the world that passes by me.