MARK LAWRENCE STAFFORD

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a painter, sculptor, and independent researcher interested in our perspective in superposition.  After immersing myself in research involving physics and philosophy related to our connections to the cosmos and consciousness. After years of experimenting with many materials and conceptual processes I have recently returned to painting, using the grisaille, impasto, and velatura processes that I learned at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to map the light of these celestial bodies in the Laniakea supercluster of galaxies and create the feeling of a living being ascending (or collapsing) from a quantum state of superposition-- in a process of painting that does feel like painting on the surface, skin, or drapery while investigating the anatomy of our galactic neighbors... or are they reflections or translations of our own existence?  This worldview relates to Spinoza’s Monism: existence as a single living unity with distinct, self-aware perspectives that can experience divisions of the infinite whole's expressions.  Making a bridge between our observed nature and our expanding environment. 

I began to understand that our galaxy is also a vortex, flattened by Dark Energy in some way, which changes my perception of the role of the Supermassive Black Hole at our galactic center.  It seems our galaxy and solar system are the result of a singularity that is expressing itself and incubating matter, light, and physical life in an elegant dance of energy removed from eternity; not a violent consumer of worlds that, after billions of years, still has not finished its meal.