STEPHEN LOWERY

I am a Surrealist/Abstract Expressionist and do consider my subconscious, and your subconscious, to be important contributors to my work. I begin my paintings with no preconceived idea of what the image will be. I work quickly and spontaneously as images develop. As I find images and relationships to which I respond, I make conscious decisions about the unity of all the elements within the context they have presented. I am not interested in prettiness, ugliness or conveying a literal statement of any kind. I try to create an image, a world, that conveys a meaningful aesthetic experience.

I ascribe rightness or wrongness to each step of the process, and to the finished work, by weighing the extent to which it allows me to become in empathy with a world that has not existed before the moment of its perception. I believe that it is possible to exit the encounter not saying that I have had a new experience or seen a new place but that I have “experienced” in a new way. The “place” is in the head of the viewer as well as on the surface of the canvas.

Kinda like those pictures in a psychologist's office. 

(Statement 8/15/19)