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Ron Peat: Artist Statement
I started exploring grid-patterns about 20 years ago to regulate my interest in patterned imagery. The grids allowed shifting patterns to move through the imagery. At one time the pattern was contained by the imagery. Gradually the patterns overtook the imagery. Now the imagery is contained by the dispersion of patterns.
In my exploration of grids, I have experimented with three dimensional grids and images as well as the grid being used as a scaffolding for various types of integrated perceptions. I like to think of my painted patterns structured through images as perceptualism. What is my concept of perceptualism? To begin with, I see the world at large is made up of layers of patterns. The spiral, the meander, the helix, the branching, the intersecting, are forms in the natural process from which all life-patterns arise on a scaffold. It is evident within the soil, water, air, solids, liquids, and gas. These patterns are endless in variation in how they intersect, overlap, and intertwine throughout one-another.
Perceptualism is my study of overlapping, intersecting and intertwining perceptions. It is about NETWORKING: an interdependence of the total parts regardless of their particular function. It is about SYSTEM: a dependence of a group of parts upon one another to bring about a certain end or function for a greater body. My use of the grid establishes a process which climates objects to an overall pattern within an environment. It establishes multiple systems and networks that are superimposed and overlapped to create a unique image. Perceptualism is the assimilation of many types of sensations simultaneously. It is perceiving, discerning, and knowing by the power of awareness, consciousness, and acquaintance; an immediate or intuitive cognition or judgment of the existent.
Specifically, I have forced three dimensions into two at times. I have used perceptualism to disperse repeating formations by color, shape, form, line, groupings. I am particularly interested in patterns that make other patterns which make still larger patterns through the overlapping, intersecting, and entwining processes. I have explored the hypnotic effect of patterns and the way it causes REMs in the waking state, which is something that normally appears within the dream state. I have presented imagery to dream upon within the hypnotic effect of patterns. As a physicist once said; “Mass tells space how to warp, and space tells mass how to move.” There is also a shift in scale by how the image is shattered by the dispersive principles of the grid. So bigger things can seem smaller, and smaller things can look bigger, depending on the division of scale. Through the use of breakup, something might be blown-up, yet retain its natural scale.
R.H. Peat