Adam Shaw's artists statement: "A Zen monk may sit in meditation for hours, and then all at once, in a single stroke, he paints a circle, called an enso, and so transmits his understanding, his very state of Being.
As a contemporary artist I dance between these two poles, striving to create the artifice of immediacy, urgency, but with surfaces built up and broken down often over the course of years, or even decades. So the painting feels like it “just happened,” is happening now, yet the surface reveals layers of history, construction, destruction, repetition. It is like meeting a person- when you look at their face you see them as they are now, but they carry with them their whole history. This brings continued interest and rewards long looking. I love paintings which are as engaging when viewed from 60 feet as from 6 inches, and offer the viewer an ongoing freshness and a sense of surprise and revelation.
In the long history of humanity, there has always been a kind of art that had a function which separated it from everything else. I believe in art that is ABOUT something, that signifies something, that has a sacred function which distinguishes it from the dross of everyday life and serves as a bridge to the present moment and a deeper experience of oneself. I love art that makes the viewer evaporate, dematerialize. Whether representational, referential or abstract, great work is not merely about depiction, but transmission and transformation.
A popular theme in contemporary physics is the search for a Theory of Everything. And while “the” theory of everything remains elusive and is ultimately unreachable, I try to bring my passions and presence, as well as my history and education to bear on the paintings I make. Art history, spirituality, nature, philosophy, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, literature, lyrics, language, poems, cultural references, equations, all of the many things that interest me- I try to unite them all in an attempt to create and share my own Theory of Everything. In so doing, by my alchemical exploration and fascination with the materials I work with, I strive to create a direct transmission, not about content but about a state of Being, from my mind to the mind of the viewer, pointing to the unity, inter-relatedness, and connection of all things and beings.
