ABOUT

“Simultaneously, he feels himself as individual, as the feeble phenomenon of will, which the slightest touch of these forces can annihilate, helpless against powerful nature, dependent, abandoned to chance, a vanishing nothing in face of stupendous forces; and he also feels himself as the eternal, serene subject of knowing, who as the condition of every object is the supporter of this whole world.… This is the full impression of the sublime. Here it is caused by the sight of a power beyond all comparison superior to the individual, and threatening him with annihilation.”

 

- Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

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Artist statement

Andrew Cullen

 

My work celebrates the complexity of natural processes and the intricate structures that emerge from the chaotic actions of trillions of individual particles following the same rules over and over. I want the viewer to notice how order arises from chaos and creates beautiful structures piece by piece. Microscopic elements repeated billions of times form macroscopic objects like mountains, canyons, rivers, trees, and our own bodies. This chaos looks ordered, like it was designed on purpose by an intelligent mover, but that order emerges from the chaos naturally. When we can find fascination, magic, beauty, and wonder in every wave and rock, the world becomes a more interesting place.

 

In order that I might impart this natural magic to my man-made artwork, I have developed media and methods that allow me to apply paint in very fine detail, creating structures as small as the eye can see over a giant area, much like the real world, where these fascinating structures exist everywhere you look closely enough. There’s no limit to the detail of nature, so I try to bring that level of detail to my artwork. This level of detail serves another purpose. My work is often a combination of natural structures and things I saw while meditating. I want to communicate to the viewer the rich aesthetic experience I had when I saw these things, which to me at the time felt transcendent. Given something beautiful and complex enough, I can become completely focused on the tiniest details, I forgot my worries, time stands still, and I truly become the subject of my focus. My artwork is an attempt at a kind of subjective photography. I am recording what I found enthralling so that others might share in that experience with me.