Light & Color

“What does it mean to be an artist? I want my art to have the same emotion and effect as music. I can create but everything I've done just has no meaning. It’s visually pleasing and I’ve always banked on that “wow” factor to carry my pieces. I need to find myself in art and keep searching even further than that. I need my own subject matter and then it’s not enough to just show it accurately. I always thought Realism was the goal but if there’s anything Modernism taught me is that Realism has no feelings attached. Now that’s an exaggeration but it’s just showing the world and that’s it. That’s what makes every artist unique, we all have different styles and ways we want to show the world or picture whatever it is we choose too. I am going to find what matters most to ma and find my message I want to feed to the world. Once I have that I can capture it in my art. For now the name of the game is to just create and create and create even more after that. I can’t imagine being a famous artist though. I know so many fantastic artists and then all the ones I don’t know who are out there and I become famous and make it?! Seems surreal just thinking about it, not impossible though definitely not impossible.” - A.T. 2015.

For me, so much of how we perceive and understand the world can be amounted into the two phenomena of light and color. The existence of one completely relies on the other, the two have a symbiotic relationship I pull from and enjoy investigating. Therefore, making neon the ideal practice for experimenting and capturing unique ways for us to view these phenomena. The light that neon produces is unlike any form of light we have at our disposal. By isolating and adding an electric charge to gases that naturally occur in our atmosphere, this light is produced. Neon contains a pulse-like heartbeat that is more akin to fire than other forms of electric light fixtures. To me neon feels alive and I believe that is why we are so drawn to its lighting. There’s a core element to it that makes it feel inviting and soft.

We’re all familiar with a neon light in the form of a bright theater marquee, beer signs, or restaurant signage. Even though there is still beauty and grace to these applications the ethereal quality of neon is lost with the distraction and prior context of commodity, commercialism, fonts, products and much more. Instead of the popularly perceived commercial applications I aim to present the form in a way that would highlight the remarkable beauty of the material. The actual construction of the neon is just a straight line while the colors are chosen at random to allow a simplicity and chance to dictate the piece rather than my own aesthetic taste and bias.