Gary John Gresl

Artist Statement:

Individuals define Art, determine what it can embrace, and give it meaning in their personal lives. We have freedom to express ideas, exploring emotions and individuality. One language for expression is visual media...and in the United States we have few or no restrictions on what is said or how to say it.  Our art stands in the world, either accepted or rejected, which is the way of evolving living things that fluoresce and fade.   The fact that all things are ephemeral in the grand scope of Time and the Universe is a fact not often fully savored by the human mind.  And then, though briefly extant, lives, thoughts and physical things may be extremely important whether over long or fleeting periods of time.

Sources for my sculptures include wild nature, museum exhibits, store displays, rustic cabins, abandoned barns, human and animal habitats.  The act of “making” art is the most important aspect of the whole process, more important than the marketing, the publicity, monetary and commodity considerations…and even more important than communicating the ideas and motivations which brought the art objects into reality.  It is the drive to create and manipulate material things, to think new thoughts, that extends the Life Force.

While it may seem radical to some, I recognize that Human transition from preceding animal forms of life suggests that the art making process, the motivations to create and configure, began somewhere along a linear evolutionary pathway even earlier than our cave paintings and prehistoric sculptures.  It is part of our nature to be anthropocentric, to believe that we are superior due to our intellect and achievements.  But I persist in the belief that our art arose as a result of millennia long experiences and successes as life forms. We cannot escape our links to our planetary and cosmic histories.

The creative spirit is an integral part of our being…the experience of our genes, if you will, and affords us the ability to explore our surroundings, our intellect, and our nature.  Art making can serve as a form of personal release and therapy, individual exploration and expression, while also serving as a vehicle to record the broader experiences and history of Humankind.

“Life is an expression of energy and an organization of matter.  Art making is an extension of that process evolved within and built into the Cosmos.”