Visual and auditory experiences are major sources of sensory stimulation in my life. Seeing and hearing inspire within me, spontaneous intuitive expressions that I deem to be celebratory in nature. I have, since childhood, felt drawing, painting, and making to be magical activities.
Image making is, and has been, inspired by visual discoveries that stimulate interaction in much the same way a seductive partner invites me to dance. My partner and I mutually celebrate. I paint what feels right visually and pictorially at the moment.
The unpredictable character of the ever-changing natural outdoor landscape intrigues me. I experience the event that is the sum of what is happening both internally and externally. I typically begin with an initial on-site experience that sets the painting process in motion. While I start from direct visual response to the subject, I proceed editorially with decisions based essentially on what intuitively feels right –pictorially. From the beginning, I paint holistically. Since each stroke changes the whole image in much the same way that each note alters a musical composition, I measure the effect that each stroke has on the overall pictorial composition at the moment of its occurrence.
Each work is inspired by an event/experience discovery that informs me. I am led by it. To me, painting is a kind of dancing meditation. Its’ meaning is in the joy of doing it.
Picasso has been quoted as having said “I don’t seek, I find!”
Richard Mattsson
I began painting and drawing from direct observation in the early eighties after twenty five years of working more or less abstractly and primarily from imagination. My early schooling at the Minneapolis School of Art in the late fifties, was largely influenced by the psychological and existential forces that surrounded abstract expressionist thinking. I attended the Minneapolis School of Art immediately following U.S Army service in Japan where I was first introduced to Buddhist thought and oriental culture in general. I have only recently come to realize how those early experiences have unconsciously informed my process. Painting has become a form of present and discovery oriented meditative practice.
For me, painting is dancing to visual music.
Initially, my choice of subject matter was intuitive. I began to paint what I saw before me with no predetermined attitude toward the outcome other than it had to feel right. While I don’t subscribe to any “isms,” I do consider myself to be a formalist with an interest in pattern, color and expressive composition. I try to appropriately respond to the circumstances of my experience in a manner balanced between external and internal observation. The place or situation of landscape appeals to me particularly because it is an ever changing unpredictable event. Painting, listening, dancing, and gardening are all exciting influences in that they all require that I surrender to the forces of life that play in the moment.
The fact is, I have enjoyed making both images and objects since childhood. The process has been magical, spiritually vital, and integral to my sense of being.
