STATEMENT
Whenever I feel comfortable with my work, I assume there is something wrong. It begins a struggle to embrace the problem and to find a way to move beyond it. Constantly seeking inspiration in everything around me, my work reflects my life and constant searching for some sort of stasis or balance. Often unexpected moments of tension sneak into the picture.
When you enter a piece, you begin to search for a place of rest. My work is very much about the notion of movement and transition. One of the most powerful experience I have had was driving across the county. My trip started at my home in Pennsylvania where I have spent much of my life. My destination was Utah, where I would be living for the next few years. Traveling to a new place can be unsettling because you are often uncertain of your direction or what your destination will look like. I enter my work with this same mindset. I have a conscious disregard for what my finished image will look like. I respond and make each successive decisions as it comes.
Visual ambiguity is extremely important in my work. I want to embrace mystery, both within myself while making the work, and for the viewer in the finished piece. I hint at depth, atmosphere, and space, then break that logic and ricochet the viewer back to the surface.
Ideas and material are the same thing. There is no gap between the subject and the object. I use abstraction as a process, not a style, to remove and deconstruct form the landscape. I want to create beauty and rhythms to move the viewer across the surface. In the eye's journey, little pockets of tension engage the viewer and move them into the image. These contrasting elements remind us that time and space are intimately linked.
I prefer the landscape over subjects with human figures. Landscapes evokes a sense of loneliness, and create a space allowing the viewer to become that missing figure. My work is large so that it must be explored. It is a journey I am creating, with all its surprises, mysteries and unknowns. Not a destination.
-Zack Pontious