Ara Zeibarian
Artist statement
my work seeks to feel whole. I’m about connectivity; connectivity with my mind/body split (which some say doesn’t exist).
I started out as a cartoony figure painter which led me to wanting to be abstract and objecty. abstraction, a style I knew but did not embrace until sophomore year in college. I had painted about Armenia but it would take until my maturity for all to coalesce.
I have to have connectivity. while others talk about this being unattainable they are usually the ones who aren’t Armenian. Even when Armenian painters are expressionist they are doing so not to revolt or claim that Armenia is a lost cause as other non Armenian painters say of their America, we Armenians are hoping for an Armenia triumphant and recognized in the English speaking world where our nation will be acknowledged as a country that not only suffered the first genocide of the 20th century and the first Christian nation in 301 C.E. but as a people who have suffered torments few have known and become fully accepted by the west as a partner in full. So the grid established connectivity between my mind/body and between Armenia and the west.
How ? Everything in Medieval Armenia is blocky and geometric. For my part I like our church architecture and our manuscript paintings. There is also our cross stone sculptures, rugs, and fresco painting.
It would be Mondrian the great Dutch painter who established the modern ideal and classical thought through his geometric style. He did so in ways that other artists like Picasso, Braque, Leger and Matisse did not.
Mondrian made the modern ideal. It really is that simple. There may have been Russian Constructivism without him but in the west, there’d be no minimalism or Post-Minimalism or my own belief as a Maximalist.
By 1997 i had painted : Green Painting, Illuminati Painting and Man and House.
All about a feeling of being whole and complete.
Many artists today speak of fracture. I paint about my life and Armenia. I don’t force the issue. I use stream-of-consciousness to make the work. I don’t usually start with a subject to paint about. I put down a ground color and get to work.
The grid is reason. It is my mind’s input into the picture. It clarifies the stream-of-consciousness. The title is given at the end of the painting. This is the merger of expressionism and Geometry.
I have never left the grid and have no desire to do so. The vertical and horizontal is due solely to Mondrian.
I do not see myself as the end of painting but the beginning for we Armenians in the post Soviet world. I’ve been called an egomaniac but i think i have established something for us. i linked east and west and past and present and mind and body for the modern Armenian. I paint for people who genuinely love freedom and think that the pursuance of democracy is a fine thing. Expressionism is what Armenians do even the Soviet Minas Avetissian was an expressionist. Gorky of course was a huge influence on me and my stream-of-consciousness is derived from our need to simply say we are here and alive. But I know also that Edward Avetisian and Harold Pinajian belong in the Armenian canon as well. I truly believe that had I known of these two extraordinary artists I would have had a much easier time to transition to geometry as the true style for we Armenians.
I think that communism in Russia and Genocide Denial in the west and the west’s denial of our existence have played a great part in our identity politics.
As a Maximalist I wish to employ ideas that most geometry painters do not acknowledge. The figure. Impasto. Experiments with the figure/ground relationship. Working large or easel sized or small are all in play. The formal qualities establish the emotional content and reception to the work. So therefore changing the formal qualities through drawing, color or sense of touch all create a new truth for the viewer.
My eyes are horizontal and I stand up straight and this is all humans in the world. And while I am one man I won’t paint one crosshair grid on a painting (unless there is an internal pressure to do so) I paint many verticals and horizontals in one painting because i am a pluralist. My last name is Kurdish in origin and other Armenians have Turkish or Iranian deriving last names further emphasizes the point.
The grid brought me to maturity and i hope to never leave it.
I started out as a cartoony figure painter which led me to wanting to be abstract and objecty. abstraction, a style I knew but did not embrace until sophomore year in college. I had painted about Armenia but it would take until my maturity for all to coalesce.
I have to have connectivity. while others talk about this being unattainable they are usually the ones who aren’t Armenian. Even when Armenian painters are expressionist they are doing so not to revolt or claim that Armenia is a lost cause as other non Armenian painters say of their America, we Armenians are hoping for an Armenia triumphant and recognized in the English speaking world where our nation will be acknowledged as a country that not only suffered the first genocide of the 20th century and the first Christian nation in 301 C.E. but as a people who have suffered torments few have known and become fully accepted by the west as a partner in full. So the grid established connectivity between my mind/body and between Armenia and the west.
How ? Everything in Medieval Armenia is blocky and geometric. For my part I like our church architecture and our manuscript paintings. There is also our cross stone sculptures, rugs, and fresco painting.
It would be Mondrian the great Dutch painter who established the modern ideal and classical thought through his geometric style. He did so in ways that other artists like Picasso, Braque, Leger and Matisse did not.
Mondrian made the modern ideal. It really is that simple. There may have been Russian Constructivism without him but in the west, there’d be no minimalism or Post-Minimalism or my own belief as a Maximalist.
By 1997 i had painted : Green Painting, Illuminati Painting and Man and House.
All about a feeling of being whole and complete.
Many artists today speak of fracture. I paint about my life and Armenia. I don’t force the issue. I use stream-of-consciousness to make the work. I don’t usually start with a subject to paint about. I put down a ground color and get to work.
The grid is reason. It is my mind’s input into the picture. It clarifies the stream-of-consciousness. The title is given at the end of the painting. This is the merger of expressionism and Geometry.
I have never left the grid and have no desire to do so. The vertical and horizontal is due solely to Mondrian.
I do not see myself as the end of painting but the beginning for we Armenians in the post Soviet world. I’ve been called an egomaniac but i think i have established something for us. i linked east and west and past and present and mind and body for the modern Armenian. I paint for people who genuinely love freedom and think that the pursuance of democracy is a fine thing. Expressionism is what Armenians do even the Soviet Minas Avetissian was an expressionist. Gorky of course was a huge influence on me and my stream-of-consciousness is derived from our need to simply say we are here and alive. But I know also that Edward Avetisian and Harold Pinajian belong in the Armenian canon as well. I truly believe that had I known of these two extraordinary artists I would have had a much easier time to transition to geometry as the true style for we Armenians.
I think that communism in Russia and Genocide Denial in the west and the west’s denial of our existence have played a great part in our identity politics.
As a Maximalist I wish to employ ideas that most geometry painters do not acknowledge. The figure. Impasto. Experiments with the figure/ground relationship. Working large or easel sized or small are all in play. The formal qualities establish the emotional content and reception to the work. So therefore changing the formal qualities through drawing, color or sense of touch all create a new truth for the viewer.
My eyes are horizontal and I stand up straight and this is all humans in the world. And while I am one man I won’t paint one crosshair grid on a painting (unless there is an internal pressure to do so) I paint many verticals and horizontals in one painting because i am a pluralist. My last name is Kurdish in origin and other Armenians have Turkish or Iranian deriving last names further emphasizes the point.
The grid brought me to maturity and i hope to never leave it.