Artist Statement


My art is based on the idea that what we know about the world affects how we see it. I also think painting reflects what we see and what we want to see. Painting can be anything, but I think in the end, artists tend to paint what they want to paint.

I happen to have a thing for cars, and so they have played a big role in my work over a long time. So when I started making completely abstract paintings, some people familiar with my work thought of the new work as a radical break--a whole new thing. But I was still painting what fascinated me, and much abstract painting was already in my car paintings; it was just harder to see because there was a car in the way.

For anyone looking at them, the car paintings are built around a very recognizable subject. But I didn't make them that way; I made an abstract painting and put a car in the middle of it. I like the curves, the colors, and the surfaces. The car was an object of desire. It was a subject that represented a passion I share with many other people. The cars in my paintings are recognizable and stand for a certain shared time and place in our culture but stamped with my own personal style. My newest work is a step forward but also not so different. Instead of a big, thick, curvy car on an abstract background, there is a big, thick, curvy "thing" on an abstract background.

My wife is a scientist at a biotech firm, and I have become aware of how our culture is focused on a new way of seeing the world. Complex curves, fractals, and the forms of microscopic life are now very much part of our everyday visual culture. They are interesting of themselves, but seeing them more and more also changes how we see images that already have been before our eyes for a long time.

Even the acrylics I use are part of recent advances in chemistry, an idea not lost on me when I push paint around on a canvas or cut the paint I have cast in plastic forms.

I am fascinated by paint and paintings. I am fascinated by images that make up our world, even if they are too small to be seen without technological help. I am fascinated by people and culture. I think these fascinations are what really drives my art forward.

My goal is not to make paintings that have some overt message but to make paintings that feel right to me.

From Form & Process, a book of new paintings by Randy McCoy with text by Daniel Kany