Lawrence Paculan - Artist Statement

Over the past 5 years as a B.F.A. Studio Art major in Central Washington University I've have been questioning who I am prior to leaving as well as who I'll be afterwards. With a collection of ideas I've explored in the past pertaining my art path, I've focused on working both with oil painting and ceramics. Working with both mediums has allowed me to cluster and visually translate meanings regarding questions that come between the point of birth and death, which is life, or rather our understanding of freedom to hold and create our identity. Art is my free of form style to seeking perfection of the inner-self and understanding my attachment to world that surrounds us. I work mainly in oil paints and any medium of sculptural quality for it's open simplicity and the personal attachment I gain in process of rendering a subject.

The most dominant feature in all me work traces to the idea of time, and how our attachment to it exploits and defines the person we are both ideally and truthfully. Time is the biggest inspiration to my work; knowing that it stands between the moment of birth and death, time is what life is really made up of. In time I find freedom and in that freedom is the art of creating one's self perfection gained through keeping a mind open to everything yet attached to no bounds. The true bounds are the absolute answers in which one accepts as conclusive to self understanding. However, setting bounds to exploring yourself leads to no absolute truth, for that a bondage of time brings a halt to learn.

Outside the time there is a concept of birth and death I explore through 3 dimensional representations. Birth is simply the uncertainty and blindness set by our fears. The moment of birth brings fear of what might and might not happen. However, the moment of death questions the value gained from facing those fears. In relation to my ceramics work, the process of hand-building keeps me attached to exploring myself.  In working with ceramics, producing figurative work has given me a level of attachment to build or perhaps birth my ideals of life and self-exploration. Apart from the imagery the subjects depicts, the time in the process of building a figurative piece teaches about balance between my thoughts and actions. From my experience and understanding about the attachment of time and process of hand-building is that meaning can only be found in relationship. Because time being is our first and forever attachment, the truth in creating myself has no path. There's always a meaning to learn from every action; therefore, whatever artwork I create next doesn't embody the same knowledge from the meaning I learned. Instead, it questions the meaning. I always fill my work with more questions than answers because I see that the truth I discover is not absolute; truth is always living but forever changing.

To understanding myself I see life as my closest teacher, and the attachment to time is where I explore meaning and question. However, my focus on the ceramic media limits my personal attachment in balancing my thoughts and actions. Because representing a 3-D figurative objects becomes repetitive to, the process of producing more figure becomes more of a routine. As result I'm grow only to understand the routine, which is a bound in my time that doesn't allow me to free myself. Simply, working in ceramics does have a limit my use imagery. Although, being open to other media guides me for reattachment to work back in forth between to two medias. In my ceramics, I have developed a collective of art that suits as templates to my learning. But in painting, the expansion of imagery opens up for new questions and non-absolute answers to further explore and develop myself. There is no template of a bound to work with in painting. In painting, the questions the questions fall under the category of attachment. But when moving back to ceramics with the gained understanding of attachment, I can re-envision a new explored identity of who I am. In other words, painting to me has generated images to the question, where ceramics has given non absolute answers to explore regarding the questions. My experience has trained me to expand my expression in being open to everything without bounds. For example, "Why is the cup useful?" The non absolute answer is because "it is empty."

Emptiness is a starting point open to continues self discovery. But in the end my work compiled is just a bunch of repetitive attempts of e self-exploration; in which I ask, what is the perfection I'm seeking? The most absolute answer I can come up with is to accept yourself with you time you're given, feel perfection and be opening to everything to make that feeling last. Despite the sound of measures in that statement, finding yourself doesn't end in failure, but at low aim. I try to explore life as open even to failure; however, failure is not crime, having low aim is. Learning is without bounds.