Des McLean Painting

My work is a crisis, a visual rebellion against realistic narrative and the dissonant nature of existence. Inarticulate emotions, expressed in abstract patterns, rhythms, and forms, penetrate beyond the confines of the classically represented figure. The act of painting, for me, is a physical, visceral experience; paint clotted, smeared, wiped off, and applied with rags and my fingers over charcoal, graphite pencil drawings. My process is a chaotic, destructive hungry search for a formal resolution that remains open to the flux of discovery. Every mark is a beginning and every mark is an ending. The fragmented unfinished nature of my work evokes a sense of both loss, and continuation: life amidst death.