Artists Statement

My practice studies the visual possibilities inherent in text, language, and the process of painting. I work with source texts ranging from scientific abstracts, literature and poetry, lists, numbers, codes, and my own cryptic notes. The text is always something that has resonated with me and warranted further investigation; currently Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ and Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ have been very deep touchstones, also leading to oceanographic studies and the marine biology of whales. They serve as a window into the “why” of painting.

I prefer an oblique process that eschews directly referential content in favor of placing language on equal footing with the line, color, texture and space of the marked surface. For me the source text is an element of drawing inside the painting, forming a structure that defines gesture and color field. By obscuring, erasing, and repeating the text I ensure that the painting is not merely read (which ends any engagement with it too quickly) and that the process of making is on equal footing with the text, the actual content of the painting results from both.

In order to emphasize language as material I often work on 3-D aluminum supports that project the painted surface into the space of the viewer. This is as much to alter how I approach the process of painting as it is to push the relationships between language and color fields into space. This allows me to expand the possibilities of the painting as a carrier of information; all of the sides cannot be viewed simultaneously, and the complete painting can only be assembled in the mind of the viewer.

Brian Dupont

December, 2025