Alan Oliver

ARTIST STATEMENT

I connect water with health and happiness. An example of this consciousness is the way I repeat the words “love”, “grace”, “gratitude”, “acceptance” and “peace” during my swimming workout. Both in body and spirit, my experience with water is deep.

Maybe it’s inevitable that I’d be drawn strongly to liquid acrylic art since physical interactions of water and paint make it possible. Using paint very thin, I take advantage of the instability caused by different densities of paint colors. A heavy pigment on top of a light one is an unstable configuration, resulting in patterns that can’t be achieved with a brush.

Even though this phenomenon known as the Raleigh Taylor Instability was discovered years earlier, the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros delighted in what he called “accidental painting”. In 1936, he led a workshop in New York City, experimenting with other painters like Jackson Pollock to find new applications for this technique.

After a fifty-year career in art and design, I’ve learned something new, energized by watery paint, applied and manipulated in many fascinating ways. I watched countless videos of liquid acrylic artists demonstrating their techniques, tried my own versions and posted results of my work for reaction and comment. I moved on from the failures and felt a rush of satisfaction with the successes. I tried to avoid predictable results and developed confidence in my own style.

By its nature, liquid acrylic art is abstract, but I plan and choose colors and composition to achieve significance and meaning. My hope always is that the viewer will connect with what I’ve created.