Abstract Art

It was Goethe who called architecture “silent music.” Of course he was referring not only to the harmonies of form that guided the best Neoclassical architects of his era, but to all of the designers of buildings in which we have lived, worked, played, and worshiped down through the ages.

I think that Goethe’s adage applies equally well—if not better— to sculpture. In a sense it may be more true of sculpture, because unlike architecture— which is always in some part formed by function— sculpture possesses a more perfect freedom of form limited only by the natural forces of material, weather, and gravity.

Abstract sculpture allows me to escape the world of appearances. It allows me to use tangible things like wood, stone, and metal to explore the immaterial realms of energy, time, space, and emotion. When art stops resembling the substance of things it begins to directly illuminate their nature.

I see no quarrel between representational and abstract art. Obviously in my work as liturgical artist, I use representational imagery as an indicator of what is ultimately an invisible reality. Abstract art is like music without words, poetry without narration. Paradoxically, while apparently being much more ambiguous than representational art, abstraction can be more direct in its effects upon us.