About the Ovoids
For me, life has always been a source of profound and mysterious beauty. And making works of art is a reverential act of appreciation for, and an expression of, the spiritual in our nature.
The Ovoids, freed from representational responsibility, are concerned with the primacy of the aesthetic idea as the ultimate motif for artistic expression. By their simplicity and directness, elemental forms can suggest the monumental.
I have deliberately chosen a configuration for these works that is rich in symbolic associations. The simple ovoid form, in either its circular or ovular aspect, becomes for me an ideal vehicle for the investigation of visual equivalents for precise states of mind.
The element of color is an important structural component. My approach to the use of color is straightforward, direct and spectral. I make it my habit never to paint a color that I cannot name. In addition to implying spacial relationships, alternating contrasts of color temperature may have the power to suggest emotive qualities.
The circular movement and centered composition are crucial to my work. The quality of centering is an invitation for the viewer to enter, and to become enveloped by, the painting. If the works are then perceived to have poignant qualities, it is because we as humans bring insightful qualities to both the creation and re-creation (by viewing) of works of art.
In many ways these paintings are a union of opposites. They combine ethereal passages with elemental, but emphatically organic, shapes. I have deliberately avoided a strict geometry and symmetry. An interwoven fabric of color and texture lends an aged and weathered quality to the surface that expresses for me a certain nostalgia or longing. Their expansive and atmospheric inner cores are contained in a delicate balance, constricted and compressed by the squareness of their edges.
To some extent the process of painting may be, in itself, the motivation for these works. Making no allusion to the illusion of representation, they become only paint on canvas, an arrangement of color on on a surface. But their value may lie primarily in what they reflect back to us about ourselves. The viewer who takes the time to approach these works with an inquisitive and receptive mind may perhaps experience some of what I have intended.
---David Pontbriand
