PATRICIA KAREN GAGIC

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Motivated by the delicate balancing of elements of the past, choices made in the present and a powerful intention to change the future, each thought and intuition becomes master to the emergence of form and method in my art making. Complexity is a key frame. The infinity of possible iterations of a form is a fascination intellectually and in terms of my method. It drives how I engage with materials in the search for what is luminous to the eye and transcendent in meaning to the heart. My art is intended to point to what is greater than the conventional and logic-based pointof-view.

The under-painting is central to how this orientation shows up in the final works. In search for the luminous and transcendental, the underpainting is an investigative yet carefully orchestrated evolution of intentional layering in which I am immersed in a process of moving with a rich flow of contemplative and clairvoyant thought. In this movement, I press-in on the mark-making with brush and paint, then stand apart from it, then press-in again and so on until the idea which wants to be noticed shows itself in relationship with my intention for an image. This process is deeply personal. It is intended to bridge to others in a way inviting them to participate in the images I make, such that well-being is magnified by an encounter with something opening them to intuition of a greater Whole.

One of the influences on my artistic life and practice is the Transcendental Realist artist, Adi Da Samraj. He speaks about the function of art in a way perfectly giving voice to my intention. He writes, “True Art heals, True Art restores equanimity. Art must regenerate the sense of well-being. That is its true purpose.” This regeneration of well-being is an overarching purpose in my method and is the context of an intellectual consideration around image-making. It is my experience well-being resides as an already-present condition in the domain of the esoteric rather than exoteric world of things and strategies designed to make us feel better, or safe, or at ease. I try to stand on the magical horizon where the rules of nature and the mystical unknown find their way together from mind to hand to canvas in order to create conditions for well-being to be re-animated in experience of the viewer. Additionally, the “Small Worlds” of Wassily Kandinsky (1922) further inspired my attraction to complexity/simplicity paradox as the mathematics in his work harmonized aspects of my feeling of understanding and brought a joyful knowing or sensing of something beyond the images themselves.

Additional influences include my long-time mentor and dear friend, Master Artist, Dragan Dragic who I was blessed to

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meet in France in 1999. His capacity as a technical genius understanding the Matisse palette with flawless precision only scratches the surface of his wisdom. Dragan triggered in me an appreciation of and engagement with the paradox of complexity coupled with a confidence in simplicity as its ultimate expression. In the ensuing years of our artful learnings together, he helped me to see the beauty of abstraction lies in the various underlying hypostases combining or being in dynamic relationship in such a way as to become conscious to the viewer as a living process. As a group, those by whom I am influenced are practitioners of what I call “Complex Simplicity”. They further include Franz Kline; a brilliant man who eventually became a dynamic interpreter of boldness with monochromatic staging where black was equally as powerful as white and required careful fluid strength. The work of Adi Da Samraj informs my understanding of the need to perpetually embody the aesthetic experience as Reality Itself.

There is a delicious struggle I engage in daily as I am drawn into what is “inbetween” the phenomena, moments, ideas which arise and yet practicing in the actual doings of the world in order to make visible what is found in those spaces. It is my adventure to capture more truth as an artist and be less of an ego and I sense the Ultimate Reality might be touched in the in- between spaces as both Truth and Egoless. I look to other artists for clues on how to enter- into these spaces more and more consistently as artist. In the work of Paul Emile Bourduas, I found rhythm and seduction at the root of his process and all the in-between spaces functioning as necessary places of risk to effervescently touch those rhythms, to animate the seductions. The moments of this realization create a rich ocean of plankton, food for the work to be done.

What I continue to learn is how incredibly liberating it is to affirm and elevate emotion as the intent of a painting or photograph and to be fearless in approaching the image as a sovereign manifestation requiring my stand as one “getting to know” life, bringing forth clues for others, and trusting the process is the under-painting of the journey I have been given to fulfill.