Why Add Movement ?

In Abstract Art there is often a divide between the artist’s intent and the viewer’s interpretation. 

How one perceives anything will always depend on each individual’s experience and taste. 

Everyone experiences a work of art differently, creating a void between the perception of the artist

and the perception of the viewer.  

Melding technology, and incorporating movement allows my abstract paintings to be viewed from 

any perspective or direction, attempting to remove the viewer from one stagnant perspective to a point 

where change and the discovery of new perspectives are shared. 

The movement devices allow the abstracts to take on a type of evolving, artificial-life where the painting 

desires to break free of its sedentary existence and constraints,

where the movement of the paints cannot be contained.  

They seem to want to expand beyond their boundaries, to "come alive".

And anything even desiring to live abhors stagnation and needs to survive. 

On each side of my canvases there is something to see, feel, or experience in it.

So, if you turn them to any side (even upside down) there is something different to see there, thus giving 

a standard canvas four different and distinctive perspectives from which one can view it. 

(ie. http://www.revolvingpaintdream.com/apic0.html )

As I paint there is a fluidity and movement of the brush. I have no idea what the painting will become when

I begin painting it. It is an evolving process. 

I paint a while, then turn the painting to another side, to see it from a different angle and try to see what the painting wants to become.  

It is as if it already existed as a life of it's own, merely asking me to release it through my hands. 

I keep turning and painting and it continues and evolves that way until it's finished.

It is created with a kinetic, living, evolving, element of discovery. 

The painting takes me on this journey without me consciously being aware of its destination. 

There is a sort of meditative "automatic painting" that conjures or exorcises my inner depths in its creation.

Like the abstract imagination of dreams, they bend to the sub-conscious realm of living reality.

When a traditional painting is finished and sits still on the wall something in the kinetic discovery aspect of 

its creation is lost.  It has captured a moment in time to be examined. 

It seems more in my painting’s nature to continue to desire to move, because of how they are created. 

Its journey does not want to end. Each painting wants to express the kinetic aspect of their own creation.

It wants to continue it’s evolving and become completely alive, and therefore also contains 

an unending, impossible hope and disparate need to continue. 

They seem to want to grow and expand beyond their limits. 

I want them to turn on the wall, walk across the floor, float in the air, to bloom, to change. 

They seem to express a desire to grow beyond there stagnate framed boundaries to break free themselves. 

I have about 10 different technique ideas where several painted abstract canvases move around, connect 

to each other to show one view then move and reconnect to each other showing a different painting/image.

Seeing as many different combinations & views/perceptions as possible with the least amount of canvases. 

(ie. Seeing 16 paintings within 4 canvases.)  

I've been trying to do this for about 10 years. I'm painting a 12-inch sphere now that electro-magnetically 

floats and rotates 360 degrees under a magnetic shelf I had built for me.

I have one piece that incorporates all five senses into it.

For every side there is something to see, & feel, smell, hear & taste.

A lot of art deals with whether or not the viewer "gets it" (What the artist was after).

I think that the artist and viewer will always have different perspectives and ideas about what he/she gets 

out of it. Taste is subjective.

There are always different and new ways to perceive things, in this case art.

And every perception (both viewer and painter) is a valid one.

The idea of viewing an object evolving, changing to a new position, changing views, amorphous, attempts 

to take the viewer to a mental state of discovery.

A place where the viewer is looking for what the painting is " becoming", as it evolves.

This is the same mental place as when I create each piece, having no idea what it is to become until it nears completion.

The creation process of discovery by the artist is I believe the place where artist and viewer can become one. Allowing the journey to be the experience, and the evolving, living, changing of form the place where artist 

and viewer share one mind.  

Where the artist and viewer should consider themselves an integral part of the art. 

I attempt to enable the viewer to see his/her role in the piece.

Getting the viewer to see the piece evolving and becoming, revealing each view of the painting, allows the 

viewer to “experience” its “living” properties.

They seem to say to me that they desire to become, they want to release the energy they contain. Movement builds their momentum, feeds their desire, and gives the painting an outlet to release its desire to express its energy. It seems to say it will not be contained.  

That it's desired state is fluidity and transition.

It's not about a gimmick or selling art.

I feel the movement is innate because of how I create my paintings

And something I have to do. Not foreign or forced.

I've run into a lot of technical problems that normal commercial devices just don't do the exact job.

I will keep at it or die trying.

I don’t claim it is for everyone or that anyone will even like it.

Art is subjective. Mine especially is. That's the point.

I don't have a lot of money for my movement devices but if this makes any sense I'd love to talk to you about 

them if you think you have some ideas, know how, or money that might help.  I live in Mississippi.

You can read a bit about some of my specific projects here:

http://revolvingpaintdream.com/grant

   Herman Snell
http://revolvingart.com

"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am.
I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing - a noun.  I seem to be a verb,
an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe".

                                            ---- Buckminster Fuller