Gregg Simpson

My process of automatism

"My work is on the border between abstraction and surrealism, formal design and automatism. I begin a work very spontaneously, often with the canvas lying on the ground and soaked with water to make the colors flow.

Then I proceed to re-draw and mould the shapes, alternately adding and removing layers of paint to reveal the implicit imagery. Ultimately, the painting tells me how to resolve the final result, which may, or may not, correspond to anything in nature.

My paintings are usually improvised from the beginning, without a preliminary sketch. Their final form is arrived at through the direct application of paint. while elements of drawing are repeatedly allowed to appear and then are covered over again, until a final result emerges.

A work may evolve into a lyrical, atmospheric work, or one where formal structures of design suggest the figure, the landscape, or even still life, but re-interpreted into a purely imaginative realm, creating a personal, yet universal, world of forms, whose meaning changes with each viewer."

Gregg Simpson, 2007