Richard Heinsohn

Email: [email protected]

My art comes from the desire to engage, through abstraction, existential awareness of the human moment in space and time. Nonetheless, I defer to the inferential capacity of the viewer to engage and speculate on meaning because I’m convinced that the best art experience includes some level of mystery and some sense of discovery. I often work through the lens of deep time and do this across a range of disciplines including abstract painting, wall reliefs, overpainted photos, sculpture, sound and video.

Time has long been a point of fascination for me and has become a key subject in much of what I create. I regard rocks as time capsules. Placing them with inorganic detritus in assemblages, reliefs and paintings provides a means for me to speak of both deep time and human impact on our planet. I paint parallel lines and stripes to reference geological time, inviting the observation that each striation in a geological formation represents millions of years.  The circles in my paintings embody the wheel of time, or Kalachakra, as observed by Vajrayana Buddhism and other ancient belief systems that see time as cyclical rather than linear. These and other temporal associations in my work invite the consideration of deep time as a means to observe our own proportionally minuscule place in both space and time, alluding to our collective vulnerability.

I’m drawn to observing the macro in the micro. I see grids in tree bark and cosmic imagery in rock formations. Examining these parallels provides spatial perspective while inviting environmental considerations. To elevate the perception of our collective place in space and time is to expand our consciousness, to see the abundance of our shared concerns as humanity.

-Richard Heinsohn