Bio.

My education is ongoing as I challenge my eye and mind to evolve the way they perceive and relate. I have apprenticed in a traditional way, gathering skills from an early age working with my father, a talented metal worker. Those skills combined with a yearning to draw out the overlooked beauty in a mundane material.

Although always an artist at heart, my formal education culminated with an MBA. Upon graduation I worked in high tech which sent me around world. Trips to Japan gave me an appreciation for Eastern thought and art. Europe instilled a classical regiment and South America brought out the desire to draw in earth and craft elements. Inspiration to create artwork came in the mid 1990’s when I left high tech and opened a bike store in Seattle. My store was next door to an artist-owned foundry and within a year the bike shop became an impromptu gallery for my early works.

In 2000 I sold the store and set off on my bicycle across the country, and eventually landed in New Mexico. There I studied with Argentinean Master Sculptor Alberto Castagna. In true classic form, Alberto first taught me to “see” with countless hours of figure drawing. He claimed that our eye is calibrated from birth for dimension, proportion, balance and relation by the human form. Regardless of composition, artwork produced by a trained eye will bear the qualities of beauty.

When the artist’s eye and skills are honed, all focus is to become a clear channel for the flow of creativity.

I now live and work in Colorado Springs, Colorado and show in galleries nationally.

Statement.

The artists role is to open the gap toward our highest evolution; to explore beyond known and mapped territories. This path is marked by intuition, inspiration and feeling. When moving in the abstract I exist to aim for the essence of this realm.

For the most part it is in the indefinable that my work is born - an effort to communicate passion, inspiration, rapture, restlessness. My canvas of steel introduces an entire universe of chance and coincidence. The process is unpredictable, allowing the idea or image I hold inside to release itself in surprising ways, as a new expression of feeling. Only by releasing the mind does creativity flow through, coaxing the potential from the collaboration between chance and vision.

It is my hope that the work, like a map, carries the viewer into the realm of possibility from which it was born.

The art.

The image or effect on the steel is an intentional effort to draw out color and character hidden within. It is neither patina or etching, but rather coaxing. I use similar techniques and agents as those used to patina and etch, but with methods gathered from endless hours of experimentation. Although I begin each piece with an inspiration, I like to believe that what is produced is more about discovering the natural expression within than imposing my will and ideas upon the work.

I endeavor to freeze the process at its peak, when the image merges with the inspiration I hold inside. Needless to say, every piece is completely original and could never be duplicated.

Although my works are a frozen step in time, nothing is permanent and there may be a continual evolution in the image. It may march on through the centuries to achieve even more dramatic contrast.

News.

http://www.cascadeae.com/mytchell-meads-artist-journey/