Artist Statement

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 In my current work I have taken the oldest personal image of the individual human, the handprint or hand tracing and attempted to bring it up to date as a visual self-portrait of the Twenty-First Century. This type of documentation has been used and recorded in every known society and is one of the earliest sources of the existence of the human being individually being recorded by the individual human themself. The basic shape(s) that I am using is (are) a tracing of an individual human hand. Mine. Some earlier paintings were taken from a variety of peoples hands including couples in a “His and Hers’ series but my current work uses only my own hands in the tradition of the artist “Self-Portrait”.

After the basic shapes of the piece are determined, I turn to the tool of color, my favorite tool, to produce define and interpret the issue of visual expressionism in a modern, art school educated, show biz influenced Paleolithic tradition.

The question is; if I can take such an image that has such a long human history, found in kindergarten classroom paintings, used in commercial ads and mass communications and still transform that image into my very own personal statement of Contemporary High Art?

David William Cummings, 2018