THE ARTIST IN QUESTION
Alexander Yates
I am building an art practice around a central question: what makes an artwork worthy of being made? Through drawing, painting, study, and reflection, I am learning how an idea develops enough clarity, necessity, and form to deserve a viewer’s attention.
The Practice
My practice begins with inquiry. Before deciding what an image should look like, I ask what the work is trying to understand, why that question matters, and whether the chosen form can carry it. I am less interested in producing more objects than in making work that rewards sustained attention.
That process currently takes shape in Uninterrupted, a developing series of black-and-white paintings made with a single continuous line. Each work begins within an emotional or lived condition and develops through movement, repetition, pressure, and restraint. The image does not illustrate the experience. It records the path taken through it.
Current Inquiry
THE ARTIST IN QUESTION
An ongoing thesis about artistic responsibility: how questions become decisions, decisions become form, and form becomes worthy of another person’s attention.
UNINTERRUPTED
A developing series of black-and-white continuous-line paintings examining attention, control, repetition, memory, and the meanings viewers project onto ambiguous forms.
QUESTIONS
Studio writing that records the questions shaping the work, the decisions they produce, and the problems that remain unresolved.