Artist’s Statement
A work of art should be startling every time one sees it. Such a work begins a dialogue between the viewer and the art, and the more meaning that is implanted in the art, the deeper that dialogue can be. The value of any work of art is its inherent energy, its ability to act as a catalyst of responses in the viewer. Likewise, the most successful viewer is not one with the best education or the finest taste, but one who can respond to the work with the greatest sensitivity.
Hopefully,
my sculpture provides no answers and removes no doubts. My intent, rather, is to
ask tough questions - to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable - to
plunge the viewer into that wondrous process of dialogue. The interaction is
usually not a verbal or even a conscious one, but often one that continues, at
various levels of awareness, as long as the viewer and the artwork are within
range of each other.
I believe every artist has a responsibility to society: to absorb, distill and interpret, through the artist's personalized filter, realities that would otherwise be invisible. I take that responsibility seriously, and that means I sometimes create images that are shocking or in some way unpleasant. One essential element of my sculpture is mystery, which I find slightly unsettling both to viewers and to myself. The images that occur to me are imbued with mystery. My work revolves around the human condition, which is indeed mysterious.
Mark Parmenter
