Voices, acrylic and collage on board, 2020, 9.5x11 in.
Painting presents a visual stimulus from which the viewer tries to “make sense,” looking for significance in patterns and trying to find a story even in the most abstract, or seemingly random, elements. My work is in the tradition of landscape painting, Japanese woodblock prints, 20-century abstraction, and street art, and aims to elicit the viewer’s tendency to derive narrative from painterly elements. Meaning is suggested but never explicit: The story takes place inside the viewer’s imagination, constructed when the materials at hand trigger the creative act of memory.
— Tony Saunders, 2020