ARTIST STATEMENT

"My art takes on many different variations. I enjoy exploring different media but in the end I always come back home to oil paining. I love the flexibility of oil paints and the ample time that I have to work the paint.

I greatly admire Pablo Picasso for his willingness to explore new styles and methods of art. He was an accomplished realistic painter at a very young age but realism wasn’t the path he was meant to follow. Picasso used the foundation of traditional painting to expand and find his own voice. Even though my artwork looks nothing like Picasso’s, I consider his spirit of adventure to be very influential in my work.

The black linework in my early cartooning relied on variations of line thickness – a line started thick then tapered to thin. The same thick-thin linework also shows up in Japanese calligraphy. Kanji is a set of Japanese calligraphy characters that was based on simple picture drawings and I love to explore carving kanji into stone. Hawaiian petroglyphs are simple rock carvings or pictograms that represented people or animals. There are many similarities between kanji characters and petroglyphs. Hawaiian petroglyphs in particular are one of my favorite subjects to

A petroglyph is a very simple rock drawing but things that look very simple are often very difficult to master. If you look at my paintings or carvings involving petroglyphs you will see that there are variations of line thickness - a line starts thick then tapers to thin. This thick-thin relationship has become a major influence in my art and can be found in my oil paintings, cartoon illustrations and even my stone carvings. My petroglyphs are somewhat stylized because of changing line thickness, but that is what makes them uniquely my own creation.

Another area of exploration in my oil paintings are the use of geometric shaped panels. I enjoy the contrast of the hard edged geometric panels in relation to the soft curves of the petroglyphs. Painting on panels also allows me to explore the use of different thickness of panels and the cast shadows the painting creates on the wall. The paintings themselves start to become sculptural elements."

Guy Junker