My work veers between representation and abstraction, keeping the focus on that space between canvas and brain, where art loves to play around.

I like looking at a painting as much as making it, watching the ancillary imagery emerge from quirky, disparate paint shapes is my idea of pure pleasure. Humans read and construct meaning from the chaos of line and color so effortlessly. Being a conduit for the process is just coaxing the brain into vague recognitions, and then allowing them to reform into another, like a shifting bank of clouds.

I use almost any image, shape or color to get me started on a painting. Then I just keep digressing, trying not to hamper the flow of the paint and the secondary images that ooze out of it. If the painting gets too tight or precious, I stop, scrape it down and restart. When the process is working, it's akin to automatic writing or shape-shifting. That's why I work in oil paint, and on several canvases at a time, and never really finish. These paintings are intended to be protracted entertainments, and, for me, they are.

–Rea Baldridge