Micheal Hermesh

My art is shaped by how I view the world. I do not believe that there is a state of grace in life. Life is life – it is dynamic and it is always a struggle. Integrity, awareness and dignity remain constants. These are elements in life that are unchanging and real that can be spent or thrown away. For me this is the mystic and beauty of life and the underlying subject matter of all my work.

The dramas are entirely fictitious but very real. Passions and dreams and stress really describe reality better than physical descriptions of objects.

I said in an earlier artist statement that truth is an orphan waiting to be named – once named it becomes a lie. While this may not stand up as a metaphor I do believe it has some validity. A piece of art is a symbol that as rendered by the artist in the act of creation and has it’s own unique meaning. It can have all the nuances, history, contradictions and flavours that a word can have when used. It is complete in itself. To over explain is like having to explain a joke – the spirit of the thing is gone.

Good art is narrative, (fighting words for some I know), where the outcome is indeterminate. It is not the job of an artist to tell people what to think, it is to see truth and to depict it.