Michael Hermesh

Artists Statement

My sculpture is about what makes us human and about what give us spiritual dignity and strength. My pieces always portray a dynamic aspect of living (force and counter force). I do this through composition, the effort, the restraint and through the battle of spirit with the constraints of situation.

My feeling about art is that in any given moment the world is filled with images and objects that entertain, dazzle and stroke the senses but that there is precious little truth in our day-to-day lives. What I am drawn to is truth, that truth is deeper than the physical shell that houses it, that truth is a subjective vision. I feel very strongly that all art has narrative content in the sense that for anything to exist there is tension and an outcome. I also feel that my art will also always have mystic content in so far that our relationship with a greater reality is part of what makes us human.

Art is successful to the degree that an emotional or spiritual dialogue has taken place with the viewer engaged in such a way as to engender participation in the work. Sculpture is capturing the transition from one state to another; thematically through movement and tension, in composition, and in the idea that spirit can be transmuted to flesh or day.

The physical progression of sculpting is much the same as the practice of what I try to be as an artist. This is the enduring path of developing rigorous self-honesty through self- destruction and reconstruction that discards the superfluous and lays bare the underlying forces and tensions of living. This is a process not a state of grace.