Exhibit Artist Statement 

Life Beginnings 

Life Beginnings is a series of paintings about the initial beginning of life forms.  Each canvas presents a form of a box, holder, or crate-like base, referring to holder of the human sediment form on earth. The small growths extruding from each one, are indicative of the beginning or initial stages of life when we have not flourished yet, or are just beginning to sprout.  The large amount of colorful negative space above indicates there is substantial room for growth or a journey.  The vivid color of each painting represents that both the human form and the journey are indeed a happy and positive experience waiting to happen for us.  As with the human form, and our individual journeys ‘accordingly, there are many variations of each piece of work in terms of color, small and large forms, and our environment surrounding us. 

The concept of the artist in relevance to the audience is two-fold;  

One in which often when we find that we have a chance of recovery from a close call, we often feel like we want to live the rest of our lives in a different way, a better way maybe, as we feel like we have been given a second chance, thus a new life beginning. 

Another in which indeed we may realize that we have limited time left as a sedimentary form on earth, and we may start to look forward to another life ahead of us, a spiritual or eternal life, thus a different kind of life beginning. 

Either way, we are at the beginning with room to grow on a colorful and fulfilling journey. 

The presence of chaos during these two types of beginnings is apparent and again is reflected in the works.  Being at the end of one journey and experiencing fear or loss, while also realizing the excitement of a new journey or beginning, is a complicated and sometimes breeds conflicting emotions, actions and thoughts. How human it is, to be in this situation. 

John Eastman

Jan 2006/7