Philosophy of Belief reflected in Art

My paintings are described as follows:

Searching for a distinctive premise in my work, I explore the culture of the communities that reside in shadow of natural wonders. I have taught myself to paint in a manner that unravels how average people instinctively utilize philosophy, religion and literature to deal with a beautiful environment that constantly attempts to kill them with weather, emptiness and wild hardship. The majority of my work never parades figures across the composition instead I paint their general presence or absence through the use of symbols. The representations are often displayed in the form of abstracted houses, orbs, ladders or tracks. Through the use of landscape, movement and symbolism; my work has evolved into a conduit of philosophy and literature as it affects the common person in an exceptional environment.

My present work thematically explores the cultural impact of over 6,000 Jews residing in the Santa Fe region and how they relate to the other resident cultures of the area as well as the natural complement of the New Mexico high desert to Israel . As a painter I am continually struggling to advance the physical attributes of my paintings beyond my training of the ‘technical skills of depicting realism'. Recently, I was overwhelmed by the following comment made by art critic, Jerry Saltz, in a recent ‘Village Voice’ article – ‘All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy. I don't look for skill in art; I look for originality, surprise, obsession, energy, experimentation, something visionary, and a willingness to embarrass oneself in public. Skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency; it has to do with being flexible and creative. I'm interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or reimagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks.’ That’s what I envision in my work; the ability to build philosophies from landscapes.

Now I am curious about the next step that binds singular artists together, while retaining their individuality. As I look at the most basic underlying feature of my work I discover my own "philosophy of belief". Even in Montana, my work made loose references to the impact of my own Judaism amongst the inhabitants of this foreign soil (foreign to me). That leads me to think of all the contemporary religious art (typically Christian) that I have long encountered. Rather than blatantly painting images of the biblical prophets, my own work is an impression of how my natural environment is affected by my core beliefs. My question is how many other artists are finding references to their core "philosophy of beliefs" creaping into their works?

Can this underlying theme of a muted "philosophy of beliefs"be a driving force in a universal movement? A theme that does not care about the actual belief itself, but rather the fact that it is present is enough. I believe it is possible that a Jew and a Hindu can make artistic decisions and conclusions in their work about a particular subject, simply based on their initial approach to creating the work as (the process) is influenced by their core "philosophy of belief(s)". -DN