USA, North Carolina artist, Robert Kernodle is blazing a new trail of artistic awareness. This trail of discovery, definition and dissemination of his findings began in the year 2000. A simple, seemingly insignificant splatter of paint in Kernodle's kitchen sink has grown into a fresh approach to revealing nature's often hidden forms. He calls his approach, "fluidism".
"Basic interest in this sort of thing", Kernodle says, "is not totally new, but my particular effort to define it, to explain it clearly and to evolve my own unique practice of it is. What I am inventing is the best way to talk about it."
Kernodle essentially uses different fluids as their own art forms. He focuses on natural motion of fluids that he contains, colors and manipulates in slightly different ways. Using various combinations of art-grade oil colors and acrylic colors combined with water, plain oil and other substances, he makes actual little paintings in little ponds. Trouble is he cannot hang these paintings on a wall to show them, because they disperse, dissolve or dry. In other words, these paintings critically depend on staying liquid. Consequently, his only recourse is a camera, which allows him to capture otherwise nonexistent art forms.
Kernodle admits, "Some people mght say that I am overstretching the definition of 'painting', but I say 'NO'. I do use paint, and I cause arranged patterns of painted shapes to loom before my eyes in a real, tangible, physical substance. These paintings just happen to slip through my fingers, if I try to pick them up."
Kernodle emphasizes that his actual paitnings cannot physically exist past their brief peak moments, but some aspect of them remains in the photocaptured images. In fact, he uses only the title, Aspect, on all his paintings, because what he captures is only one, two-dimensional aspect of the paintings' four-dimensional existence in space-time. "My definition of 'painting'", he says, "is the dynamic process of painting, ... the action of it, not just the dry stopping place of a traditional paint-substrate artifact."
Images of Kernodle's paintings appear on the internet, along with more details of his philosophy. Google "artist robert kernodle" or "fluidism". Direct links are:
http://www.geocities.com/
http://thedb.com/
