email: henry.riekena@gmail.com
website: www.henryriekena.com
locale: Poplar Building, 1960 Mandela Parkway

abstract painting

Formally, my artwork is pure abstraction—once I have a general idea for a piece, I begin painting and then react to what is on the canvas, allowing it to develop naturally into something that is beautiful without being tied to anything in the material world. Conceptually, however, my artwork does have a representational side—it is an attempt to represent things that do not physically exist. The inspiration for my artwork is not formalistic or art historical, but rather comes from my own synesthetic experiences. Strong emotions, music, and sensations trigger hallucinatory responses of color and motion that are more intensely meaningful to me than any concrete objects or symbols. While I realize that these sensations are personal experiences, I feel that there is something very pure and universal that they can communicate, the closest I can come to directly sharing an emotion with another individual.

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