Artists (Left-Right) Courtney Downman, Kim Wilkie, & James Paterson
Artist James Paterson
1. Colour is obviously essential in your artworks- it makes the images and messages speak to the viewer. What is your favorite colour and do you often gravitate to it when creating?
Asking about a favorite colour is like asking who my favorite child in our family is, I love them all. I use a lot of orange which I really like, but also really like purple blending to magenta because I get a taste sensation whenever I look at it. Lately the earth tones and warm greys have also been speaking to me. Just give me colour. All the colours!!
"Your Glory Swirls All Around Me"
2. How has the media you have chosen to practice with, in this exhibition, reflect your personality?
Using wire gives me the ability to “build”. I always think of myself as building my art pieces. From my earliest memories I remember building things: model cars and planes from kits then my own creations as I grew.
"I feel the winds of God Today"
3. Tell me of a time when an artwork was going in the wrong direction. What did you do to adjust and bring it to its finished state?
The main body of #624, “I Feel the Winds of G-d Today” is an example of using a reclaimed configuration I had cut out and discarded from another art piece that was going in the wrong direction. Later I took that discarded piece of the assembly and built it into this whole new piece, #624, which I was much happier with. The original piece I was working on turned out ok too.
4. If you could directly speak to the viewer, what is one key bit of knowledge should they know about you or the artwork to experience it?
My hope is that people who see my art or talk to me will come away with an infusion of joy and delight. That they will be reminded there are mysteries in life worth probing, inner journeys of discovery worth taking and deep resonant rhythms sounding around us that we must listen carefully for if we are to hear them and be awakened to the redemptive nature of God in creation. I want people who see my art to reclaim a sense of wonder.
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5. What would be your dream project or location for exhibit and why?
I would love, really love, to take one of my moving pieces and have it enlarged to 30 or 40 or 50 feet in height and have it situated in a large airy public atrium with lots of natural light, where people would mill around it daily and sit near it or always see it as they walked by. I’d even compromise on not motorizing my pieces so that in this case it would be motorized and moving continually in a slow and gentle motion.
"Do you see the joy in my Heart?"
