About the artist
Glen Moriwaki is a Bay Area native and a third generation Californian.. His work has been exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and France. Glen paints large abstract or semi-abstract acrylic works on paper and canvas, often employing mixed media, collage, and found-objects. His current work includes a series of very large multi-panel paintings, some of which are permanently installed in public spaces. Each painting is comprised of images painted on many discrete canvases, which are then assembled into unpreconcieved compositions.
Recent solo exhibitions include SWING, an installation at Dab Art, Los Angeles, CA in 2020, Galerie L’Espace 13, Mur-de-Barrez, France in 2016, and Galerie-In-Situ, Labelle Friche, Nogent-le-Rotrou, France in 2015. Glen is represented by Dab Art Co. in Los Angeles. His work can also be seen on Artsy.
Artist statement:
My abstractions emerge out of the actions and circumstances of making them. Formal decisions about dividing up space, value contrast, and especially color guide my initial efforts. I try not to have preconceived ideas in the way, but I do try for sparseness and plainness of effect. I try to make areas of the painted surface that at first glance seem too blank but on second glance hold the viewers’s attention without embellishment.
And yet I’m not really a purist about abstraction, at least not anymore. If I get really stuck and can’t move forward with a painting, I may go to collage in the hopes of jump-starting the painting. That opens the door to all sorts of allusions, references, and associations that come from the world of things, places and times. A scrap of wallpaper,.a faded color swatch, pencil marks, a scumble of paint, all can be the triggers to spark unexpected and/or long forgotten memories and feelings.
This serendipity can shape a clearer path to resolution than through formal composition alone. And, when meaning is generated in this area, as if by intuition I trust it as opposed to when I consciously try to shoehorn content into a work. That usually ends up just an illustration of an idea.
Increasingly, the focus of my attention is on the kind of cross-over, hybrid, eclectic energy of the present which I experience everywhere around me and I want my art to reflect and participate in it as well. In this anything goes moment, my values and perspectives are thrown up for review. It is refreshing to say the least.
2019