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John Roome

Artist’s Statement

 

My work is grounded in my experience of the world around me. I use drawing as a way of understanding, interpreting, and expressing my response to people, places, and things I come into contact with on a daily basis. Drawing provides a direct and immediate interface with the world. Drawing is not only a vehicle for recording the visual stimuli I encounter, but it is a way of processing and expressing my thoughts and emotions.

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I also enjoy printmaking, particularly relief printing. Whereas drawing is immediate and direct, prints are the result of an indirect process. I am fascinated by the element of surprise when, after a lengthy and time consuming process, the print finally rolls off the press. I am interested in the way the printmaking process can transform and often strengthen the original idea.

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My subject matter ranges from cityscapes and landscapes to portraits. My aim is not to provide a photographic replica, but rather to explore and express my psychological and emotional response to ‘reality’. In the words of one of my favourite artists, Max Beckman:

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            My heart beats more for a rougher, commoner, more vulgar art...one that offers direct access to the terrible, the crude, the magnificent, the ordinary, the grotesque and the banal in life.  An art that can always be right there for us, in the realest things of life.