Willem de Kooning once said, “ I’m not interested in ‘abstracting’ or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it- drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea.”

 

    This idea captures the essence of what maximalism aims to achieve. Art that transcends the basics seeks to convey emotion, imagination, experience, and innovation through techniques like segmentation, cloth-like wrinkling, and digital collaging. My neurodivergent perspective influences this distortion of reality.

 

    Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism, which enhance emotional intensity by distorting reality, greatly inform my work. Claude Monet explored how distorting a scene could improve a painting and capture fleeting beauty. Similarly, Chaim Soutine portrayed grotesque subjects with a vibrancy that made them inviting. De Kooning’s "Interchange" illustrates abstract renderings with depth and movement, while Richard Estes’ segmentation of light and shadow influences my rendering approach.