Working
Working in the visual-arts is, to me, very similar to spell-casting (should such a thing actually exist, an opinion I leave to the reader!). So is music, conversation, designing houses or writing software. In some way we are all casting spells; we do the things we do to produce a desired effect, whatever that may be. Many paintings are like spells that influence slowly, over time. They sit silent in a space and exert their influence, hopefully beneficial, sometimes not.

Time and Energy
Time and energy put into a thing stay with it, even if the energy is not immeadiately apparent. Perhaps the more finely tuned the focus of the energy, the less is lost to entropy. I don't think it matters if something hits the viewer on a concious level or not - the energy is what matters.

Symbols
The image of a person may simply be a mechanism for less conscious or obvious messages, just as a store mannequin is there to convince you to buy clothes, not to make a statement about women. Many of my figurative pieces have nothing to do with women but rather incorporate figures as a convenient visual "symbol" to reperesent another concept alltogether - the figures are simply palatable for me, I like the asthetic, but they are not what I'm talking about in most cases.

If a symbol is clarified and made easy to digest, it’s influence becomes simply one of our conscious labels, an “apple” or a “carriage” or whatever. These kinds of symbols have their place, to tell stories, to show events, but they can diminish the real power of a painting to influence on deeper, less obvious levels.

This photo was taken in the catacombs of Paris.

Jeff Buehler presently lives in San Rafael, California (near San Francisco in Marin County) with his wife Grier and daughter Asha. If you would like to see examples of Grier's photgraphy, please take a look at www.gbimagery.com.

Jeff has also been doing software development for ten or so years, and provides hosting services for a number of clients.

Jeff also has a weblog at www.buehlerart.net in case you are interested in his incredibly mundane thought process.