Brian Rattiner

Rattiner paints his larger works on the floor. He drips paint, spreading a field of color that serves as the background of his work. He often paints on the works while they are wet, because it feels liberating from academic correctness. “I realized that the more I thought about what I was painting, the less real the artwork felt. When I allowed myself to be completely free of concepts, the work felt more natural. Although the works are done quickly, there is a long process of getting my mind into a calm and meditative state during the day or week before I do the work. In other words, getting inspiration from an environment, taking it in, and reflecting on it.”

Often Rattiner works from all angles of an image. He starts from a perspective and then turns the work sideways and rotates it around. "When I work on the floor and walk around the painting, I sometimes realize that the more organic images are not what I first planned. It is important to be open to it. For example, when you see something in nature that hits you. It could be moss along the side of a cliff – effectively there is no up, down, left or right. We approach nature from the angle we perceive it to be most beautiful. When I allowed myself to flip a painting and work on it from different angles, I realized that I was allowing nature to control the paintings even more. I learned from it in a compositional way, as previously I was more concerned with replicating its marking or value. "Rattiner says that colors are and remain the most important part of his work.