ROBERT DALE ANDERSON
Artist Statement

Formally the aim is to create a compelling sense of pictorial space and illumination. Building through slow concentrated touching of graphite against paper producing delicate value and form. Beginning with gestured mark making, the image is developed intuitively following the inner eye. Within a miniature format the mind as much as the sensual eye is addressed. An attraction to the seductive play of light and shade over surfaces invites us into the monstrous depths they reveal. What is realized through silent contemplation is content that polite society does its best to hide - decay, disease, death, dementia, and chaos: the dark side. Siding within the traditions of the erotic, carnivalesque, fantastic, surrealistic, and psychedelic we find malignant growth and movement, a rotting world turned upside down in disorder, twisted grotesque bodies, beautiful monsters and decaying ruins.