Artist’s Statement

I (Gordon Massman) paint almost exclusively in oil large-scale works in a 4000 square foot studio built on the Gloucester MA commercial harbor. I infuse each paint stroke with a deep obedience to primality uninhibited by any stricture associated with artistic tradition.  I say, “there is the tube of paint, the canvas, and the sum-total of your life. Period.”  My work prefers no meaningful censorship; I paint as an elemental man whose emotions have no chains. I do not believe in failure because I have no direct antecedents by which to judge. Most assuredly the original abstract expressionists affected me deeply, but I am not significantly derivative of their masterful work. Like all artists, I express as honestly and as profoundly as possible my unique vision and voice into the world in hopes of connecting viewers to their own joys and sorrows.

 My visual art springs from a four decade’s long devotion to poetry. Having published seven volumes—one a collected poems which was nominated for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. During those decades over two hundred journal editors selected my work for publication including Harvard Review, Chelsea, The Georgia Review, The Literary Review, The Antioch Review, Fiddlehead, Malahat Review, to name a few. I transferred my raw emotion to the visual realm after realizing that I had reached my peak as a poet, and after realizing that visual art can be much more immediately impactful than literature. Visual art needs not elite literacy or cerebral processing; it allows for a more immediate unfiltered catharsis.

My work has been featured in magazines in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Lisbon, Tbilisi, NY, Toronto, Frankfurt, Florence, Liverpool, and several others.

Instagram: gordon.massman