John Zinsser

An Epiphany
I had an epiphany when I was 21-years-old, in my last year of college, taking a seminar on the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s: abstraction could serve as a direct conduit into consciousness. Not only that, but this sensation could be shared--either artist-to-artist or artist-to-viewer.

Precedents
Since the Renaissance, pictures have been determined by composition, described in Gaugin's famous dictum that painting is above all an arrangement of colors and shapes on a flat surface. But with the dawn of automatism also came these factors: risk, act, accident, chance. Also: absoluteness.

Automatic
In post-World War II America, the term "automatic" wasn't just an expression of an unconscious impulse. It was also a consumer paradigm. In automotive technology, look at this time to the development of the "automatic transmission." Yet, what a beautiful metaphor for an abstract painting: a visual object capable of "automatic transmission."

—John Zinsser, New York, 2005

Artist Resume (PDF)