Jim Giddings

When I begin a painting I have no idea what will develop. My ideas change throughout the process; the process changes my ideas. For a number of years I have placed simply rendered images—letters of the alphabet, numbers, and the silhouettes of men or animals—in an abstract setting. My current surfaces are richer and more heavily worked than earlier work. I apply and remove paint, predominantly oil stick, over and over again until I have created an environment suitable for the figures to inhabit. I like to see how they react within their boundaries. My people don’t pose; they simply sit or walk around. I can only guess at their stories.

For about 15 years I spent lots of time in Maine. Like most artists who are introduced to the ocean, it becomes an endless source of mysterious and undefinable form. (My favorite of all images is the ocean surface—nothing else—cropped to exclude horizon, foreground or any other single thing). But waves are fun, too, and they offer a starting point: shape, rhythm, contrast. And I can always say, “That’s exactly what it looked like.”