Richard Z Ross

Carving stone of various types and colors is not only poetically visual experience of shapes, colors and unlimited patterns, it is also sensual to the touch, liberating to the soul and mystical to discover the form that will emerge. Carving a raw stone of undefined shape into a finished form is rather straight forward. Not having a preconceived image involves a different approach: reading, feeling, and sensing the stones undefined shape; it’s angles, curves, colors, raggedness and roughness, until even a wisp of an image presents itself and lures me toward its own idea of what its meant to be. When I do work with a preconceived image or form, I'm often redirected from my initial instinctive mental picture. toward something unplanned and find myself engaged in a kind of tug-of-war. The meaning I find in my art comes home to me when I experience the thrill of the zygote of imagination has been realized in the aesthetic of my work.