Interview
I recently did an interview for the Des Moines Contemporary Art Examiner. Here’s the link.
Synopsis of speech given to the Siouxland Artist's Group about my work.
Expressionism and Primitivism
In order to get any sort of coprehensive picture of the enormous range of stylesin the contemporary art scene, some system of classification is needed. So I call the style of art I create Expressionist, but this is still just a system of classification and any such system inevitably involves arbitrary pigeonholing and stereotyping which distorts and simplifies our u…
Current Project: Abstract Primitive Expressionism
As the elemental dimension of symbolic culture progresses, so does, by equal steps, alienation from the natural. Symbols are essential for the development and maintenance of social order. From symbols come language… from language comes number…from number comes time and order and systematic control. That is the reason why I stay away from symbols. I paint from a transcendental view tha…
Selling Jackson Pollock's "Mural"
True Value of Iowa’s art? Priceless
Preserve treasures for future generations
The next time Iowa Lawmakers are short on cash, they might check into how much selling Cosmic Seed could generate. The 17,000 pound, 24-foot-high sculpture in front of the Wallace Building in Des Moines took artist Ronald Bladen three years to create. The state could probably fetch a lot more than the $60,000 ori…
My personal website with gallery.
Universal Truth and a metaphor for art.
“It is on account of emptiness that all things are at all possible.” Nagarjuna’s Madhkyamikasastra.
“We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-b…