Acrylic + Oil on Panel

18.5”L x 14.5”H

2015

Randall Tiedman is a highly intuitive self-taught artist. He is also a skilled draftsman who spent nearly four years during his early career copying old master paintings to acquire technical proficiency in oils and various graphic media. He typically works on his paintings over a long period of time, beginning with a familiar image, then subjecting it to a series of destructions and reconstructions, which may be metaphorically compared to a process of death and rebirth. After building up the surface with various media, he mars and scrapes it, leaving mysterious presences where objects or forms have been removed – as if to suggest that these rough, pitted surfaces have been “lived in”. This process, so essential to releasing imagination and subconscious associations, produces deeply felt images of obsessive intensity.