Selected Works

"I get fully immersed in the tactile engagement of materials as well as the physicality of applying energetic strokes and marks to the canvas; each one a response to what came before."

- Paul Marrocco

My work is nonrepresentational and is all about the interplay between color, form, line, and texture. I want the audience to integrate their own personal narrative and draw their own conclusions from the paintings. The viewing experience should be open ended, expansive, and free from premeditated notions. 

My process is exploratory, and the outcome is largely unexpected. I try to tap into the myriad of internal and intangible forces operating in the subconscious beneath perception and purposeful thinking. As the Zen master D.T. Suzuki stated “man is a thinking reed, but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. Uncluttered without words or instruction, a still mind makes for the best performance”.

I usually begin a painting with loose, uncontrolled gestural mark making and then start building up the canvas with layers of paint. I get fully immersed in the tactile engagement of materials as well as the physicality of applying energetic strokes and marks to the canvas; each one a response to what came before. The painting keeps evolving as paint is applied, removed, reapplied and elements are constructed and deconstructed, as I create a dance between the visible and the obscured until the proper sensibility is achieved. Finally, some deliberate intention is necessary in the later stages of the painting to harness in some of the wildness and provide whatever shape or structure the composition may need.