An Appreciation / Peter London

“The world is so glorious just as it is, and it is there for the beholding by anyone everyday by just opening our eyes, and looking, so why look at art? Art is never as big as the world nor as varied nor as exquisitely made and this is most wonderful about the world, the world is Alive. Alive, and in full color, that’s something that art cannot say about itself.

So why look at art? Why look at Gregory’s art?

Well, look at the art of Gregory Guss, and that is why. Because as big and varied as the world most certainly is, you will not find the likes of Gregory Guss’ work in it. You will only find the likes of Gregory’s work in Gregory’s work. But before it is in his work, his photo paintings, it is first in his mind. And what is in his mind, you will not find in the rest of Nature. And his mind, it can be said, is much like an Alchemists mind, what might that be? Alchemy is the ancient tradition of putting one thing from the natural world together with other things from the world - just so - to create a third thing, a new thing that was not ever in the world before. Not so easy, to gather just the right things and put them together in just the right way - (all kinds of merely messy even nasty things can come of this.) In Guss’s photo-paintings, his selection of “telling” things and placing them, concocting them just so brings something into the world that all art worth looking at does, Mystery. Beauty. Beauty is a kind of mystery too. 

Beauty full Mystery.

Beautiful Mystery is hard to define but everyone can notice it when we merely look at a sunset, a baby, a flower, even a baby dog. Beautiful mystery is what we simply are, what the world simply is. But why don’t we therefore see the world’s mysterious beauty all the time? Every bright sunny day, every rainy day, every night, every everything is beautiful and mysterious and yet for most of us, it is just another rainy day. Or a baby dog.

HA! says art. HA! Time to wake up! Gregory’s art wakes us up. His work says, Wait a moment. Look at this. Look slowly. Here is something that you have and have not seen before that can awaken you to see what you have seen before but now see as if for the first time. We look at his art and we say, Hmmm. It certainly is beauty full, but what is it? A leaf? A stone? A rock? A bent something? What is it? Yet it seems familiar. I must have seen this somewhere before. No. I have not. But it is beautiful. And it is mysterious.

Ah, I got it!

Beauty full Mystery.

Just like life, In its own way. Art is just like life, in its own way.”

— Peter London