The hand that creates any original work is unique to each artist, and I strive to magnify the idiosyncrasies of my own hand as a sort of meta-signature. There is a physicality to paintings that cannot be duplicated by computers (at least not yet, and not easily), and I examine this physicality by surveying its limits. Making marks by hand is one of the oldest human endeavors, and I try to explore the ways in which a person can make one on a canvas. Texture, color, line vs. shape, volume and depth vs. flatness are common experiments. Though there are figures in my work, the paintings are about painting, not the individual in the painting. My work is ultimately exploring what it means to be a painter in the 21st Century, to find how the Handmade can be relevant in an age that is ever closer to full autonomy through technology. 



Adam Cochran
2017