My work explores the boundaries and potential of corrosive metals and materials in painting. I capture the color and movement that occurs in the properties of individual metals during the process of corrosion. The metal is laid behind the canvas and stained by working from the front with different solutions, which bring the corrosive property through the canvas. I add depth with the use of pigments and other various mediums, including metal on the front of the canvas to further the depth and complexity of the image.

Process is the most important aspect of my creative method. My vigorous, repetitive motions on both the front and back of the canvas act as an imprint and recording of the harsh interaction between destruction and rebirth. I am aware of the impermanence in these images that I paint, and embrace this factor in my studio practice.  This impermanence plays a very important role in the overall composition and atmosphere portrayed in the physical representation of the multilayered space of each painting.  My calculated decisions are intertwined with spontaneous occurrences that juxtapose the ideas of color and composition, as well as the deterioration and preservation of contemporary painting.

“There is a tangible depth to Siedt’s paintings that I don’t often feel when viewing most non-representational works. The palettes and textures that are chosen somehow are evocative of a feeling or vague setting almost immediately, and it doesn’t shift once locked in. It only cements itself further the longer it is studied. These paintings are depictions of sentience, manifesting in hidden corners of the wilderness, holding congress on matters never to be known by human minds and never meant to be witnessed by human eyes. There are secrets being told here.”

Review by Daniel Fortunato