Form — Code
The horizontal line, the vertical line, the circle, and a swash —
these marks are my core language of form, which I call "code."

This "code" is, really, a distillation of my art making ideas.
It is a system of mark-making for our time, my time in history —
meaning the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.
It's a time when cultures are changing rapidly, influenced by new technologies.

Technology, like visual art, is a way to manifest systems of thought and feeling;
It's a way to manifest "being" in our global culture.

I think of visual art as a certain type of "being"— a technological expression.
After all, the word "technology" shares the same root as "technique" as "skill."

As a visual artist, my skills, my art "technologies," and my "marks,"
are manifested in the material world, in Nature and in global Culture,
influenced by the present and the past.


Influences
When we look at art — everything from the stone age to today
we see how human beings exist in Nature, in relationship to each other,
in relationship to systems of expression, including, social, political,
poetic, and theoretical expressions.

My work has benefited from many influences, especially art works
expressing universal forms, like those by Agnes Martin, or Mondrian.

Mondrian initially depicted Nature, but then painted a minimalist visual system
expressing his early 20th century context.

Global art-makers such as Jeanne-Claude and Christo are also influences.
Installations such as "The Gates" embody strong ideas, and strong concepts
in form, expressed for our time in history.

What do these visual expressions mean?
Simply put, they mean "Visual Art is — Form plus Concept plus Context."

When these three aspects of art-making are brought together in a unique way,
then art has the potential to create an impact — a shift, in thinking, feeling,
and being, which are all aspects of our human technology, and they are
all aspects of our Nature, because we are Nature.
Human Beings are Nature creating Culture.


Movement
In considering Nature in my own work, I think about opposites, about dualities.
Nature expresses herself in Day and Night, breathing in, breathing out,
visible forms and invisible energies. Human beings exist in relationship to these dualities.

I think, at times, of duality as two spectrums, horizontal lines and vertical lines
stretching in opposite directions. I have often used these to create a grid. One concept implied by the form of the grid is that integrating dualities, "make" and "unify" an image.

Another concept I associate with the grid is the integration of our Nature
with an increasingly technological Culture.

How are my forms and concepts related to our context?
In our context, we are becoming more and more connected
through our electronic technologies, our codes of "zeros" and "ones."

The duality of "zero as nothing" and "one as something" is the invisible
technology behind the visible grided images that I paint.

The "one" is a vertical line, but it might also be seen as a "zero"
or a circular form in a particular space. The horizontal line is a circle, prone,
perhaps at rest. So I also see duality as a moving, unified form.

And in addition, the movement itself, created by this circle,
this zero, can be seen as a swash mark, or in technical language, a tilde.

So this tilde-swash, documenting the circle's movement in space,
provides a point of departure for me.

And these forms provide a point of departure for viewers, those who are
conscious observers, who I consider critical participants in the art process.

Sometimes viewers ask me, what is the purpose, the meaning,
what is the benefit or effect of this work we call art?

That question speaks to our tendency to value concrete science over art.
In fact, art and science are seen, essentially, as dualities.

But contemporary physicists allow us to integrate art and science by
reminding us that observation of the material world — how we see Nature —
does, in fact, change it.

This is why I create images and environments, which invite the viewer to
consciously participate in the act of observation. So there is an effect,
and we are changed.

The viewer who consciously engages in observation, is moved, and creates
movement. This is science and art unified, as one form.

This is the power of art — and it is what my core forms suggest and call for
in the context of our time.  —Deborah Adams Doering