Artist Statement

Gregory S. Kailian


Art is more than a total of components such as design, color, line, decoration, proportion and symbol. Art “happens” when an alchemy of factors create an object or results in an experience with meaning more profound than the sum of the individual parts. I pursue art in an attempt to capture this experience or create this type of object. I derive satisfaction from successful completion of a project and enjoy thinking about a piece long after the work is finished. My stone sculptures tend to result in either design studies or more symbolic works. Design studies can explore and develop shapes and forms, but art happens when a piece also carries higher levels of symbolic, metaphoric, or allegorical meaning.

My work tends to be abstract in form and conceptual in theme. I favor native California marbles and unconventional stones such as basalt, pipestone and onyx, with most works falling in the 200-1000 pound range. Depending on the design, I will also incorporate stained glass into my works in celebration of color and light. In, more complex, compound pieces, bases and supporting stones become organic elements of the entire sculpture, engineered to rotate revealing different angular combinations of the base and component stones. The resulting sculpture enables the viewer to explore, discover, and enjoy a wide range of alignments and positions emphasizing varieties of line, texture, color, form and shadow. A piece might develop a form inherent in the stone or emphasize and highlight unique colors, veins, and patterns to allow painting with the rock. I try to provide an experience that transcends visual appreciation in the hopes that my work is seen and perhaps later reconsidered as a source of reflection, thought, and contemplation, since the meaning of a piece can change from day to day as the viewer changes as a person. Identifying sources of motivation and inspiration can be elusive and sometimes difficult to articulate.

As the son of a 98 year-old professional artist who still paints in her studio on a daily basis, I could point to dozens of historical, family, and academic influences stretching back to early childhood. However, I consider the outcomes of these influences to be much more interesting; and, like most artists, the themes that have chosen me derive from a lifetime of experience, travel, study, love and pains, losses and gains.

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