(From a recent speech John Bell delivered at the Utah Museum of Fine Art) Hi, I’m John Bell, & I am a artist without a genera. What I mean by that is that I have chosen NOT to work in a recognizable style or established genera, but instead , I am trying to create one of my own. I guess you could call it Anthropological Expressionism, digging not only through the history of modern art, but also through mass culture, science,  media & cultural phenomenon & attempting to link them all together in my work. I am interested in process as much as style. Painting, print making, photography, sculpture, architecture & writing have all found their way into the work. Combining  elements of abstract expressionism, geometric abstraction, post modern philosophy, pop art, modern sculpture, & the ideas & philosophies about space addressed in modern architecture to name a few. I am always searching for a new pictorial language to add to my work. Once I finish with a set period of ideas & feelings, I have to find a new visual language to carry on, a new way to express an evolving sense of exploration & understanding by incorporating different forms & ideas into my vocabulary. I have found that once the restrictions of a  single genera have been lifted, & the door kicked wide open, the influences & possibilities are as surprising as they are infinite. By way of example, For past several years my work has been dealing with the paradox of time. Inspired by Einstein's notion that time is elliptical & is constantly repeating itself, sometimes exactly the same, other times slightly or completely different based on our individual decisions... & that all these moments in time may still exist in parallel space. Taking an abstract understanding & approach to this, I simply asked the question what might this look like as a painting? What if you could actually see random clusters of  moments in time all at once? What images would you see & what types of narratives would these juxtapositions create? In the paintings I have repeated images as an even more tangible illustration of this theory, showing the same image living multiple lives in different settings. Working in this manor, pulling elements from so many different influences, allows me to comment on a vast array of subject matter including political & social commentary, & the complexities of the human condition. My most recent work is exploring the impact of  social networking & media influence, & the ever-fluctuating values of contemporary culture, linking warhol’s famous quote that “in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” with intense media circus that social networking has become… making the statement that “the future has arrived, the question is with billions of people pumping billions of minutes into these networking sites, with so many of them pining for the lime light, will there ever be enough minutes for everyone to receive their 15 & the existential conundrum that it creates. To see available work by John Bell, click HERE