Artist's Statement
"I've always wanted to be happy so I decided to be"
- Neil Baldwin
In The Optimists I present case-studies of resilience, tenacity and the ability to accept circumstances with a sense of obstinate optimism.
Named after Britain's first team of blind darts players, these paintings carry out a function somewhere between fabrication and documentation. Handicapped creatures with mobility aides show off unique quirks and conditions that ask only to be accommodated and celebrated. By their side, unenthused animals wearing gasmasks exhibit complacency in a state of circumstantial flux that has clearly become habitual to them.
These works aim to provide a kind of therapy or relief through the knowledge that every optimist has some wisdom ingrained within their own simple or blinkered mindset, and that each may find their own version of happiness.
In a broader sense, empathising with imagined creatures can help us to isolate and appreciate the spirit of compassion itself, posing a direct challenge to modernity’s interminable “survival of the fittest” dogma. Instead of masking frailties with defensive coping mechanisms, these optimists’ understanding of adaptability seeks to demonstrate an alternative in openness and unashamed vulnerability.
‐ Paul Ulan‐Taylor, Bangkok, October 2015
