I paint to make the world a better, more beautiful place. Specifically, I paint to show the beauty of interrelation. I juxtapose line and shape to relate them strongly with one another, to forge the separate elements into a dynamic, inter-working whole.

I build each painting to mold a certain feeling, to create a certain energy. It is an energy of pressure, of potential, a latent energy like a compressed spring or the excitement of a crowd. I choose the lines I draw and the shapes I paint in order to produce and heighten this energy.

As someone who has always stood apart, observing the world as though from the outside, I sense strongly the ties that exist between the members of humankind and the cosmos in which they dwell. I choose to draw out and accentuate these relationships in my work, in symbolic form. My hope is that someday I may so completely portray these relationships that by merely painting I will bind people closer to others and to the world around them.

The artist explains how to enjoy his art, "I encourage viewers to run their eye along the edges of each shape. I find it easiest to move my hand or finger when I do this; involving more senses results in greater comprehension. Now do it again, using the other hand to do the surrounding shapes. Feel how they move together." The challenge the artist offers his viewers is to simply perceive. Not to judge, or even to think, but to see and feel and to be moved by that perception.

To those who approach his work that way, John-Dan Key points out a different way of experiencing reality which relates the objects viewed in relation to each other, as opposed to each object being solitary, or merely a small part of a harmonious whole. Two forms in proximity in his paintings are both transformed, perhaps subtly, perhaps acutely. Juxtapose any two objects in our universe and modification occurs. John-Dan invites his viewers to examine his works and be similarly changed.

John-Dan first paints his works on a computer using an art program, Corel Draw. The art files are then either sent to a service bureau - who prints the paintings on either canvas or archival-quality paper - or for certain smaller works, printed in my studio on a pigment ink printer.