From Concrete to Canvas
There are moments in an artist's life when a new material doesn't simply change the way they work—it changes the questions they ask.
For me, that material was concrete.
What began as curiosity quickly became something much deeper. I wasn't interested in using concrete as an industrial statement or simply to create texture. I was drawn to its weight, its fragility, and its ability to suggest the passage of time. Concrete carries history. It cracks, erodes, and reveals what lies beneath. It records pressure, impact, and change.
The more I worked with it, the more I realized I wasn't covering the canvas.
I was uncovering it.
That realization has led me into a new body of work I call Excavating Through Time.
The title reflects more than the physical process of building and removing layers. It speaks to the way memory behaves. Memories are rarely complete. They shift, fragment, disappear, and unexpectedly return. Living with a traumatic brain injury has made me acutely aware of this reality. Memory is no longer a fixed archive but something continually reconstructed, rediscovered, and reinterpreted.
My paintings have always explored memory, presence, and the spaces between what is remembered and what is lost. Concrete has expanded that exploration. Instead of simply describing time, the surface now embodies it. Cracked edges, exposed layers, and weathered textures become evidence rather than illustration. They feel excavated rather than painted.
What interests me most is the tension between permanence and impermanence.
Concrete suggests permanence, yet it slowly breaks apart. Paint appears delicate, yet it often preserves a gesture long after the moment has passed. Bringing these materials together allows them to challenge one another, creating surfaces that feel simultaneously ancient and immediate.
This shift has also changed the way I think about abstraction.
Rather than constructing an image, I am increasingly revealing one. The painting becomes less about adding information and more about allowing something hidden to emerge. Each mark, each fracture, and each exposed layer feels like a conversation between material, memory, and time.
As I continue this work, I find myself moving beyond the canvas as a traditional painting surface. It becomes an archaeological site—a place where experience is unearthed rather than invented.
Excavating Through Time is still unfolding, but already it feels like a natural continuation of the questions that have guided my work for years.
Sometimes the most meaningful discoveries are not made by looking forward.
Sometimes they are found by carefully uncovering what has always been there.
—
Kris Haas
