Current Position
Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University

Website
artserver.cfa.cmu.edu

Email
belgil@andrew.cmu.edu

Image created as a fund raiser for Artist Image Resource, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Statement
Mystery and enigma have always been important to my work. After years of study, I am beginning to strongly believe that the most important and interesting symbols are the images that appear and keep pressing on one’s mind with no explanation. Honoring these puzzling visages is the direction that I have begun to follow in my work. I concur whole-heartedly with Arturo Schwarz when he states, "The poetic quality of the work depends on the fact that its creator is motivated by forces and drives of which he is unaware. A great artist is an unwitting alchemist. He explores the memory of an archetypal world without realizing it. The motifs of archetypal symbolism emerge in his work independently of his will. It is not the artist who creates the symbol, quite the contrary, it is the symbol that imposes itself on the artist." "And which Duchamp when he says, when he says, "To all appearances, the artist acts as a medium who seeks his way out into the open from the labyrinth beyond time and space, if we give the artist the attributes of a medium, on the aesthetic plane we must deny him the awareness of what he is doing or why he is doing it."

With everything said, I must add that I am an artist that finds absolute exhilaration in mark-making, from the controlled and academic to the childlike and spontaneous. I want to achieve a weird elegance. I welcome provocation and puzzles. I often look to the work of outsider artists for inspiration and awe. Like Paul Klee, "I want to produce work that is in touch with fundamental forces and gives voice to doubts, and allows for the most precious kind of confirmation of one’s indentity."