Thaddeus Beal stopped practicing law to challenge himself in a world without language. He turned to art.

He was not surprised by Marxist analysis of art with its appeal to origins as the final explanation. He had grown up in such verbal analysis when studying history and law.

What surprised and disturbed him was New Art History and its ideological method of verbal capture, which can be broadly categorized as deconstructive. There seemed neither room for nor interest in what used to be called aesthetic -- where the art object has an existence above and beyond its place as a political statement or a cultural object. Where it cannot be captured. Where it disables the verbal. Where there is another world, another sense of time.

In response, he had sought to make work that has to be physically experienced. Work that slow things down in an effort to summon up otherwise imperceptible forces. There are images, to be sure, and an author, but there is also a detached physical presence, an inherent order and an abstract sweep, which dissociates the author from the work. The dialogue then is between the viewer and the piece.

His process is calculated to uncover this immanent structure. It begs for accidents, for irregularities, for changes of direction. Yet an underlying order is maintained. Tension is thereby created and energy generated. And the viewer is invited to provide more, as he does when watching flames in a fire or light reflecting off of water.