Kadar Brock was raised in a New Age spiritual community and has used his experiences growing up in this environment to research issues of faith and transformation as a basis for his artmaking. An abstract painter, the canvas becomes a platform to first layer a number of images of symbols or people he derives from his research, then gradually strip them away in a complex process of addition and erasure. The outcome is a non-objective painting grounded in the rituals and actions of abstract painting. 

Like his residency cohorts, Brock is seeking connection in his own way. His art is a deeply personal process of self-questioning and physical deconstruction that results in paintings filled with a contemplative presence. His intention is to inspire the same emotional journey he experiences when making a painting with the viewer, in the hopes they may share in it. 

There is a lineage of Modernist and contemporary artists whose work touches directly on spiritual connection or communion that Brock responds to in his work. Two examples he points to are artists Wassily Kandinsky and Hilda Af Klint, who invested in different notions of spiritualism that guided how they approached making their art. For Brock, his interest in Western Esotericism clearly influences his practice. While not a believer in anything specific himself,  he constantly observes, questions, and analyzes. He receives ideas and inspiration from post-minimalists and conceptual artists whom he feels are also making secularly spiritual and poetic work, similar to the actions and rituals he brings to his practice. 

After his month at Fountainhead, he felt his practice had been impacted by the proximity to his fellow artists. “I asked myself questions about my working methods as a result of being around Furong and Andres; I’ve already gone ahead with printing a series of booklets that I’d been considering, booklets that contain my source material and an interview, and being at the residency really confirmed that I wanted to make them,” he said. “I also have some new ideas for how to install my paintings, and also some ideas about additional objects I can make to coexist with the paintings.”