My name is Chad Glazener (he/him) and I’m an abstract artist and writer in Portland, OR.

I remember the first time abstract art stopped me in my tracks.

Walking through the museum, I paused before the works of Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and others. There was something there, in those paintings. I stood silently before them and the ground beneath me shifted.

Standing with the work of these abstract expressionists, I saw and felt something vital, what I can only describe as pure presence. Through gesture, shape, and line, these paintings hummed not only with the artist’s energy, but something more.

This vocabulary of gesture and movement is central to my creative journey. In my work, I fuse this lexicon with two other creative-spiritual streams.

First, my theatrical training in “Viewpoints”—a postmodern deconstruction of stage movement into its basic elements of space and time. Second, my embodied practices of silence and solitude—what is often named “Centering Prayer.”

Currently, I paint small and large-scale contemplative abstracts on canvas and paper. I use acrylic, charcoal, pencil, and other mark-making tools to express a dynamic range of gesture.

My aim is to make paintings that approach our inner horizon and the outer horizon, the place where the mystery of our hearts touches the benevolent love that holds us all.