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.

Strolling through the museum, I paused before the works of Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and others. The pause turned into a stillness, and then into a long, contemplative viewing. There was something there, in those paintings. I stood silently before them while the ground beneath me shifted.

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. They commanded my attention and led me into interior silence.

This vocabulary of gesture and movement is central to my artistic practice. From our earliest human ancestors to contemporary abstraction, gesture has always indicated a reality larger than itself. In this tradition, I fuse two other parts of my personal creative heritage.

First, my theatrical training in “Viewpoints”—a postmodern method of stage movement, where actors create visual compositions through the basic units of time and space.

Second, my embodied practices of silence and solitude—what is often named “Centering Prayer.” This practice grounds my work as a creative-spiritual endeavor.

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.