Monday, May 30, 2016

demystic

To demystify is to risk boredom.


To talk at length about structure.


To explain away the momentary experiences of ecstasy.


To work a painting from cadmium to grey.


I too wish to expose the mystery...


and call it work.


Tuesday, May 3, 2016

pratique

I've been contacted recently by the freelance journalist Simon Thurston of Pratique des Arts, a magazine in France for art enthusiasts.   Pasted below are answers to some of his questions that will be translated (not by me) into French for an upcoming issue.  A tangible copy can be purchased at a Parisian newsstand soon.


How do you choose your subjects?  

Watercolor is a medium designed for travelers.  And for me, this history and tradition of it taken along on adventures into new and exotic worlds, i.e. Sargent/Klee in Egypt or Homer in North America’s wilderness, attaches a transportive aesthetic to the medium itself.  And I’m only now realizing this, after 15-20 years of working with watercolor and after recently expanding into acrylic inks and more recently oils, that when I pour a layer of cobalt blue onto paper I’m participating in a tradition of expression that speaks of the longing for the new, for wanderlust-ed horizons of adventure.  It is a delicate and ethereal medium used historically to depict the ancient, sublime, monuments of empires of man or nature.  A fantastic combination.  And so what I look for is somewhere near to this: an angle of our city or civilization that is similarly tired, worn, and marked by millions, because this to me is what watercolor wants to paint.  


Do you work from photos?

The deliberate part of my work is photography: examining the photograph, editing the photograph, and prepping the paper and sizing it, etc.  There is quite a bit of this work that I consider less “creative”.  Much of the painting is a production that I could probably hire out to an assistant if I were more ambitious, but I do everything myself and quite enjoy it.  The mechanical aspect of stretching paper, much like a canvas minus the stretcher bars, and enlarging a photograph and taping it, these are steps that I find to be important.  They lead up to the creative, ecstatic phase of applying paint.  In fact, the more time I feel I invest in building a surface, i.e. panel, canvas, etc., the more precious that surface becomes, and therefore the more sacrosanct the process of painting upon it.  It is a rush to spill paint or ink, and I’ve often found this loose application whether with a mop brush or literally tipping the jar to be the most creative thing I do, and yet it only lasts a small portion of the total time.  It is when time seems to flow.  In the end what you see is a building up of layers that shows a process of working, of developing.