Thursday, November 24, 2011

IAIN NICHOLLS

Fall rise, acrylic & oil on board, 18 x 18", 2011



What are you working on in your studio right now?

I have just finished the last of a group of small acrylic and oil paintings on board which I am about to show at Transition Gallery in London opening December 2nd. I have done 25+ since August and am happy with 10 of them of which the painter Phillip Allen who is curating the show will choose his favourite 5.  Two other painters, Mark Joyce and William Gharrie are also showing work. It should be a good one.



Can you describe your working routine?

I try and find any excuse not to paint! So I get up early in order to accommodate my excuses, and get these ‘necessary things’ out of the way: I go to the shop for the paper, drink coffee, watch breakfast television, read Facebook and any Emails and reply (in detail) to any (thank God I have kept away from Twitter!), eat some toast, have ‘just one more coffee’ etc. etc. until there really isn’t anything left to do except go and paint.
 I paint in the garage at home so when I do go to paint I start straight away. There is no sitting around, no chatting (there’s no one to chat to), no drawing or preparation as that gets done in the house at other times and I know roughly how I’m going to get going, so I just start. With these small paintings I paint very quickly and intensely in about one and a half hour bursts. I usually get about 3 of these intense painting bursts done a day, give or take.
I don’t know why it’s always one and a half hours at the moment but it is. Bigger paintings take longer but that’s nothing to do with them being harder to do. With big paintings the paint application involves a bigger area which takes longer to fill, and you only see the whole of the painting by pausing and stepping back so the whole process takes longer.  





Marker on acetate, 2011



Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

I am a very untidy messy painter. Once I get going I can’t keep stopping and starting to keep my stuff organized and orderly as it breaks up my thinking. I seem to always have a tin of brush restorer on the go as I lose brushes in the mess and when they reappear they are hard! I am my own worst enemy but I have tried to change and keep tidy and it just isn’t me. There is no natural light in the garage but that has never bothered me as my paintings don’t rely on subtlety much (not to me anyway). Also, it’s a good test if the paintings can stand out surrounded by mess and lit by strip lighting. This doesn’t mean they should gravitate towards being bright and garish – more that they somehow are more alive, a special arrangement of the matter they have come from, i.e. the mess which is all rounds them.








Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I get ideas from anything I might see, think about, read, watch on television, and I distill all this into drawing, mainly in my sketchbook, most often at night – watching television. These days I need a specific idea to start a painting from and these come from the drawings. When I say ‘idea’ this is a very loose term. It could be just a colour or pattern or a real thing I want to paint, a memory or something stupid, anything really, but mainly from the drawings.

I used to paint like I draw – just making it up and seeing where it goes, but now I need an anchor point or two. With drawing it’s just about doodling until an idea takes shape, then making this idea clear, then that’s it – the drawing is finished. There are no changes other than additions because it is biro or ink pen, so I can’t fuss over it erasing like you can with pencil or paint. Any mistakes have to be made into a positive influence to the drawing somehow and this often sends the drawing off on a different tangent. Drawing isn’t a problem; it’s just using my imagination, getting ideas out, playing with them to make something new and making them clear. This would be enough but paint and colour are special and addictive. Once enough drawings are done to generate ideas for about a dozen paintings, I start painting.
When I paint, like drawing I just want to get my imagination working, playing with ideas, going off on tangents etc. I don’t want to refine and polish what I know, but I do want to paint with the least resistance possible and still end up with something I haven’t seen before, that surprises me, and puzzles me and that I learn from.  But what stops me doing this, the resistance, was (and is) the making of the painting: the adjustment of colour, the relationships of shapes, the edge of the painting, dealing with painting as being flat but a real space., etc. etc.

Some artists ignore these problems, but to me dealing with them and trying to get past to a new thing is the whole point. In trying to do this painting is stopped from stagnating and ending up in a dead end, and becoming at best the painting equivalent of a tribute band.
 It’s only been in this last year or so that I have started getting somewhere I think. I have started relaxing a bit, thinking of each painting not having to be perfect, the be all and end all but just as one of a series. This lets me be more playful because if it fails its OK, there is always another painting. I have began painting on large boards with 5 or 6 ‘areas’ of painting which each have their own start off idea but with no fixed edges. This lets me just concentrate on using my imagination, playing with the ideas etc. I can work on all these areas of painting at once and they sometimes merge or split so it’s a very fluid process.

Along the way I photograph the work if I am not sure of something and try changes using the computer. But these are only big changes, or collaging separate paintings together or dramatic colour tests. Eventually the areas of paint become clearer in what they are trying to say to me and more separate from each other. I then cut them up and work on them as separate paintings and only then consider things like the edge, how the space is working etc. But these final decisions are painted in a much less panicked way as most of the paintings main idea(s) and its structure is there. Recently I have gone back to making paintings with edges on fixed sizes again and it feels a lot less frustrating now.  





before & after



What are you having the most trouble resolving?

Reading my description of this process of painting sounds like all things are resolved and sorted. They aren’t! The hardest thing to resolve and which I am a long way off doing, is to try and develop an approach that allows me to paint anything, any subject or idea, without having to be detached; so I am painting from the heart as well as the mind, with equal measure.



Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

Poster paints were the first paints I used and my earliest memory is of painting in front of the fire a ‘mural’ on some wallpaper of the local park for my sister who was at university and I was off school poorly with the mumps. My sister still has it and the ‘mural’ is actually only about 2 foot long, but me being 4 or 5 I can’t have been much longer either, so it still seems in my memory to have been huge! The poster paints were in small glass bottles by Rowney and were pre-mixed. You can’t get them in glass bottles now but I still love using pre-mixed pots of poster paint for their smell and their squidgyness which you can’t get from acrylic and gouache – although I use those as well now. I use oils with Turpentine and Jacksons Glaze Medium which gives a lovely glow to the paint without it being like a varnish and makes it flow better and dry quicker.

I pretty much just draw with black biro and ink pens but recently I have been drawing on large A1 sheets of acetate with permanent marker pens and using nail varnish remover as an eraser. This is great as you can draw on both sides and reverse the image and draw but also rub out and leave a trace of the rubbing, and also rub out perfectly if you want, so it’s a bit like painting but also like ink drawing.
As I say I also use the computer to test out large changes to paintings without ruining them. I also have a Nintendo DS and got the ‘Art Academy’ for it which is a brilliant little paint program – lots of fun. It’s the only paint program I know of that has great painting sound effects! Unfortunately you can’t get images printed from it so I will probably get an iPad at some point.





Ink on paper, 2011



What does the future hold for this work?

I want to do lots of different things which I have been thinking about over the last year and will give me a break from my ‘usual’ painting, which I can then come back to later next year ‘refreshed’. I want to make some sculpture on a flat board like a model railway landscape using plaster of Paris, bandaging, clay, plastic – anything. Like a diorama to be able to do what I want with. I don’t think it will be a thing in itself, viewed from any angle like a sculpture or installation. It might be just in a corner viewed from one angle. I might do landscape paintings from it. I also want a digital projector to be able to paint more accurate areas on my paintings but without having to slow down and worry about accuracy. I want to use photographs, my own drawings and paintings, and I want to be able to use it to do things that are impossible any other way like photographing a half finished painting, then projecting it onto itself and painting itself into itself recursively, and distorting itself somehow in between maybe using the computer. I also want to try painting on the acetate sheets I have and seeing what happens there with reversing them and layering and tracing etc. I have been painting all my adult life but I am still in the dark quite a bit about what’s out there in terms of materials and methods and have been recommended a couple of books on the subject which I want to read.  



Is there anything else you would like to add?

It’s great to have been asked to write this. I don’t normally put all this down in words and only occasionally talk like this to others, as do most artists I think. I hope it sort of makes sense!




Desert, acrylic & oil on board, 12 x 12", 2011





Saturday, November 19, 2011

PETER SHEAR



Untitled, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 "




What are you working on in your studio right now?

I’ve been working much of the year on a cycle of smaller paintings, most between 8 x 10” and 11 x 14”. In between works on paper are being made and unmade.




Can you describe your working routine?

I have a working/not working routine. There are periods of a month or two where I’m in the studio painting or drawing for some substantial amount of time every day and this continues until I reach an impasse and am forced to regroup. But what I really like is to be in the rut of work and it makes me nervous to not be making anything.

I’m relatively disciplined in my work habits but only in order to have massive room to mess around, get bored, stare into the abyss and freak out. If I’ve worked the previous day I’ll go into the studio once light is decent and see what I’ve done. Artists know this is a horrible thing. Unless a piece needs immediate attention there’s a period of coffee drinking and padding around, cleaning brushes, cleaning the cat litter box, reading a little, spacing out on the internet, trying to get a feel for what I’m working on. Maybe I try to ignore the work and just live with it. Maybe a painting suddenly reveals itself as complete if I can catch it off guard. This happens.

I like to listen to podcasts of interviews or lectures while I’m working. Sometimes music but mostly not— music is always perfect and just totally convincing. My hand is too easily led by it. I like the clumsiness of speech which is more in sympathy with my approach to painting. Voices are engaging in a way that keeps me somewhat detached from the work at hand and that small remove allows for just enough criticality on my part.












Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

I’ve never had a dedicated studio and have always worked at home—right now I use a spare bedroom in an apartment shared with my girlfriend. It’s multi-purpose, so things accumulate, disappear and later resurface.

When I first became ‘serious’ about art-making as a vocation I was drawing with a charcoal pencil and all I needed was a table. When I began painting a little while later I couldn’t get used to an easel and stayed on the table. My studio is strictly okay but my table is amazing.

All of the spaces I’ve worked in have been small and I make small work, and this condition of working in living spaces has affected deeply the way I relate to paintings as objects in the world. I’m interested in making THINGS which address the smaller, uglier, intimate spaces where our private lives play out. I relate differently to work on a smaller scale, and a small canvas or bit of paper is an incredibly sensitive recording device. That said I’m eager to make some huge paintings.





Careful, 2011, acrylic & glitter on canvas, 8 x 10"




Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

Beginning with a blank canvas there’s usually the desire to finish a piece in one go, and I do try, and I do fail most of the time. Maybe if a painting feels done I’ll hang it up and go to sleep that night very satisfied. And then over a period of hours or days the work dies on the wall, or just keeps repeating the same joke. But if it can get off the wall and walk away, a painting is done; then it’s my job to interview it and see if it knows anything about the next painting. Vija Celmins said she knows a work is nearing completion when it begins to push back; I relate to that measure completely—a sense of fullness.

Most of the time in the studio, however, I’m not dealing with beginnings but with work in progress. Sometimes images are allowed to evolve organically but more often I’ll paint everything out that isn’t working. The discarded image is still there; the memory is still there influencing the painting but it informs indirectly.  For the genesis of images I’ve often restricted myself to the very familiar—lines, dots, simple shapes. As general and inclusive a vocabulary as possible. It’s become increasingly important to leave behind an image to which no concrete meaning can be attached, only possibility. I’ll put some things down, have a look, paint around them and paint them out. There are all these intuitive, oblique strategies improvised to bring me possibly to a place where I can make a really great mistake and then things can get going. I’m not as interested in the hand of an artist as I am the eye; the ability to remain sufficiently present while painting in order to recognize that (suddenly!) a composition is done, regardless of preconceived notions.









What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I’ve often worried about the finish of a work. Finish or finished? First thought best thought? Myron Stout tweaks for years? Nozkowskian tectonics? All are interesting and feel pretty good. A range of such strategies is something we’re often led to believe is problematic within one’s work and I repeatedly remind myself that it isn’t true, that a fucked up mixture speaks more honestly to an experience of being in the world.

I also wonder a lot about the wide open spaces between intentionality and reception—I mean, this is an afterthought, not a painting-thought. My painting thoughts are less than verbal. But it’s such a curious thing—from time to time I get some image down that satisfies me in a deep and totally ineffable way, and then for what reason do I need other people to see it? To have a comparable experience, maybe. That’s how I look at other peoples’ work.




Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

At times the work calls for strict controls. There was a period from 2007-2009 when I first began using gouache and used it full-strength from the tube, making quasi hard-edged, geometric paintings (lines were ruled out but not taped so it was like a one-shot performance, performing the edge). I was maybe setting out to establish a baseline for myself. Prior to all the right angles I was painting Joan Mitchells, or Joan de Koonings, really. That was a cool time because I had no idea what I was doing and no idea what they had been doing, and it was enough just to be influenced. The time of the right angles was like political reeducation and in the end I became really fearful of doing anything without a ruler. Lessons learned. When I did reintroduce more gesture I found I’d gained some knowledge about control and economy of means that was initially lacking. Early on I wasn’t making choices when they needed to be made.





Untitled, 2011, acrylic & glitter on canvas, 9 x 12"




What does the future hold for this work?

The next work. I’ve gotten myself to a place where the drawings and paintings are really generative, and the bonus prize is that individual pieces have become less precious to me. I’m interested in the dialogue among works from the past year; some are rather severe and others are very chatty and outgoing. I didn’t anticipate the latter but am pretty curious. I’ll find out what’s going on.



Is there anything else you would like to add?
Thank you for creating a platform for this sort of exchange! Artists gain so much from blogs like yours. It’s fabulous to be forming communities outside of a particular geography—strange and new and absolutely positive.





Tuesday, November 15, 2011

PIER WRIGHT

You possess the blowhole of a whale
Acrylic on Duralar, 7" x 5", 2010



What are you working on in your studio right now?

Currently I am working through a series of mid-size paintings. It's been nearly 4 years since I've worked on canvas and it's a very different way of thinking from the collage series I have been focusing on during this period. The "house" has been a significant lifelong metaphor, referencing my interior architecture, frequently appearing in dreams and is the place in which these paintings occur. This series is simply about windows -- allowing the unknown a way in and me a way out -- about opening up and allowing a breeze to pass through. On a slightly different note, I feel the process of painting is a kind of breathing; we inhale and in doing so fill up the canvas, this can go on for many years, and then we exhale and find ourselves making very sparse paintings where maybe the gessoed surface is enough -- this belief in a respiratory cycle in the making of art fascinates me.




grid of the small collages on Duralar



I'll fly away
Acrylic on Duralar, 7" x 5", 2010




Can you describe your working routine?
My working routine changes during the course of the year. I have a gallery during the summer/fall months and that requires most of my time. During that period I am able to work before I open the store and when I shut down, so that I occupy the studio in short bursts. The rest of the year I am able to focus my energies full time on making art. During this time I try very hard to get up reasonably early (not easy) as there is very little day light this far north and I will paint until 5 or 6. It's a very simple life style repeated daily.




Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?
Studio spaces are so important. I have been here in Northport for 10 years, in the past I would find a small work space in town for the summer months and then move to the larger gallery space after it shut down for the season. I live in the back of the business and this year I converted a room upstairs into a year round studio -- it's a little too pretty for a studio and it would be nice if it were larger but it works just fine and I am very lucky.








Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.
Regarding process; oil painting is so different from the collages. It's as though a whole different part of my personality steps up. In either case there is no final image in mind. With the paintings I start making lines and applying fields of color, waiting for something to appear. Regarding the current series I didn't even realize the forms were portals/windows until quite late. On the negative side, I have over time found that the editor in me has very strong opinions as to how to finish a canvas. It was a revolt against that voice which led me to start the collage series and effectively shut him up for years.
The process for the collage pieces is two part. The "work" is composing all the pieces. I will paint or draw on hundreds of sheets, this is sometimes gratifying but mostly tedious and it's a task that is ongoing. The series is in need of constant fresh material to pull from. The enjoyable part is to make something out of the mess, there are literally an infinite number of possible combinations. I will have two long tables set up on which to work and have about 10 pieces going at a time. There is a third table where the pieces are piled and sorted through. I simply go through the stack looking for interesting bits and pieces to build around. In the case of the small acetates (actually Duralar) each one usually takes about a month to come to fruition. Even after they are finished I end up keeping less than half. This series constantly surprises me.






collage on Duralar, 43.5" x 24" x 5",2011



What are you having the most trouble resolving?
I have always been curious about light and now, from working on layers of acetate, with transparency. This has led me to begin to study glass making. I love working with glass. My biggest hurdle is to find the most suitable process in which to translate my work (kiln firing, cold work, enamels, etc).


Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?
I have been working with a variety of materials, i.e. glass, acetate, canvas but I don't necessarily consider myself to be that experimental with the materials themselves. It's all about trying to find the best medium to express an idea.




From the "Window Series", 36" x 36", oil on canvas



What does the future hold for this work?
The future is wide open! I am amazed that I am painting on canvas again, I had sort of written that off -- and I'm loving it. I also feel working with the Duralar has played a very important role in allowing me to push my boundaries so I definitely want to keep working with that series. And what can I say about glass, it's like a whole new world opening up.


Is there anything else you would like to add?
I am sincerely glad that you've invited me to be part of this. Your blog has introduced me to so much new work, thank you.





Sunday, November 13, 2011

ALICE BROWNE

Obstacle No. 4, oil on canvas, 40 x 35cm, 2011



What are you working on in your studio right now?
I’ve just made a load of new work and am now preparing some more canvases, fiddling around with a few larger paintings which are in progress and thinking about making some paper sketches.  The new work I’ve just made has really challenged me, I’ve been exploring subtler colours and working more on linen.


Can you describe your working routine?
I get to the studio early and start painting once I’ve settled in. I work pretty quickly so unless I get stuck I usually work on at least 5 paintings a day. A lot of my studio time is used stretching and priming canvas, which I take a lot of care over…though I do sometimes get quite bored of doing it!








Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?
I’ve recently moved to a larger studio so I’m very aware of the effect it’s had – I can stand a greater distance from larger works which has given me a bit more confidence to work on the whole surface at a time, rather than painting just on bits which usually are their downfall. The particulars of my space don’t really matter – I keep all my materials in cardboard boxes so they are transportable to any space with a white wall and good natural light. My studio building is close to the Olympic Park which has been constantly changing for the last 2 years I’ve been here, I’m sure this must have influenced my work in some way.




Dune, oil on canvas, 40 x 45cm, 2011



Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.
I’ve always got paintings on the go, but usually the bulk of my work is done in bursts -  depending on when I have fresh surfaces to work on. Whilst preparing canvases I’m usually churning over things in my head, exhibitions I’ve seen, things I’ve read, places I’ve been to. I might make some works on paper at this time just to think about colour and get moving on something.
When the canvases are ready I start applying layers of colour and seeing what sort of depths appear between the layers before bringing in some kind of ‘problem’ or ‘obstacle’ which changes the space. I love to introduce something out of curiosity and be surprised at what it does. Its important to me to not feel restricted by fear of embarrassment at making some thing which looks rubbish, which is why I work on so many things at once. Its ok for them to fail.
Some work well in this way and are finished quickly and others take longer to resolve and usually get layered over many times. Titling is the final thing, which I do whilst looking at photos of the paintings on a computer as this feels a more natural place to apply word to image. They often come from a feeling I have about the work, or reference something which is interesting me at the time. They are also usually words which have good rhythm and stability.







What are you having the most trouble resolving?
Larger paintings…I often get impatient waiting for them to dry and make a mess working into wet. I also worry that my work appears a bit erratic as the outcomes can look very different. But this is partly what keeps me excited about it.


Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?


I experiment with new materials if there is something I would like to achieve and slowly work it into my studio practice. Recently I’ve been experimenting with dry pigments, making my own oil and watercolours but its taken me 2 years of thinking about it!



Made, oil on canvas, 40 x 35cm, 2011



What does the future hold for this work?
I want to continually question and play with my practice. There are endless possibilities because I’m always looking around and feeding new things into the work. I enjoy engaging with the contemporary debates and history of painting because it has always been so central to my experience and love of art, though I’m also interested in how my practice can engage with other media which inspire me such as sculpture and video.


Is there anything else you would like to add?
Next week I’m going to be taking all my recent work to Limoncello Gallery to make a selection for my exhibition ‘Certain Obstacles’ which is open 24 November 2011 – 14 Jan 2012. I really can’t wait to see how it works in the space though I’m a little nervous too.


Friday, November 11, 2011

ALAN CROCKETT

Little Boboo, 2010, oil on panel, 14 x 12"




What are you working on in your studio right now?

First I must say that I work part of the year in my studio in Columbus, Ohio and part of the year in my studio 8 ½ miles up Elk Creek near the small town of Happy Camp, California which is located in the heart of the Klamath Siskiyou National Forest.  I spend summers and part of the fall in California and the remainder of the year in Columbus. This summer and fall (in California) I have made seven paintings that range is scale from 36 x48 inches (2), 32 x38” (2) to 18 x24” (3).  I find that when I am in my California studio I almost always allow my work to challenge the work I have done in Ohio.  I think that this is partly due to the fact that in my California studio I am not surrounded by the work I have done and therefore, in some sense, I tend to re-invent myself.  The last two pieces that I have been working on are titled: “Painter’s Dream” 36 x48” and “Emergence” 32 x38”.  They are somewhat antithetical.  “Dream” for example is loose, free, and open with the feeling of being rather freely arrived at.  The white of the canvas; it’s beginning point, plays a dominant role and allows the colors of line and shape to have an almost pre-ordained quality.  “Emergence” on the other hand evidences a summer’s worth of struggle, ideas, found and then erased, destroyed, re-incarnated.  Very little of it’s beginnings remain except, I thin k, the original spirit with which the piece was begun.









Can you describe your working routine?

I am addicted to painting.  I paint and draw virtually every day and additionally keep what I call a “painter’s journal” which includes drawings, images from various sources (newspapers, magazines, comics, my own photos, etc.), quotes that I find meaningful or inspirational, my ideas about art, life; in short anything that I feel is or might be a part of what I need to say as a painter.  Often I will paint in the morning before going off to teach.  If I do something awful I will think about it all day, looking forward to where it’s undoing may take me.  If I do something “good” I will think about it all day, wanting to see where I will go with that.  Usually I will begin painting again around 9pm and work late.  The next morning a visit to the studio will tell me what sticks, what doesn’t and it’s back to work.  On days where I can just paint, that’s what I do.  I should also note that drawing plays a significant role for me.  I often make dry pastel drawings on 22 x30” Arches paper.  These drawings often inform the paintings and vice versa.  I also make small 9 x11” watercolor collages that often inspire my painting as well.  I find myself just as committed to the drawings as to the paintings.  I often move from drawing to painting or painting to drawing during the course of a day.
Another thing that is a part of my practice is to revisit and revise previously “completed” pieces.  It is not unusual for me to, in effect, work on a piece over a period of years and even when I don’t revise my work it will typically take several weeks to come off.  The smaller paintings, say 20 x16 18 x24” etc. seem to take me just as long as the larger work and in some ways are even more difficult for me to make. 









Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My Columbus studio sits behind our house with a very short walkway that I call the Avenue ‘d Studio.  To the right is my coy pond with 7 very large old coy that beg for food whenever I approach the studio. This always puts me in a rather joyful mood. The studio is spacious and well lit both with skylights and artificial lighting.  Many current paintings are hung on the wall and stacked about within view as well as a few old paintings that remind me of potential paths to re-examine.  A cut out dog from a painting by my old friend, Roy DeForest (he did the cutting) is pinned to the left of my working wall. Many more pieces are in the painting racks.  My drawings are also hung about and usually a current drawing is pinned to the drawing table near the north facing windows.
 
When I enter the studio, the piece I am working on instantly confronts me.  I have large tables with shower glass palettes to the left and right of me.  Paint tubes are cluttered about; brushes, palette knives, auto body putty knives, etc. are in cans at the ready.  Actually the somewhat cluttered atmosphere of the studio is my friend.  I will, for example think to use some ultramarine blue but in going through the clutter of paint tubes find an Indian yellow that suddenly seems even more appropriate to use or instead of a No. 4 filbert brush find a No. 20 flat just by chance that will totally change my ideas about where or how I need to take the work.  An older painting in view may prompt me to pull out a painting journal from around that time and then I may find myself playing with some aspect   re found in the current painting I am working on.

My California space is quite different.  As I have mentioned, I have no old paintings to remind me of who I am as a painter.  The space itself is rather small but soon too becomes cluttered with paint tubes, cans, paint rags, and so on.  Even though it is a small space I can do pieces up to around 60x68 inches.  Often here I will unstretch the canvas and work with it stapled directly to the wall.  This too changes the feel of the surface and also allows me to be a bit rougher in the way I may scrape away paint.  The incredible beauty in the nature that surrounds me here also creeps into my work and stays with me even when I return to Ohio.  I guess growing up on the west coast, the unique quality of light and color, the feeling of being a bit outside of the New York Art world has always been a part of how I work, how I feel, how I think about art.  It is, in a sense, a feeling of the freedom to be irreverent.  That the type of work that I do in our cabin near Happy Camp is, for the most part, either not understood or misunderstood also seems to affect my work in a very positive sense.





Shedding stones, 2011, oil on canvas, 60 x 68"




Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

Typically I will select a scale that I want to work in, say 60 x72 inches and apply several coats of gesso to the surface scraping each coat in such a way that I can get a smooth surface on which to begin the painting.  This process takes me several days.  Finally, when the support attains a sort of perfection, I begin to paint. I begin by using oil paint mixed with solvent and Galkyd Lite so that it is very liquid and flowing.  Typically I will begin by drawing with the paint in a way that, in effect, defaces the pristine surface I have previously crafted.  I usually begin a painting or drawing influenced by some other piece (a painting or drawing) that I have previously done.  Sometimes I feel a need to keep going with some idea or feeling that a previous piece has dealt with.  Invariably however, I find that my ideas get in my way, they hold me back rather than propel me forward.  It is through erasure, destruction that I seem to be able to find new possibilities, new paths that lead to each painting or drawing being a new adventure. 

Usually, through the process of painting very little will remain of where I began with a painting and yet, in some way, to contradict myself, the traces of what was left behind are very much a part of where it is that the painting needed to go.  Quite often something will arrive on the canvas that seems so fresh, so real that I want to stop.  Typically however, I won’t. I’ll lose it and have to begin again but now with a surface that has become bruised, soiled, perhaps even ugly.  Maybe I need to put myself in this place so as to allow the painting to arise out of resistance rather than acceptance.  I almost never give up on a piece but allow it to come out, as it has to come out.





Pastel drawings



What are you having the most trouble resolving?

 Probably everything.  I wonder at times about the very act of painting; its necessity or validity in our work.  I worry about the fact that my work seems to be a bit allover the place and yet, it really does, in the end, seem to relate to itself and to who I am as a person and an artist.    I need the work to come to some point of what I call “prefiguration, a place that is somewhat known and yet unnamable.  I want things to be suggested without being absolutely definable; is that a face, a foot, lips, a thought bubble, a map, a hat, all of the above, none of the above and I just can’t and don’t want to say.

Small paintings too often give me a hard time.  I can’t just make a smaller version of something that exists at a larger scale for example.  I seem to have to allow myself to go about their making in a somewhat different manner.  Part of this is perhaps that I am very much more aware that what I’ve done in one part of the painting is having a rather direct effect on all other parts of the painting.  In a larger piece on the other hand, I can allow for spatial disconnects to be a more evident part of the work; something that I want all of my work to possess.  When I read a current art magazine I often think, “I’m so out of the conversations about art, so irrelevant” and yet, what can I do, I just have to do the things that I have to do.  I must say too, in all honesty, I am terrible with the art business part of being an artist; I don’t like contacting galleries, etc. and, truth be told, I even hate to see my paintings go when I do sell them.  But of course I do want to share my work, to feel that what I’m doing is meaningful not only to me but to others as well.




Watercolor Collage



Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I experiment with many different tools, paint mixtures, palettes, you name it.  I love to create new brushes for example by taping an old brush to a long weed tree branch so that when I make a mark or line I am not only standing 3 or 4 feet away from the painting, which affects not only how I see and experience what I am doing but my touch, control and so on are dramatically affected as well.  Autobody putty knives of various dimensions are great for mark-making and smooshing paint or scraping away unwanted passages.  Gloved fingers and rags of various textures  can also be used to both apply and remove paint and make marks, lines and shapes. Often such experimentation will amount to nothing; will be erased and replaced by a more traditional painting mark.  One never knows what is or isn’t going to work.  With my watercolor collages I cut up old drawings in whatever shape I want and use the now interrupted line or shape to lead me in new directions that may create image scuffles and face-offs.  This is the same attitude that I use to propel my paintings toward the unknowable as well.





Night journey, 2010, oil on panel, 12 x 16"




What does the future hold for this work?

Because my practice invites adventure, the challenge as Beckett would have it to “fail, fail again, fail better” I must keep going off the trail to see what I may find, and perhaps even who I am.  It is personal and real for me and so I feel that it may reach out and ask the viewer to experience its playfulness as well as its challenges.



Is there anything else you would like to add?

Henry Miller once said: “without puns and puzzles there is no serious art, that is to say there is nothing but serious art.”  I want my work to be unabashedly pleasure giving, to be fun, irreverent, playful, filled with psychic spills, lot’s of oops, slips and anything else that gets me to some place I’ve not yet been.