I've been painting for about ten years now. I would say my major influences are Freud, Hofmann, and Kooning; the work Frank Auerbach was doing in the fifties was really incredible too, he’s definitely someone I keep a close eye on. It started mainly as a curiosity; I found an old, unused, canvas in my father’s attic after he passed, and I have just been building on that ever since. I definitely lean heavily towards the abstract; I enjoy playing with texture, and perspective, one brush stroke can change the entire feel of a painting. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes it’s not. I definitely struggle with over analyzing my own work: I'll spend days examining a brush stroke, trying to figure out its place in the painting as a whole, or manipulating it in small ways to try and make it fit in with the rest of the painting while still maintaining its voice. Which I think is probably the most difficult aspect of painting for me: at what point do I step back and let the work speak for itself, flaws and all? A lot of time the mistakes in a work of art are its most potent ingredients, but how do you know which mistakes those are? I guess there’s something to be said for someone like Picasso who could just churn out work after work with no seeming regard to, quality’s not the right word, but, reflection maybe; don't get me wrong, Picasso was certainly a genius, but you can't produce that volume of work in that span of time while still holding yourself to a higher set of standards, or at least I can’t, but I'm obviously no Picasso. You also have to consider the audience. In Picasso’s time there wasn't much going on, a guy could paint thousands of paintings and every one of them would be loved because his audience didn’t have anything else to do. With the internet, people’s attention spans are lessening by the minute, and it’s great for getting your work out there, but it’s also a double edged sword, because as easy as it is to display your work or reach a wider audience, it’s just as easy to then have that work swallowed up by the flood of ever-updating content that the internet provides. I’m sure there were hundreds of more skilled painters than Picasso in his time, but because of his prolificacy, and happenstance, they were never recognized; Picasso was kind of like the internet of his time: quantity wins out over quality. Again, don't get me wrong, Picasso is great, I'm not bashing Picasso, I’m just saying. Anyways where were we?
You were talking about mistakes and knowing when to release something.
Right. It’s a difficult line to walk. I get the feeling that most artists struggle with this question no matter what the medium is. When is something truly done? I've spent days in my studio just staring; trying to figure out where to go next, what to add, what to take away, it’s taken me literally days to just add a line. I mean, as a journalist is there a desire in you to keep editing, to keep going back to an interview or an investigation and re-interpret or re-word or ask more questions?
Of course. There are articles that I could pull up right now that I would make changes to, from huge sweeping changes that would change the entire tone of a piece to grammatical changes, or word choice changes.
Exactly. That’s exactly what I'm talking about. The feeling of putting something out there and knowing that in two or five or ten years I’m going to look back at it and say to myself, what was I thinking? The act of painting comes very naturally to me, and I’m very easily inspired, but I lack that ability, the ability that Picasso had an abundance of, to just let it go, to let the work speak for itself. That feeling is what I want my work to express; I want people to look at my painting and see equal signs of exhausting struggle and jubilant creation. I think calling it a lack of confidence is a bit lazy. Maybe Picasso was extremely confident with his work. Ok, maybe he was, maybe he was over-confident, who’s to say, I'm not judging. But I don't think it’s a confidence issue, I'm very confident in my work, I just want to keep improving it, the challenge is recognizing the point at which your improvements become impoverishment.
Yeah, I get it; I think it’s something that most people struggle with regardless of what they're doing, I think there's a natural human tendency to want to improve on the past. Alright, well, you want to show me around? Do you have a studio set up here, or do you have a rental space you use?
Everything’s in the garage. That’s where I do all of my work, after I discovered the canvas, before I even started painting on it actually, I decided to convert my garage into a studio. I wanted everything to be just right: no distractions, no excuses, everything I would need to be within arm’s reach. I added sound-proofing, got new brushes, a new easel, renovated the lighting, and added a pretty nice sound system; the only original piece was the canvas itself. With the sound proofing and mounted speakers I'm able to eliminate all outside noises and get the perfect mix of ambient sound that allows me to create.
That’s where you keep all of your paintings too? Do you have any at galleries?
Everything’s in the garage, like I said: I wanted no excuses. That’s why I like having my studio in my home; I can wake up, walk downstairs, and get started. I don't need to go to a gallery or a storage unit if I want to make a simple change. It’s right over here.
Do you mind if I take some notes while I look around?
Go right ahead. Let me put some music on for you. I've perfected an ambient noise playlist that really helps me focus. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I also put up drywall when I renovated the garage. Along with the foam soundproofing on the walls, I used this new paint product with soundproofing technology mixed in called HiFi PaintHD, so the paint itself is soundproof. Anyway, go ahead and have a look around.
Ok, thanks.
Notes:
- Single car garage
- Sparse
- Ambient music playing, possibly rainforest, lots of frog sounds
- Walls painted royal blue
- 4x4 squares of soundproofing on walls
- Concrete floors accented w/oriental rugs
- Supply chest on western wall, 4-5ft tall by 2-3ft wide
- Chest contains A LOT of brushes/paints
- Stool, easel, black canvas in center of garage
- Stool and floor around easel covered in paint
- No sign of other paintings, stored in attic?
In the supply chest over there I noticed that you have a lot of different types of brushes and paints. Do you use those specifically to evoke different emotions? What is your thought process when picking a brush and paint combination?
I could spend hours talking about the different brushes and paints I use; as it is I spend enough time online researching and ordering them, but to answer your question, yes, I use them mainly to evoke a response, but also just to experiment. For me, one of the greatest joys of painting is discovering a magical combination of brush and paint that you never knew was possible, I think that comes through in the work too, and for a viewer of the work, I would imagine the revelation of seeing something they never knew could be done in a painting would be exhilarating.
Tell me a little bit about this painting you’re currently working on. How often do you start with a black canvas? Is there a typical timeframe for your paintings? I also noticed a lot of paint on your stool and the floor surrounding your easel, is that a product of your painting style?
My style really varies depending on the mood, like I said earlier, sometimes I will sit and stare at the canvas for hours, using tiny brush strokes, other times I'm almost literally throwing paint onto the canvas. It really just depends on the mood I'm in, but I'm willing to try anything. I’m very experimental. I've been working on this painting for ten years now, it truly is the culmination of all of my experimentation and effort, and it best represents me as an artist. Everything I've learned over the past decade is on the canvas.
And where is that painting at? Do you keep the rest of your work in the attic?
The attic? No, we just use that for Christmas decorations, I'm not really sure what’s up there to be honest.
So where do you keep the rest of your paintings?
What do you mean the rest of my paintings? The painting is right there on the easel; didn’t you just look at it?
Do you only have one painting?
See, you reporters are all the same. You're all just looking for the next Picasso. That guy was a freak; he produced like thirteen thousand paintings in his life, that’s insane. Has anyone even seen all thirteen thousand? I bet some of them are just like, “here’s a circle,” “here’s a leaf,” “here’s a piece of bread,” but because it’s Picasso, it’s genius. Who wants to look at a painting of a piece of bread anyway? He ruined it for the rest of us, you know. It’s like, take a break you jerk. You know what I'm saying? Go take a nap or eat some tapas or something. How would you feel if there was some journalist out there producing Pulitzer Prize winning content every other day for seventy years? Picasso may have painted a lot of individual paintings, but he never put the time and dedication into one painting like I have. My painting has layers, literally thousands of layers. But you didn’t notice any of that did you? All you saw was a “black canvas,” because all you were looking for was a painting of some weird shaped women with crooked eyeballs. My painting weighs over fifty pounds; does Picasso have a painting that weighs over fifty pounds? I don’t think so.
I guess you have a point there, I was just expecting more than one painting is all.
Yeah, you and everyone else.