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.
