20 May 2010

Here is the challenge: be brave, struggle to build a vivid document. Courageously push the materials to a surprising place, accept an art of rough approximation, of free-improvisation, where careful measurements may be entirely inappropriate. If successful, the paintings will make visual what is within.

What are these curves and corners: knees and hips, hills and ditches? Mutating shapes must be what I need.

Very often, the materials misbehave. What can I do with acrylic? It dies if left to its own devices. I wrestle for a tactile skin, for an exciting, unpredictable surface: poured scraped punched and shaken. Color, the most urgent ingredient, is compositional glue.

I spend a whole lot of time asking: "What if I do this, what if I do that?" It’s an awkward, endless struggle for the appropriate vocabulary. The images evolve one move at a time. They nag for attention, haunt me until full-grown. I admire strange balance, and purposeful inner dynamics. If done right, bold gestures satisfy. Fussiness is annoying, but specificity is essential. There’s undeniable tension (and energy) when freedom and restraint go head-to-head.

The scenes are a mash-up of orchestrated mayhem. I fight against boundaries and obsess over edges. Direct gestures and oblique techniques intertwine. If I rely too heavily on successful methods I start feeling like a fraud. The point is to not be repetitive.

Improvisation is essential as I surrender to the pictures, to the paint, to my own nervous energy. This is an art of precision and abandon.