statements made about the work and everyday influences

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, love her paintings, costumes, puppets, and sculpture.

"what is this a drawing of?" "my 4 year old niece drew it" "she wanted to draw three sisters" "but there are only two of you who are sisters" "but maybe she wishes she was part of the two of you, being a sister too the two of you, instead of niece, daughter" "maybe?" "or maybe she just likes sisters" "maybe they are the sisters from something she was reading, like cinderella or something" "but maybe she wants a sister instead of a brother" "who knows what she was thinking at the time?"


Have one or two going at a time.  Letting them evolve and making moves and decisions sometimes haphazardly but most of the time in response to an inner dialogue.  It becomes a conversation with the painting only half listening.  It does it's own thing and I gently nudge with "this happened this week" and then "yeah well then this happened", by describing a shape, pouring some paint, scraping away or covering up.  Being coaxed to put it away for awhile.  Being tempted to peak around the corner, peak and see what is on the other side.  Generally, what is on the other side is what is beyond my control and what the painting did on it's own.  This side is usually preferred over what I was doing on the other side.  Then more daily conversations go on, I look for something to describe just that, day to day.  A vase, a still life on it's head, a shape, something spilt, remnants of a conversation.




July 10, 2012
It's about the collective consciousness in its rawest and most blatant form, not hard to find cuz it's absolutely everywhere...girls and guys men and women it just all hangs out and we all are just hanging out/ its about all the rejected colours mixing together, the ones that get picked over for more jewel like tones/ its a hangover with a memory of love/ its overindulging/over the cliff and amazement and wonder disgustingly vulnerable, frail and hanging by a thread/tension that its all going to fall apart/ jenga'd/ tripped over my own feet/humility/ self-assured awkwardness/ hilarity/ clowning around/ blurry-eyed and fuzzy headed/ sick and ill and ecstatic/ and way too over the top.  Those are the modern minds of no one, primitive and reverting and evolving to something that is all alone, self sufficient, robotic primitive, needs and no needs, cold and aloof and pulses.



A NOISELESS patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,

It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.



And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.



Walt Whitman (1871)

I was outside in the backyard laying down some pigment on a piece of raw canvas and the rain started to come down. This is what is going to essentially paint this painting, this being the rain water. I wanted to direct and play around, but needed to hold back and let that something else take over. A playful game or a game of chance or maybe it isn't a game at all but just that the painting is involved in become itself more than I used to think it did. Leaving the unknown and unpredictable to dictate what happens next, what happens when I see it, I don't even think that subjectivity is being considered at this point but rather it will come when the painting is finished.


The Intermixes, the Peels, the Front and Backs all begin with a little help from a source that is beyond my control. The Still Lives are the closest to figurative paintings or they have something inside them driving them towards the earth, our existence.

But, when the paintings need closure it comes through an almost, word association type game except this is a visual one. Taking the first image fragment that comes to mind when thinking about the painting, and what it "needs" to make it complete, or "good". This is done in a very direct and immediate way, sketching the idea or lines onto a post-it note and then execution. I think and write, ask about the art that children make and what is behind their creative process. Why children, because if I am attempting an honesty or "just a gesture" not a statement or an expression of an idea per say but a pure gesture, then why not follow a child? Gesture first, idea, contemplation second. Just people, responding to a world and trying to make sense of it. It is with these ideas that some of the other paintings happen as well, front and back and spill, taking the mistakes and accidents and haphazard ways we do things, bulls in china shops, stopping, looking and finding the beauty in our mistakes and errors and using these to fuel the next set of moves. My paintings seem to get stuck in between worlds, and they are meant to remind of us something familiar but that somewhere is a place of uncertainty, not unlike our day to day lives, a place parallel to our world.


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