An Aside
These junk-food-and-caffeine-fueled paintings are made with the simple materials of pencil, brush, water, ink, watercolor, and paper—materials that require little technical know-how while demanding brevity and craft—materials that I love for their beauty and for the way they make an obvious record of their use.
Here are some things I tell myself—or not—as circumstances require:
- The simplest thing I’d say to someone asking what these pictures are about is “How do they make you feel?”
- I want to show the perceiving of things more than the appearance of things.
- Our perceptions are completely unreliable but are all that we know. The truth really matters but doesn’t really pertain here.
- Both making art and looking at art can be like dreaming: each involve echoing and reordering experience.
- I like the contrast between the obviousness of a subject and the ambiguity of it’s metaphorical implications.
- In making an image of something I’m trying to implicate you in a relationship with the thing. I want to compel you to feel involved. All is shaped in pursuit of this.
Still, my pictures don’t finally advocate anything or reflect any agenda but this: They say an affirmative “Yes, I’m present in the world at this moment—I see it around me!” From somewhere I might hear an answering call back, “Yes, at this moment I’m present too.” That’s it.