A Gamble

Painting (or perhaps more broadly, making art) is nothing more than a series of decisions, big and small, grandiose and minute. So many decisions must be made, and then once made bravely and boldly, they must be re-thought, re-considered, re-done. It's easy to become overwhelmed. (Have I mentioned I'm overwhelmed?) It's certainly exhausting. To learn, past decisions that worked must be remembered and re-used to facilitate the next series of decisions toward something even more difficult or complex. But to move work forward, they must also be questioned, challenged. But which ones do you hold on to in the name of a lesson learned, a skill achieved, an idea expressed clearly, and which ones do you discard as inadequate, unsuccessful, or no longer interesting? How can you be sure you know which one is which?

Lately I feel as if I'm sitting at a slot machine, with a million possible choices whirling around inside. With a random but decisive move, I produce one result that reflects some combination of all those choices, and with each successive attempt, I produce new, slightly varied results. But it amazes me that it can be the change of just one choice that makes the difference between hitting the jackpot and losing your quarter. I know I can't hit the jackpot every time, but I'm tirelessly trying to achieve enough winning combinations that at the very least, I get to keep playing the game.

Beauty in Disguise

If you could see me, you wouldn't describe me as beautiful. I'm pretty enough, and I can feel pretty good about myself on a good hair day with a flattering outfit. But I'm not beautiful. Enough men have hit on me that I assume some would say I can be sexy, or hot, or however men describe it outside the company of women. But it's not beauty. I think it would be fair to say that I have a fascination with the fantasy of being beautiful. For me, the fantasy is not about gaining the approval or love or admiration of others. It's something I assume I would feel inside myself - not just a confidence, but perhaps a freedom, the kind of freedom that comes with donning a perfect disguise.

I generally don't talk about the role of beauty in my work. I'm comfortable discussing the theoretical debates surrounding the idea of beauty in contemporary culture, but to declare my work to be a meditation on beauty, I don't think I'm ready for that yet. It closes off the possibilities. It sounds trite.

Someone recently said to me that they were tired of the idea that people thought art had to be deciphered, that art was somehow a means to hide something obvious that the viewer just had to find. I agree with that, but I don't think it applies just to viewers. I think artists too, now faced with the pressures of insightful and theoretically rigorous artist statements, can find themselves trying to define and clarify and explore ideas without even making the work. But the more work I make, the more I continue to be surprised by the themes and ideas that reveal themselves to me in the process of making and in the completed pieces.

My private relationship to beauty is slowly revealing itself. People have been telling me so. But that doesn't mean that is what the work is about, or what I intend it to be about, or what I hope it to be about. But it is there nonetheless.

Perfect Enough

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me if there was a difference between searching for something that cannot be found, and searching for something that doesn't exist. A weird question, I know. But as I began to play with the philosophical angles, I quickly (as I always do) veered toward painting.

In the context of painting, I like to think there is a difference. I think in some ways I am always striving for a perfect painting - not THE perfect painting, but the perfect realization of the current painting or idea that I imagine. Can it be found? Does it even exist? I'd like to think that it does exist, even though I'm sure it can never be found. But that does not deter my efforts in the search. Everyday, at the end of my work day when I look at the part that I've completed, I wonder how differently it would have turned out if I had painted that part yesterday, or tomorrow, or the next day. What decisions would I have made differently, how would my hand have moved, which brushes would I have chosen, would the colors have been brighter, duller, warmer, cooler. As a painter, the vision I have in my head for a painting is clear but still nebulous. Even working from photographic sources, the vision I have for a piece doesn't fully exist until I paint it. Then maybe it satisfies that vision, and maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's better than I could have imagined. Maybe it's better because I couldn't have imagined it. But I'm always fascinated with the idea that I could paint a certain image a hundred times, and each time it would be different. And which one would be perfect? But once that first painting is done, then it's found. It exists. Imperfect, but fully realized. But the possibilities still haunt me. I want to paint every painting again - fix it, make it better, live through the search all over again, see if/how/how much it would be different with just one more endless try. But there are a million other paintings to search for, so I move on.

I like to think painting is special in this respect, but I'm probably wrong about that. Photographers must struggle with the same choices - one split-second to the next captures a different, irretrievable moment. You have to pick one, averaging out their strengths and weaknesses. Is there such a thing as a perfect moment?

When I paint, I consider it complete when I believe I've achieved the best result possible in that moment and believe that doing more is more likely to ruin it than improve upon it. Some might call that intuition, but I don't. For me, "intuition" sounds like I can tap into some inner voice that has the "right" answer. I hate that idea. I have a million voices in my head all the time, the angels, the devils, the sloths, the philosophers, the wounded, the dreamers. It's hard to know who to listen to sometimes. Sometimes I listen to one over the other. But what I am working toward is that moment when they all seem to agree - when I get that rush of adrenalin, or happiness, or excitement, or ecstasy, or whatever you want to call it - a rush that tells me to stop. It is complete. A few stragglers in my brain may want me to go back in and see if I can make it even better, but armed with the comfort of majority rule, I resist. It's good. It's good enough.

That sounds like I'm only striving for "good enough". But the fun part for me is that with each painting, "good enough" slowly becomes closer to that ever-elusive perfect - I want more and I expect it to be better. My skills develop, my vision expands, I have to rise to the new occasion. And then what was good enough for painting 2, just isn't good enough for painting 10. I'm capable of more, I want more, and a thrill occurs each time I see the glimmer that I can have more. It makes me endlessly curious, if not impatient, for the next painting, and painting 112, 256, and 759. The challenge is to not be defeated by what constitutes "perfect" in the given moment, to have a little faith, and to just keep painting.

A Beautiful Thing

I'm in a show next weekend, the "Untapped Emerging Artist Exhibition" at the Artist Project. It's a three day art fair, and there will be various lectures on contemporary art held as well. I received an email today from one of the lecturers who will be doing a talk on beauty in contemporary art. She asked me about the role of beauty in my work. This was my response.

Beauty is undoubtedly central to my approach to art. I have not been an artist all my life, but I have always been a viewer of art. Now as an artist, I relate strongly to the role of the viewer and I believe the use of beauty and an engagement with the ideas of beauty is a seductive way to capture the viewer's attention. Jonathon Lasker writes, "Contemporary culture is oriented toward sensation far more than it is toward beauty. This is very much in keeping with the image of our world: the texture of life is seldom beautiful, although it is usually sensational. It is fast, loud and enervating. [...] If contemporary art cannot provide beauty, than it must come to terms with sensation." But I disagree that we have become numb to beauty in some way, or that beauty lies outside the realm of sensation. On the one hand, I think beauty has an aspect of spectacle to it, a call to be looked at, which is very much symptomatic of our society today. On the other hand, it is also true that beauty is generally a quieter presence, a more contemplative space. But in the midst of a culture seething with the type of sensations evoked by images of violence, disfigurement or disgust, perhaps beauty is a much needed antidote, an escape or refuge from the "fast, loud and enervating" aspects of our life. It seems to me that the experience of beauty is one of the fundamental qualities that make us human, that frankly, despite everything, makes living worthwhile. If art is to capture, reflect on and remind us of all aspects of the human condition, beauty must be an essential part of that endeavor.

The other important aspect of beauty in my work comes from my belief there is an inherent sadness to the experience of beauty. Alexander Nehemas describes beauty as "a promise of happiness", but I think it is more the promise of unhappiness. Beauty is momentary, fleeting, sparking a desire that cannot be fulfilled, creating a longing that can never quite be satisfied in the same way again. My work deals directly with this by virtue of my process. My recent paintings are derived from images taken from fashion magazines. I print fragments of these images with an inkjet printer on a surface to which the ink does not adhere. I photograph the prints as the ink moves and bleeds, as the image dissolves into something new (and "less beautiful"). My paintings are composed from fragments of these photographs, with each painting comprised of one image at different stages of metamorphosis, from one vision of beauty to another.

The Risk of Being Earnest


I have been salivating over images of paintings today, particularly those by Jenny Saville. I have been thinking about where I belong as a painter, and I am finding it increasingly difficult to not place myself in the figurative painting category. And yet it feels uncomfortable to be there. The thick and meaty brushstrokes in Saville and Freud's work seem loaded with aggression and impenetrability. It is hard to look at that work and not feel that my paint handling is timid in comparison. Their surfaces are scarred and overwrought. Mine are ethereal and dissolving.

So if my paintings are not going to evoke the visceral quality of flesh like the great figure painters, then where do my paintings belong? My use of mass media images suggest that I would fit easily in the company of pop artists, like Andy Warhol. But there is a jaded quality to the critique by these artists. I don't want to mock the images I use, I don't want to de-humanize or caricature those photographed, and I don't feel above the seduction of the fantasy such images are hawking.
 

I don't know why I am looking for what box I should fit in. Perhaps I am looking for reassurance that I am pursuing a legitimate track, or that I am part of the right conversation. Lately, I have been experiencing what I would describe as a crisis in confidence, an overwhelming desire to be BETTER. And yet I'm not sure what that means at this point for my work, and I'm not sure where to look to find the answer. Does it mean more paint, more distortion, more emotion? In a visual world dominated by slick, bold hits of instant gratification, my work's subtlety and fragility make it feel like the underdog, fighting to be heard amidst the din of so much aggressive visual bellowing.

Look. LOOK!!!!!

It's not about the body.   If I want you to see me, to really see ME, I want you to see my face.  The body can be revealing, but it is not the most insightful.  That isn't to say that the body cannot be expressive, but it's distracting.  The naked body is too wrapped up in sex, flesh, carnal pleasures and pain.  The clothed body reeks too much of status, style and costume.  As my studio fills with painted portraits, I realize I have systematically deleted the body.  All that remains of the original images is the face, painted larger than life, looking at the viewer with a certain yearning - to be looked at, to be seen.

Preparing to Paint

The last week has been back-breaking, boring, tedious labour - building stretchers, stretching canvas, gessoing coat after coat. I'm exhausted. But seeing the large white stretched canvases begin to multiply and crowd my space, I am beginning to envision the paintings that will come. It has got me thinking of paint again, the physical act of painting. My three go-to guys when I get in this mood is Velasquez, de Kooning, and Bacon. This week, I came across a great essay about Bacon and his "quest to capture and convey a sensual memory experience". Paint, not just the image, was essential in his pursuit. I can't get his words out of my head:
"Real imagination is technical imagination. It is the ways you think up to bring an event to life again. It is the search for the technique to trap an object at a given moment. Then the technique and object become inseparable. The object is the technique and the technique is the object. Art lies in the continual struggle to come near the sensory side of the objects."