Since all paintings are a result of the ones that preceded them, I feel I should give a little background on my last body of work, which was based on Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, which would be my second attempt at using literature as a source, the first being a failed attempt at Apollo and Daphne. And although I could say that I really should explain the works before that, and so on and so forth, back to the first drawing I remember doing in the first grade (a drawing of a snake with a hand reaching down to grab it that my teacher turned into a tree, that asshole), I'll save me the trouble and just stick with the mosr recent.
My initial idea was to do a series of paintings based on Dostoevsky's novel. The idea just popped into my head as they usually do. Originally I thought the intensity of the book would really fit my painting style and I was looking to bring the intensity, light and color wise, back into my paintings. I also thought the few characters and settings would make it fairly easy to put together in the corner of my studio. I thought I would have a lot of fun with it. “Fun,” an interesting word when it comes to art I guess. One of the things I remember from my first painting class sophomore year in undergrad was a remark someone made during a critique about one of my paintings, saying that it was obvious from looking at my work that I was having fun. I remember thinking it was a weird thing to say, I mean isn’t everybody having fun? If not then why are you even here. It’s not like you went into art for the money, this isn’t accounting. It became one of those things someone says that never leaves you for some reason, and is called to the surface every now and again. Like somebody once told me you weren’t supposed to eat after 7pm, and for some reason I always fuckin think about it, daily even I believe. But I was always amazed at school during critiques how people were able to verbalize things that I guess I took for granted. Like using the word “ambitious” as a compliment about a big drawing or painting. It just made sense to me to do the biggest possible thing I could do. Bigger was better, if you can do it 6 feet, you can do it 2 feet. It doesn’t work the other way around. I think it’s especially important early, before you have intent and content which dictates the size, shape and everything else. That’s what school is for me, you gobble up everything the teachers throw at you; try everything while you have them at your disposal. When you leave you can do what you want to do, knowing you have some abilities in case you go through some drastic change, which could happen, you think? I’m still gobbling. I’m like a snowball rolling down the hill, sucking up everything in my way, which leads the way to being able to pick up more stuff. Like some of the books I’m reading now, I couldn’t wrap my brain around 5 years ago before I got some other knowledge in there. Prerequisites that are unspecified, so just swallow everything in your way.
I also feel more comfortable talking about my work now that I’ve left school. I don’t know if it’s because of or in spite of school, with its formality and big word users. I don’t go out of my way to use big words. I let them find their way into my dialogue on their own. Sometimes I’ll say something and think, “Shit, I didn’t know I knew that word.”
But anyway, Dostoevsky: my original plan was to set up scenes from the book in my studio and paint them from life. I went to the Salvation Army and got a crusty couch, got a coffee table and a lamp, boom, Raskolnikov’s apartment. I also had a roommate, Matthew, who would make the perfect Raskolnikov (at least the way he’s described in the book, I usually breeze over those and form my own image). Matthew was a tall, gangly intellectual type with longish hair and glasses. He also was (and still is) English, which is closer to Russia than anyone else I was roommates with. Wait, where is Sri Lanka?
So it seemed like a perfect fit. Only, it didn’t really work out. Something was wrong and I didn’t know what it was, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Matthew insisted on reading and could not sit still for the life of him. I was enjoying painting from life again instead of photographs, but it just didn’t feel right for this theme. Although I still didn’t know what I wanted out of the paintings I knew this wasn’t the way to go about it. It seemed corny and insincere. Then I tried painting from my head, which was interesting and beneficial, but I always feel when painting completely from imagination that I can only take a painting so far. With nothing to work/ bounce off of, the painting felt empty and incomplete. So not wanting to paint from life or imagination put me in quite a dilemma as you could imagine. So I was stuck until I was saved by the contemporary German painter Johannes Heisig (who ditched me in Berlin when I told him I didn’t speak any German, but we won’t hold that against him. The Germans are a curious creature.). Anyway, to make a long story short (too late), while I try and explain in one blog entry my last series, something I’m trying to do throughout this entire blog with this series. I was on the crapper, looking at a Johannes Heisig book when I came across a painting of Barbie dolls. And that was it. I had an epiphany, where all great epiphanies occur: on the toilet. I thought I would make my own models, make these characters, set them up in various scenes and paint from them. No more painting from imagination, no more trying to get Matthew to sit still while he reads seemingly the most interesting book in the world about Bach. So what started as a means to paint these scenes began to dictate what these paintings were to be about, and in a way represent what painting means for me.
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