Giorgione meets Wacky Doodles

This tall drink of water (8x4 feet) is the premiere of my brain farts onto the canvas. Wacky doodles I call them, dribblings from the unconscious. Something I’ve been doing in my sketchbook for years but never brought into painting. The best most interesting doodles are done while I’m doing something else: talking on the phone, listening to Howard Stern, half paying attention in class, solving the world’s problems. I tell people it’s a visualization of what is going on in your brain when you’re not thinking about anything in particular, or more accurately; when you aren’t aware of what you’re thinking of. It reads like a language to me. I like to think of my paintings as a representation of that space between consciousnesses, and these doodles speak the same language. I’ve never incorporated them into painting, although I’ve been doing them longer than I’ve painted. One of the reasons is I never wanted to put them out there to be scrutinized. Not because they’re personal, although they are. I didn’t want to take them too seriously. In my sketchbook, it doesn’t matter how they look; if the composition is interesting or there is enough depth. They were kind of like a hobby, a conversation with myself that was just for fun. But I always knew they would be bound for bigger things. I mean they’re really honest in a way. It’s the stuff that comes out of me when I just pick up a pen and draw. And the fun can still be here, I can just refine it in a painting now and again. The sketchbook is more laidback anyway. The other reason for not putting it into painting is that it never seemed to fit. I really had no desire to until now. The language seems to be similar though to the way I draw these rags etc.

In this painting I started with a sharpie drawing on a gessoes canvas and then put the cool grey wash over it. I never intended to keep the doodle in there. It was just my way of saying ‘Alright, just jump in there and get your feet wet.’ I actually did the drawing about 9 months ago, before I knew what the composition was going to be. I just recently put the wash over it. I originally had some Tintoretto-like comp planned, but this one will work just fine. This painting will be done in acrylic to accommodate the sharpie.



"Images apparently occupy a curious position somewhere between the statements of language, which are intended to convey a meaning, and the things of nature, to which we can only give a meaning."
-EH Gombrich