So I’m taking these Old Master paintings and incorporating their composition. So what? There has to be something more in that, where is the relevance, the significance. Why don’t have an answer. It’s something I’ve always done, it is enough to just have it a part of my work, utilizing the compositional elements they establish, unwittingly applying it to an image that “seems to fit. Or should I/am I making it more a part of the subject. The Renaissance artist vs. the Rock star? What the fuck is that, a side story? Painting to me, the story I’m sticking with, what I want painting to be, is a visual representation of a state of mind. Any state of mind. And my goal for this body of work, based on my original idea, and the work that has preceded it, is to represent a creative, or inspired. Make paintings more like Johnny Paintbox. It’s a painting about the act of painting. I don’t know where the rock stars come in to play. Do I even need them anymore? Yes. I still want to bring a little of the rock n roll into art. Male and female relationships. It’s really what all great rock is about. The story of a girl, acquiring life experience and expressing it in some form. Another major part of the unconscious. And to answer my question I still think about an old relationship now and again. Not in a ‘one that got away’ kind of way, just random things will make me think of her, not even concrete things like ‘oh, that was our place’ but I’ll be digging around in my brain one thought will lead to another, and all of a sudden I’ll think ‘Did she really say that to me in passing? Man, she was kind of crazy.’ And speaking of clichés, how about these automated responses to routine questions. Are they pre-programmed into us, like just now a guy said to me ‘Staying out of trouble? To which I replied, “I’m trying.” When I was younger I would reject those types of things. I never wanted to believe in the similarities of human personality, maybe that’s why people fall in love so easily, when you spot similarities in someone else’s personality, but you don’t realize that you have plenty in common with just about anyone. But people need love, it’s what separates us from the animals; that and thumbs, and thinking too much, and insecurity, and lack of common sense. I feel like I’ve been thinking too much about the work lately. I need to paint more. I was watching Pollock when I was inspired to get up and paint. I mixed up some colors in some buckets and laying it on. I also was thinking how easy and fun and laid back it would be to be an abstract expressionist. Sure, there would be structure and all that, but you don’t have to worry about much more than that. A representational work has to deal with everything an abstract work deals with, but more. The most difficult I believe are the ones between realism and abstraction. It’s what I admire so much about the Germans. It seems like it has always worked for them. Anyways, I want to get into a hardhat mentality when I come into the studio and grind out these paintings. Take one drawing and one painting and really focus on them. It just can’t be magic all the time, and in the meantime you need to fill the canvas up with something. I’ve been reading James Elkins’ book “What Painting Is” and there is a great excerpt in it from a letter to Elkins from Frank Auerbach: An English painter who is known for his ridiculously thick paintings. In short, the book is an alchemical approach to painting, meaning it’s looking at the meaning of the paint itself. Elkins apparently sent the first few chapters while he was working on them to a number of people, Auerbach being one of them. And he writes:
“Everything you say is true to my experience. But – the whole subject makes me extremely nervous. As soon as I become consciously aware of what the paint is doing my involvement with the painting is weakened. Paint is at it’s most eloquent when it is a by-product of some corporeal, spatial, developing imaginative concept, a creative identification with the subject. I could no more fix my mind on the character of the paint then – it may be – an alchemist could fix his on mechanical chemistry. I have put this clumsily – but I am certain that you understand.”
And it made me realize that I was thinking way too much about the work. Not that thinking is bad, but I have been thinking while painting too, and that can be very destructive. I’ve always been a believer that the best stuff happens when you’re not thinking about it, always attempting to get to that point while painting where I’m not aware of what I’m thinking. Something in the language of a wacky doodle. I just haven’t been there in a while. Thanks for reminding me Jimmy.
"What the [abstract] paintings told me was that I was a hard working guy who was trying to be important."
-David Park
