Painting 2: Track 4

I’ve been thinking about realism and how I’ve wanted to bring it back into my work. The extent to which I finish a painting or drawing has been an issue with me for a while. There are so many points at which I could call it finished that I never really take it to the next level. Sometimes I can get a little ridiculous and think everything is done after an hour. Back in the day art was so much easier (In school I mean). It used to be all about production, quantity over quality. Although quality has always been desired, you could do a couple crappy paintings when you’re doing 20 in a month. That’s because of the early learning phase, before intent; or rather the intent was to find out what you wanted to do while focusing on formal issues. Art has changed for me gradually over the years. I feel that everything I have done up to now has been a logical progression to where I am, I can find a reason for every decision. But you can only do that by looking back, which is why I need to make ideas concrete in a painting to figure out what this series is about. In terms of process, so much more goes into a painting than just whipping something up. Everything is considered, the reason for its existence, the size, narrative, color and all that formal stuff. So much more also goes into research. In grad school it took me a summer to read a bunch of books so the work could advance. Aside from research I started to make these dolls/action figures and videos. It’s no longer all about making paintings, although even the videos are still about painting. It’s a much more involved process.
I really want to take this painting to a place I haven’t been in a while.


"You think this is easy, realism"
-Bowie


"I saw that if I would accept subjects, I could paint with more absorbtion, with a certain enthusiasm for the subject which would allow some of the aesthetic qualities, such as color and composition to evolve more naturally. With subjects, the difference is that I feel a natural development of the painting rather than a formal, self-conscious one."
-David Park