For a very long time I thought art was all about esthetics, beauty, grace. I did not look at other dimensions, such as distortions, unbalance, pain, darkness. Now I try to reach both, very much like in nature, there is life and death.
The most important quality in an artist is need. A need to draw, a need to paint, a need to observe and obsess.
While a good abstract painting is an event on the canvas, I strive in my figurative work to do the same.
People will always need something created by the hand of an individual, which no one else can do and which offers a unique experience when one is actually in front of it. So a work of art becomes more special, more necessary as so much else is turned into a few gigabytes flashing across a screen.
For about a week I was hospitalized due to overwork, the whole time laying in bed, thinking about my next piece.
I want to make my work and feel connected to, at least, some people, sometimes. The process is the point.
Q: What do you do when you are feeling uninspired? A: Uninspired? Do something I think is awful and not give a shit.
I used to devote days on end to a Velázquez, Houdon, Vermeer, or Corot. I couldn’t say which I looked at the most. Yet for the last twenty years, I find myself more captivated by the natural world as well as by the built environment.
In this time of “great pause,” I am seeing a flourishing of creativity. People are responding to the pandemic in innovative ways. I am suddenly seeing all kinds of new models for cultural production.
As artists, we get this incredible opportunity to bear witness to all that we see and experience in our lives, and to give thanks for being alive and able to experience it.