I’m always asking myself how it’s possible to create something meaningful from something commonplace. Painting is a way for me to try to prove that poetry, beauty or whatever else you want to call it comes from how you see versus what you see.
Every small meditative thought can contribute to artistic pursuits. In that regard, making coffee and staring out of the window can be considered a part of the creative process. And I do both several times a day.
I suppose I’m not concerned about any one set of questions, but rather concerned about what a painting is capable of doing without written descriptions. What is the vernacular of the picture-making, and how do I express things through that? Some of the best moments are when a painting can describe back to me the feeling of my work just by looking.
I try to work every day, often doing three or four pen and ink drawings before getting out of bed or before going to sleep. I eat and then stagger into the studio and work and nap and make calls and do chores and then get back to work with the improvements I have been mulling as I did the other chores.
You want to find your own world in painting, and you want who you are to come to the surface with all that integrated knowledge.
“One of my most important goals as an instructor is to help students clarify what they are looking for in their own work. It is within this constant clarification that a student may begin to develop a distinct and unique visual voice.”
“Learning to get comfortable with not knowing is one of the last stages of an artist’s development. That’s how you start to develop the habit of questioning and seeking, which can propel and sustain you outside the classroom.”
“I think the creative act is very different than the ability to perform a skill set. I think that individual choice is as distinctive as the human being who makes those choices.”
“I am a humanist in my work. That is very important to me, to always have content, to always be involved in storytelling that is important to other people. Otherwise, why bother?”
Do people still feel the need to own, to have present in one’s life, an artifact, a painting, made by somebody else?