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.
I continue to strive for a way to make my body of work more cohesive without sacrificing my ability to work in multiple media and techniques.
As I paint, the image is a living, mutable thing, and sometimes it reveals the answers to the questions it asks.
You have to show up—to the class, to the studio, to the openings, to life, because, at the time you may or may not know it, your artistic eye is keeping records of everything you see. You just can’t help but to absorb life, after it percolates and rises to the surface, you want brushes in your hand.
I look through my sketch books to uncover ideas and images that stimulated me but which I didn’t flesh out at the time. This recalls me to myself and my sensibilities which often jump-starts new work.
It’s easy to come up with the idea. The work comes in the actual execution of the idea and then doing it all over again, while at the same time striving to improve skills, so that every successive image is better than the last.