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I paint to see what I think. Sweeping strokes are passing thoughts in paint and time. No painting is ever preconceived; instead, each work explores unexpected moments in space and time. I paint with my body’s mind rather than my literal, analytical mind. I think that my paintings are better understood if they are experienced sensually rather than read as a sort of post-modern index. The “body’s mind” is the mind that allows the body to move freely without doubt. Athletes know this all to well. Why shouldn’t painters know it too? Our eyes are constantly gazing, our minds constantly turning—nervous bodies continually in motion. |
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I paint to see what I think. Sweeping strokes are passing thoughts in paint and time. No painting is ever preconceived; instead, each work explores unexpected moments in space and time. I paint with my body’s mind rather than my literal, analytical mind. I think that my paintings are better understood if they are experienced sensually rather than read as a sort of post-modern index.
The “body’s mind” is the mind that allows the body to move freely without doubt. Athletes know this all to well. Why shouldn’t painters know it too? Our eyes are constantly gazing, our minds constantly turning—nervous bodies continually in motion. The body’s mind is what allows the body to imagine what something may taste like or feel like simply by looking at it. It is also the state of mind many athletes and artists alike refer to as “The Zone” where the body is purely reacting to external stimuli unselfconsciously.
Each of my paintings begins as a field of one color. My process involves painting horizontally on the ground as I pour mixed paint onto stretched canvas. I make my own brushes, which I use to bring out certain marks on the canvas. This “mark-making” involves my body, as I literally run around the canvas, wielding and whirling my brush to create the calligraphic marks one sees in my paintings.
I live in Los Angeles California, where wide-open spaces juxtapose dense urban centers, which are all tied together by a vast network of freeways as far as the eye can see. The experiences of my daily life driving on the freeway through this urban metropolis, witnessing both natural and man-made phenomena collect in my memory and remain there as a limitless source when thinking about my work; that is not to say that a given work corresponds to a given memory or experience. Instead, these memories exist as starting points and references from which I create a lexicon of images.
When I paint, the flat singular color that is the painting’s ground is ruptured with marks of contrasting or corresponding colors. Over time new marks are laid down. These may erupt with violence, creating moments of dense opaque paint, or they can flow elegantly, quietly into moments of transparency. Working within a contrasting or contrary moment in the work is what I feel separates me from the past. I am not angry nor am I painting a false bravado, but am focused instead on nuances of hard/soft, hot/cold, masculine/feminine and contemplative/impulsive. It is through these rigors that I explore myself and the world around me, investing my creativity into the framework of my life, so that I continue always to live and work simultaneously.
