SIMPLY PUT…

The narrative embedded into my paintings has always derived from the difficult collaboration between the child self and the adult one. A constant negotiation. Letting the child run loose conceptually, and eventually letting the adult step in and provide introspection. I say introspection, often it feels like I’m cynically stepping into my own creative process and stripping it of all of its fun in service of some banal metaphor I’ve decided to tack on. Deciding what is cliche and tasteless and deciding whether or not I want to harness it or remove it. 

But what would happen if the kid ran wild, the work would be so indulgent and dumb, every figure would have a gun in their hand and a cigarette plastered to their mouth. The practice would be completely fueled by violence and sugar. How many times would he paint some blood-drenched monster because he thought it looked cool. When I paint monsters now I do it with intentionality and purpose, and when I depict violence I do it with sensitivity, but without this juvenile sense of wonder preserved in my psyche child, I don’t know if there would even be any compulsion to create. At the end of the day, the adult is an editor that uses a filter of experiences, the child is really the only one creating anything.

I think one of the reasons people have an aversion to art is that they feel as if they are being tricked, that they are going to derive something profound from a piece, only to have the rug pulled out from under them, and have the artist admit the work actually means nothing. This fear of making the viewer feel cheated is something that has made me contort the narrative to fit the audiences expectations. I don’t want a practice advised by the potential interpretations of others, I wanted to see what the work did when I expelled the leering public out of my head and my process. I wanted to make work that’s elusive, work that is hard for people to cling to immediately. Taking time to reflect on my current work has made me realize that it has exposed more of my psyche than intended. My subconscious, as usual, has betrayed me and has laid bare my innards on the canvas. Expelling the societal expectations from my process has led to more honesty and clarity, but also more vulnerability. The work makes me more uncomfortable than ever, but it’s a healthy tension that I need for now. 

My work is changing. My previous approach to art-making was not something that could be sustained, consigning ideas that excited me to small illustrations and reserving painting for more “important” imagery. I don’t disown the work, I just don’t think I would want to make it again. So often I will become wrapped up in telling a story that the painting process will become a means to an end. Somewhere along the line a quote seeped into my consciousness and polluted my mindset. “Art without meaning is decoration.” Since then Ive held contempt for this concept, giving it the designation of thoughtless and pretentious, but over time I’ve begun to consider that my understanding of it may be a misinterpretation, fueled by my own insecurity and internal biases. I think it’s fair to say conversely that the quote implies that all art has meaning and the beautiful act of sitting down to create something is totally impractical but not pointless.