I make cruddy things. Maybe not as cruddy as they should be … but … plenty cruddy.
I was trained as a printmaker and while I loved the exactness of the process, I gravitated to images where the execution broke down: the prints where the colors didn’t line up correctly, where the lines of ink were clotty, gnarled and clumsy. I was drawn to the mistakes that pierced the pristine authority of print.
These mistakes seemed to me a salacious treat - like getting a brief glimpse of a bright red slip normally kept well hidden beneath a formal dress, or of a vibrant neck tattoo peaking stubbornly out from under the collar of a professional business shirt. It was those parts of the print that I could identify with, that I could fall in love with. Those were the prints that seemed the most exposed. I want my paintings to have this quality.
As a child, I wanted more than anything to be invisible. A scared gay kid, I made tasteful paintings, with tasteful colors, that wanted tasteful people to like them. I gingerly dabbed neutral, murky colors, indecisive lines and amorphous indirect shapes. I wanted to be liked and I didn’t trust people to like me. Now, maybe because I have given up ….My paintings are much more trusting. My colors are intense, bold, saturated. …There is an honesty to them –a straight forward exuberance to the glowing hues. They depict a world bristling with intensity, each object sopping with vivid alive color. There is no plausible deniability to them – you can’t “accidently” use a toxic neon pink.
I was trained as a printmaker and while I loved the exactness of the process, I gravitated to images where the execution broke down: the prints where the colors didn’t line up correctly, where the lines of ink were clotty, gnarled and clumsy. I was drawn to the mistakes that pierced the pristine authority of print.
These mistakes seemed to me a salacious treat - like getting a brief glimpse of a bright red slip normally kept well hidden beneath a formal dress, or of a vibrant neck tattoo peaking stubbornly out from under the collar of a professional business shirt. It was those parts of the print that I could identify with, that I could fall in love with. Those were the prints that seemed the most exposed. I want my paintings to have this quality.
As a child, I wanted more than anything to be invisible. A scared gay kid, I made tasteful paintings, with tasteful colors, that wanted tasteful people to like them. I gingerly dabbed neutral, murky colors, indecisive lines and amorphous indirect shapes. I wanted to be liked and I didn’t trust people to like me. Now, maybe because I have given up ….My paintings are much more trusting. My colors are intense, bold, saturated. …There is an honesty to them –a straight forward exuberance to the glowing hues. They depict a world bristling with intensity, each object sopping with vivid alive color. There is no plausible deniability to them – you can’t “accidently” use a toxic neon pink.
The Love Registry |
Robots & Bunnies
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