Statement

In my paintings, the room represents a mental space, and with every blank canvas, I am moving into a new room. I have to choose potent symbolic elements to “decorate” these areas and convey a narrative. I have incomplete visions that can only be clarified through a process of shifting, adding, and taking away. I fumble awkwardly through dusty boxes of thoughts and emotions, mislabeled and stacked haphazardly, grasping stubbornly for the right language to tell my story. Through this process, a painting becomes a pastiche of historical embellishments, psychological metaphors, and emblems of transience.

Things for all painters

Noted To Myself On Beginning A Painting

by Richard Diebenkorn
1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued- except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider then absolutely expendable
5. Don't 'discover' a subject- of any kind.
6. Somehow, don't be bored- but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential
7. Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position
8. Keep thinking of Pollyanna
9. Tolerate chaos
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

Wise words

Whistler has long been my favorite painter. In this passage, he crystallizes his brilliance. This statement was contrary to the popular concepts about art and nature of the day. Pick up The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. This is an Excerpt from Whistler's Ten O'Clock Lecture, February 20, 1835, London.

"Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music.
But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful--as the musician gather his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony.
To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano.
That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that is might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all."

Kissing paint

This not as fucked up as when the guy smashed Duchamp's Fountain but it is close.

Woman Faces Charges for Kissing Painting
Jul 21 02:56 PM US/Eastern


MARSEILLE, France (AP) - A woman has been arrested on suspicion of kissing a painting by American artist Cy Twombly and smudging the bone-white canvas with her lipstick, French judicial officials said Saturday.

Police said they arrested the woman after she kissed the work on Thursday. She is to be tried in a court in the southern city of Avignon on Aug. 16 for "damage to a work of art," judicial officials said.

The painting, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. It is part of an exhibition slated to run at the museum through Sept. 30. Officials did not provide further details on the painting.

Twombly is known for his abstract paintings combining painting and drawing techniques, repetitive lines and the use of graffiti, letters and words.

Born in Lexington, Va., in 1928, Twombly has lived in Italy for nearly a half- century. He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2001.


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