I’m sure many of you have been curious as to the sudden change of subject matter in my work over the past few days. First, I need to address the sudden uptick in work and blog posts. Before January 1, I made a commitment to myself to create one original painting a day. In order to make this not so overwhelming, I limited the size of these paintings to just 4”x6”. I had been in a creative rut during most of the second half of 2013 due to a variety of reasons which included some drastic changes in my personal life and with it an unfortunate spike in my constant battle with anxiety. This project was designed for the sole purpose of getting me into my studio and painting every day. These are meant to be created throughout the year IN ADDITION to all the other work I will be creating which means that I will be a busy man in 2014. I have many exciting projects lined up and at least one partnership opportunity with a local gallery. The most recent paintings in the 4”x6” format have been quite abstract compared to the work I have been producing. This is where the creative rut comes into play. I start looking for inspiration from photos I had taken with my iPhone. Some were speaking to me, but many have not been suitable for such a small format. Then, I decided to revisit some old sketchbooks- I have several. I went back to my 2006 sketchbook and flipped through the pages. I began remembering my thought process at the time I created those drawings and the type of satisfaction it provided. So, I decided to take some of those drawings I never used and use them for this 4”x6” project. After painting a couple I started wondering why I stopped exploring the options of working in this way. After much thought, the answer came to me. I got bored. Then the “Ah Ha” cascade continued. Over this past year, why had I not been wanting to paint and create? Besides the reasons already stated, I got bored. More on this later.
The infancy of my aesthetic began when I rejected the goal of trying to render every subject as ‘realistically’ as possible. This started in college. I was looking for more. I was looking for my voice. I wanted to be more free, so I began exploring all the possibilities of gesture drawing. Somewhere during this period, I learned of Matisse’s late paper cut-out works. I fell in love with the simplicity and it was then that I believed it was possible to produce minimal work that was still very narrative. I began editing my gestures down to what I considered the bare minimal elements that still communicated the feeling/action. At this time, the extent of Matisse’s influence on my work was very apparent.
After college, I took a corporate job out of necessity which nearly killed my creative spirit in just 3 1/2 short years. Five moves and one terrible hurricane later I caught my footing in Houston, TX. I began working again and tried to pick up where I had left off in college. I found some models. Some posed for me voluntarily in my creating space while others were unknowingly sketched while I sat on the patio of my local Starbucks. My goal had changed though. I began seeing my minimal gestures as developing into some kind of literal visual language. With the exception of a very short experimental series(first two pictures), almost none of this work is titled. How can you title a ‘language’ that can not be spoken? I also began visually studying Japanese, Chinese, and Islamic calligraphy. I mashed this up with everything I loved about Matisse’s cutouts which resulted in work like this:
This method of working is very intuitive and quite abstract. I had to decide what should or should not be included very quickly as my subject moved. These images are intended to be very flat and may or may not appear obviously derived from the figure. This work is about a captured moment-the present. The challenge in creating this work is the editing. What stays? What must be discarded? This was an intense exercise in economy and required that I pay very close attention to balance. Positive/Negative. Straight Edge/Curved Edge. These combinations force the eye to move around even the most simple of compositions. However, this way of working had one major drawback. It locked me into only being able to use two colors(or black and white) at a time in order for the piece to read most effectively. I could not resolve this problem, so eventually I got bored. I also felt the strong desire to tell more of a story.
I will call the next phase my ‘Hybrid’ phase. I began this work with gestures as I had before except that source images came from both real time observation and photographs. In addition, this time I decided to use many shapes that could overlap each other. And although the work was still completely flat with no illusion of the third dimension, this enabled me to make my work appear more obviously derived from the figure. Some of this work is serious in subject and some are very light and even cross into humor. This is when I became much more conscious of color theory and how I could apply it effectively. I challenged myself in this work by limiting the number of colors AND the number of times I could use those colors in each piece. I also had to strike a balance between representing the actual subject in both an abstracted and more representational way. It was self-imposed limitations that made me work very hard to include ONLY the most important aspects of the feeling/subject I was trying to convey. Restriction demands creativity. It was at this time that I began titling all of my work in a very free form of Western Haiku. I did this partly out of my own insecurity about no one being able to ‘get’ my work, and partly because I wanted to add more ‘story’ to the work. Some of the titles are based on a shared experience with the subject while others obliquely reference something that was current in the subject’s life at the time. Very few titles are complete fiction. Even my bird pieces usually convey bits of my personal philosophy.
My most recent body of work has by far been my most representational. All of the pieces continued to be titled in Western Haiku format. Some major changes from my previous work: All work is derived from photographs(mostly taken by me). For most of the portrait work I chose a cinematic widescreen format and hard cropping to create more drama. My visual investigations go deeper in this work as I try to address the psychological and emotional aspects of my subjects. Many of my subjects I know personally. Some of my models are my friends. Some of my models are former friends, and some are much more than just friends. This work is very painstakingly planned. I have to choose my colors very carefully because in my portraits I must notate not only local color(the actual seen color) but also the value( light or dark) in order to give even the most modest illusion of three dimensions. This is very challenging and the most time intensive. And above all else, the image must accurately represent the subject!
The better I know my subjects, the more quickly the process moves because it is not difficult for me to visually interject whichever chosen emotion into the piece. Though they were(and still are) greatly appreciated, my most difficult pieces have been commissions by people I have no relationship with because the only clues to their personalities are available to me primarily over social media. It is sufficient, but not quite the same. The only discernible difference is that these take me longer to execute and complete. After many successful portraits I began searching for ways to expand that resulted in many animal portraits. I have painted some fish and have painted many birds. Then I felt as if I hit a wall. I got bored.
Back to the beginning again. I had been hit with a conundrum. I could not possibly create work any more abstract than my early work and still maintain any reference to the figure. The work in between was an obvious bridge between then and now. And as for my most recent work, I have not been able to think of any new ways of depicting my subjects representationally that would not get so complex that it violated my self-imposed restrictions regarding simplicity. After all, my mission is about reduction and distilling the image down to only the bare essentials. I had been looking at my art making career as if it was a short story or novella: A beginning, a middle, and an end. Then I began to ask myself: Where do I go from here? I have always felt passionately about the figure and it has always been the focus of my visual explorations, while shape and color have always been my preferred tools to communicate those ideas to others. Thinking linearly, I felt I reached a dead end. I took the figure from extreme abstraction through to minimally rendered representational portrait work. My thinking was incorrect. My artistic energy is fluid and organic and not bound by linear time. Since I can draw ideas and imagery from any source for creating my own art regardless of the time in which it came, why not give myself the same luxury and freedom to use my own creations from My Art Universe? I can toggle between them seamlessly and with ease at any time of my choosing to change up the way I have decided to express my ongoing experience with the world. The toggling will not only reduce the possibility of boredom, but will also encourage creative problem solving and exploration as I further develop each of my highly developed methods of working. I have already started developing more than a handful of viable projects using my most abstract method of working. I feel strongly that I have developed a unique aesthetic, and have yet to see any other current artist’s work that even looks remotely similar to my own. My basic mantra is: Less is more. After reducing, reduce more. If I had to choose any way to describe my work besides using words like “mine” and “awesome”, I would maybe label it Sophisticated Minimal Pop. This is “My Art Universe” that I have been nurturing for so long. There are unlimited possibilities waiting to be explored within the parameters I have established for myself. This is going to be a very busy and very big year for me. Please keep looking and reading. I am very excited about the work that is coming. Thank you for your continued support.
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