If I was to be a smartass, I would say
I try to not start a painting, and that's where I start.
I don't want to begin with an idea.
I just start basically taking everything in the studio
and dumping it onto the onto the substrate,
whether it's linen or or vinyl or panel
I'm literally just tracing these elements
from the studio,
which could be a table, chair, nails,
whatever, you know, that shows up.
I'm always working on several things at once.
There's this very, very primitive
alchemical thing that's happening in the beginning.
I'm tracing or I'm staining or I'm taking objects
and soaking them in ink and putting
And this will go on for a few weeks.
And then I'll start reacting to
to what has shown up with another application.
Almost none of the marks I make,
I allowed myself to make without an obstruction.
And by that I mean, I'll place a screen
or a stick or a tool or another painting
or a a table in front of the painting,
so that I have to reach over or through or up against.
A lot of the marcations on the
on the surface of the paintings are reflective
of those obstacles.
It forces me to remain present
not just intellectually, but physically.
I mean, just the stupid idea of just putting,
literally, a sawhorse in front of me
and and the painting, so I have to reach,
immediately makes me conscious of of my
of my body.
which in turn, reminds me that I'm I'm here.
Because it's very easy for me to go elsewhere.
You know, I think this is something that's evolved,
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that we are we are we are not really fully here.
We're tomorrow or next week or
or even in a couple hours, we know where we are.
I want the work to be present
I came into the arts through the theater.
And I I very early on,
realized that I didn't want to be onstage,
but I was I was more fascinated
with what was happening backstage.
So you know, I was a stagehand or stage manager,
then I was building props
When I'm working on the paintings, when I'm painting,
if someone was to pop their head in the studio,
it could look a lot like dancing or or performance.
Because I'm I've set up these obstacles in the studio.
It's very rare I I'm standing in place.
Sometimes I'm literally jogging
from one thing to another.
So it's incre it's very physical.
It's very exhausting.
And also, often, and not by mistake,
things that I set up in the studio
look like maybe the way you might set up a stage,
with props.
You know, I have this one piece of a of a nine-foot tall
one-by-two with a with a copper wire
and a rusty bucket hanging from it.
And I've had it incorporated in many sculptures,
but it's never left the studio.
It's just kind of
this constant prop
that exists in the studio.
And
sometimes-- these sticks will
literally cast shadows on a painting,
and then I'll just mimic that shadow with a line
of paint.
They're really directing me.
And there's something kind of comical and tragic,
I think,
about being directed by a rusty bucket.
I find things are are suitable for viewing
once they've really kicked me out.
Because we all have this kind of autobiographical mark.
We can recognize our sort of the human stain.
And this is what I want to erase.
And that's why there's layer after layer after layer.
I'm really trying to push it to the point where
this thing shows up in front of me and it
I not only don't recognize it,
but there is a kind of confrontation,
It incites energy.
And more questions.
God forbid, I don't want to find an answer
to any of these questions.
They're not meant to be answered.
They're meant
to invoke other questions and problems.