Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
So, it's curious to be up here speaking about my work
when my whole career is based around not having to speak about my work -
painting work that can speak for itself.
So I want to warn you that I talk similarly to how I paint:
I use layers,
I use stray marks,
I use mistakes
to try to bring them all together and create one beautiful piece
that, hopefully, somebody can bring something close to themselves with.
So, with that, I want to talk a little bit about being an artist,
introduced as an artist,
the person who created this work.
And it makes me think about that word,
and it's kind of a buzz word in my head.
I don't know - and I know that you all are artists in your own right.
You know, being here, wanting to be here,
applying here -
you have something going on that makes you passionate.
So with that, the artist with a capital "A" -
how do you define that?
And I think in my life, I ask myself, "Have I achieved that?
Am I an artist? Could I be considered that?"
I usually introduce myself as a painter,
but that typically comes with some sort of retort
like, "How much would you charge to do my house?"
And it brings this whole issue in where I want to take myself seriously,
and so with that,
I, yeah, I ask the question,
"Have I done it? Is that what I have achieved so far in life?"
And then I realize that that is the wrong question
because I look at myself in the studio,
you know, covered in paint,
sweating,
angry because something isn't going the way I want it to,
wielding this pneumatic staple gun trying to finish a canvas,
and someone walks into the studio and says,
"Tell me about your painting."
And so you just have to take a deep breath and be this blue-collared philosopher
and say, "You know, I can do the work, and I can work hard,
but I can also take that work and put it into something
that people can see themselves in or see someone else in."
And so I think where I am now is I'm doing it,
and the focus is on the "ing."
I haven't really accomplished much
as far as being a world-renowned, world-collected artist,
but every day I show up,
every day I try,
and hopefully you all can connect to that in some way, and you're doing it.
So, the focus for me, on the "ing," is -
I'm just going to relate to you my story and how I'm trying.
I'm going to start with this slide.
I paint portraits mostly.
I paint people that I know,
people that I don't know,
people that I get to know through the painting,
and it's always an interesting process.
But it started out as I wanted to paint beautiful things,
in the very, very traditional, typical sense of what is beauty.
Beauty is a fashion model in a magazine,
so I would tear them out and paint them obsessively -
when I was younger -
and after, you know, a handful of months of that -
I was this teenager, and I, even then, realized
I had this pool of like this is not - this is easy,
this is an equation.
I plug in pink. I plug in perfect.
I plug in eyelashes this long,
and you have a nice-looking painting that someone will say, "That's beautiful"
because it tugs at this collective aesthetic
that we are kind of like trained to think is beautiful.
And so I switched.
I yearned for people who had green and blue in their skin -
I wanted them.
I wanted their noses to touch their upper lips almost,
the proportions to be off.
And that was beautiful to me; it was so unique.
There are stories in those people.
They weren't photoshopped; they weren't glossy.
They weren't anything other than raw and real and exposed
in a way that I wanted to paint.
And so I moved - I started to paint that in oil.
They were, you know, this man is kind of leering at you from the screen.
And they were very powerful, very dark.
They were very comfortable in the space that I had given them:
this dark, powerful, dramatic background.
And then I started to scratch away at that,
like, Why am I giving them this comfort of this traditional sense of painting,
like this beautiful, classical thing?
I scratched away - I took away the comfort of the background,
for me and for the subject,
and I moved more into reducing it.
You know, I took away the comfort of the background
for myself and for the subject.
I took away their clothes;
I just painted the skin
because that's where the green was, where the blue was,
where the wrinkles and the imperfections
that I thought were so incredibly fascinating -
that's where they lived.
And I painted this woman named Shirley,
and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life,
and I felt her rising,
and I wanted to take that further.
I wanted to push that.
I wanted to find more people like that.
And with that, I rode this idea and this feeling
into what I call "The Era of Bill."
And Bill is this - I think he's a 72-year-old man
I met when I was living in Tennessee.
I met him through a friend,
and I spent three hours of my entire life with him,
and I fell completely in love.
There was just something about him that was so -
he was small; he was powerful;
he was fascinated with life, with things.
And I worked from photographs.
I took photographs of him and worked from those for months, years.
I painted him obsessively.
I painted him every which way I could.
I wanted to paint him in oil, in acrylic.
And it really opened up my style
into something where I wasn't afraid anymore.
I wasn't afraid to make something that wasn't beautiful.
I wanted to explode his head.
I went through this series of exploding heads
(Laughter)
because I wanted to release him.
I wanted to release myself through him
and use him as an expression for what I was going through as an artist.
And after I had fairly well exhausted those images,
I was seeking more Bill;
I was pursing that feeling of, Where can I find a new Bill?
And so I went -
I found new models, new people that I wasn't kind to.
I didn't paint them beautifully.
I painted them in a raw sense; I painted them real.
And that is something that I'm still pursuing,
and I'm trying to paint more of their minds than their body -
I'm getting away from the physical
and reaching more into the emotional, the spiritual, the soulful -
and using watercolor as my medium
and, you know, seeing where that takes me.
And I'll finish up with this slide of
a self-portrait.
One that I did - I felt like I needed to.
I felt like it was fair because I was using these people,
I expected them to expose themselves to me as subjects,
and through that I wanted to relate to them in that way
by turning the camera onto myself and becoming the subject.
And it is not fun;
it's not something I enjoyed,
but it was necessary, and it's pushing, pushing me,
and that's what I constantly want to do is push
and discover new ways and discover more things,
ways to express myself,
ways to not express myself,
make mistakes but always chase the muse and pursue the "ing,"
the verb of art,
of doing and creating.
And so I just encourage you -
I stand before you as someone who - an advocate of doing that
and, you know, encourage everyone to follow that:
do what you can to never catch it, but always chase it.
(Applause)