Interview by Jeffrey Gillespie
for Luminous, December 2007 ©
photo by Enrique Sotomayor
Q: What is your sense of who the audience is for your work?
I'm only really aware of who the audience isn't.... Some time ago, conservative persons liked figurative or representational art, and it was the Manhattan sophisticates who liked deKooning. Nowadays, superficially similar abstract-expressionist works are called for to coordinate with Lazy-Boys and Pottery Barn artifacts, while critics' darlings are John Currin, etc.
Q: What is your context? Do you feel an affinity with other specific artists, and if so, why? I know you cite John Currin as an inspiration as well as a few others (Freud, Schiele, Klimt) could you speak to that?
Skill is a good thing. I like it when someone is capable of saying "hmm... just because I made this doesn't mean it's all that great. Let's try again!"- not being necessarily satisfied with a first attempt. This stuff is hard and it takes a long time to get right. You've got to wonder, "Do I really need to bring this into the world?"... or you can be so totally prolific that it doesn't matter what you do, because something good will eventually happen by default.
Q: You left art school despite having been given full scholarship, why? What do you feel that has done for the work?
I always had strong drawing skills but I could not get my head around painting, so I "made up" my own technique of putting on paint; happiness ensues.
School is impossible for me for a few reasons! When subjected to institutional environments I get these racing, obsessive, crazy dialogues going on in my head, so I go out somewhere and sleep in my car.
Q: What is your standard for evaluating your own creative work and the work of other people?
Everything derives from my complete reactionary nature and sensitivity to extrinsic properties. I often say that I'm not really a creative person- I'm a critic just looking around and being judgmental. Not a single thing I do is new- each new thing is merely a new iteration of some old thing I admire. In art school people were annoying, always posing (frostily) and writing pretentious artist statements, wracking their brains for something New to do. Terrific, do whatever you want. I'm like Tigger, bouncing on people's heads. I'm going to paint pictures of my friends. Let's be intellectuals some other place, since visual art is suboptimal for this.
Q: What do you think of the notion that creativity is linked to madness?
Oh, no. It is sad, I feel so much embarrassment on the behalf of those folks who embrace this stereotype. I know people who have deliberately done mad (stupid) things in order to induce madness and thus amplify their street cred.
Which is crazier- actually having a problem or thinking having a problem is a good idea? Actually, maddening things come on down the road without too much help- all these bland, artless people we don't want to become put immense effort into getting and staying that way. Artists should focus simply on adding to their oeuvre!