Posts
 |
| Detail from a recent painting. |
My walls are full—some might say overfull—of paintings,
prints, drawings, and photographs. Many of the paintings are my own. I rarely
sell one, though I give one away now and then when I think it won’t be taken
amiss. I certainly don’t need to paint any more paintings, and I don’t think
I’m much good at painting in any case. So why do I paint?
The easy answer is that I still enjoy it—when I don’t hate
it. Painting challenges me. I never seem to be able to create the image in my
head on canvas, but I’m often pleasantly surprised by what does appear. And if
I’m not pleased, I can paint over it. A good number of my paintings have other,
less successful works lurking beneath the surface. I like pushing paint around.
Attacking a canvas is a visceral aesthetic. Often I do so to the accompaniment
of rock music played loudly. Painting can be a total-body workout, feet
shuffling like a boxer’s, hands slashing paint, mind running this way and that,
contemplating moves like a chess player.
Mid-19th century,
the Académie des Beaux-Arts dominated French art and therefore art writ large.
The Académie was the embalmer of traditional painting standards: historical,
religious, and mythological subjects, portraits, all carefully idealized
realism in somber colors and no visible brush strokes.
Then along came
the Impressionists, who liked color and everyday scenes—and visible brush
strokes. Perhaps they also rebelled against the Académie because at mid-19th
century the advent of photography was threatening to make realistic painting
obsolete. Once freed from the constraints of the Salon, painting boarded a
speeding train toward Modernism, which pervaded the 20th century. That was the
train I got on about a half-century ago.
I’ve never
entirely settled on a style of painting. The images I create veer toward
Modernity but are as likely to be sidetracked by Impressionism. Put two of my
paintings side by side and one might wonder whether they were created by
different artists. My only defense is that, yes, they probably were. Each time
I load a brush and approach a canvas, I am someone a little bit different from
the person who last painted in my shoes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines.” I make no judgment about whether I am
foolish; I only know that I am not consistent. At least, not in painting. But I
like doing it anyway. It’s good exercise.
