What is your primary medium?
Oil paint. I've been a painter for a long time. I occasionally do other other things as well. But yeah, painting is my primary occupation.
What got you into painting?
Wow, that's a big question. I think really from the earliest age I can remember I was interested in art, especially painting. From a young age I was just one of those kids that liked to draw and paint and I think in high school I decided I really wanted to pursue it as a way of life.
What drives you to come to your studio?
That's another really good question. I think about that a lot. I think that it's sort of mysterious, what will compel somebody to continue on a path through a long period of time. I don't know if I have a really good answer for that, except I feel sort of compelled to do it. I think, to me, painting is kind of a way of knowing or a way of figuring out what I think or believe or what my response is to any particular situation in a way. So I want to know, I want to understand. For me, painting is a way of knowing.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I think that varies a lot over time. The body of work I'm making now I think is pretty personal, in a way it's kind of an investigation of what compels me to make images and maybe thinking about where they come from. This is pretty much pandemic work that I'm making now, maybe the last year or so. For a couple of years previous to that the work was much more in response to things happening in the larger world. I think they're kind of satirical, angry paintings. Angry doesn't sound right, I think they were kind of funny, but they were maybe motivated by some rage about things happening in the world. So it varies a lot. I tend to create bodies or series of works. I work a certain way for a while until the energy runs out and then see what happens next.
Has the pandemic changed the way you work?
No, I wouldn't say so. Just in terms of, you know, how I go about it or my physical setup or anything like that is pretty much the same. I teach school as my day job, so that has been a little unusual with teaching remotely and in hybrid. But in terms of how I work here, it's been normal I guess you'd say, if that's possible. I think the work has changed. I think the work became more inward as possibly a response to the pandemic, but there's nothing overt in the work about the pandemic. I think it maybe took me out of thinking about what's happening culturally right now and more just reflecting on creativity. That's such a vague word, but the sort of mystery of where images come from and how other artists impact one's way of thinking and way of knowing. It's kind of been a way of processing that.
How important is it for you to have a space to go and create?
It's very important. I've maintained a studio for a really long time now and I think it's important for a lot of different reasons. I have a lot of crap for one thing, so it's a place to have your stuff. I know that there is a trend in contemporary art for artists not to have studios and to make projects that use other resources and other people to help with the process. But I'm pretty hands on, I like to be the one making what I want to see. So yeah, it's really key to have my own space.
Are there any Boise specific opportunities you've had?
Well, I mean, to continue talking about space, I moved here from New York City, so having a space of this size would have been impossible. I mean, I had a decent space there, just out of sheer luck. But yeah, I mean, that's one of the great advantages to being here. I don't know, I think I found a different kind of rhythm and relationship to my own work. I've been here so long now that I don't really remember what a dramatic transformation it was. I certainly had a community in New York of friends that were painters and other other types of artists. It certainly is not an easy place to break into the gallery scene or whatever. But, you know, there's always a community of artists if you look around and you're open to it. I like Boise, I feel like I'm part of a community here of artists and curious people who support each other and are interested in what other people are doing. Definitely.
What's it like for you to help guide students on their path of art discovery?
Well, I don't know how many teachers you know, but teaching is a tough gig. No matter what the subject is. I think all teachers probably feel like they teach the best subject. I definitely feel that way. But it's challenging. Yeah, it's super rewarding when you feel like you are contributing to somebody finding a voice or figuring out a path for themselves. But it's also a grind. Teaching is a tough gig, for sure, but I like it. It's way better than any other job I've had and I've had a lot of different jobs over the years. I've been doing this now way longer than I've had any other jobs. So yeah, it's rewarding.
Did you go to school for art?
I did. Yeah. I went to undergraduate school, I got a BFA. I went to a couple of different schools, but then I went to grad school as well. I didn't know I was going to be a teacher until a few years after grad school. An opportunity came along to get a teaching certificate and the other jobs, as I referenced, were not that inspiring. So I went in that direction.
Why do you think art is important?
Well, that's, of course, a huge question. The answer to which I suppose varies considerably over time, but like I referenced earlier, I think engaging in any kind of art making is, on some level, just a way of knowing, but also a way of being. So I think it can help one make sense of their world, their existence, you know, to create meaning in your life. And hopefully that experience gets communicated to others through your work. Ideally it is, I think, ultimately about connecting and demanding in a way that demands something of an audience or another individual. It's not just “Here, this is a gift for you.” It's like, “Here, struggle with this a little bit if you're willing to.” That's a really long vague answer to a difficult question. But what else do we have in life now where so many other things people have looked to as a way to bring meaning or feelings of security to their lives have become debased? I mean, when you look around the contemporary world, what's going to help us understand and give ourselves meaning if not art?
Do you think it's important to look at what other artists are creating?
I think it's very rare for there to be somebody who makes compelling images that is not aware of both their contemporaries and of art that has come in the past. There are some, but I think it's pretty rare. I don't like the term “outsider artist”, but I think the great exemplars of “outsider artists'', if you were really able to investigate, weren't as remote or cut off from their contemporary visual culture as people might imagine them to be. They certainly didn't necessarily go to art school or anything like that. I don't think you need to do that, but yeah, I think you have to be visually aware of what's going on around you. Nothing comes from nothing. You're part of a larger conversation ultimately.
Is there anything I haven't asked you that you wanted to talk about?
When the stay at home thing first kicked in and I was teaching from home, I started doing a lot more sort of smaller pieces, water based media, just at my home desk because I was there and I don't know, I felt weird coming to the studio. It just sort of worked out that I got into a kind of rhythm and that's when things started transitioning from the more satirical work I had been doing to what I'm doing now. So that's sort of a transitional phase. But this work started kind of curiously. Sometimes when I'm painting I have rags that get saturated with paint and oil and stuff like that. So sometimes I'll pin them to the wall to give them a chance to dry so I don't leave piles of dirty rags around and I just found myself kind of staring at one of them. The way one sort of absentmindedly stares at basically anything, as a way of inviting images to emerge. You know, cloud gazing or, there's the famous description that Leonardo wrote of staring at the water stains on the ceiling until an entire world emerges. So I found myself kind of doing that and at the same time thinking about what has influenced me, especially in terms of writers, I didn't want to necessarily try to take on other painters. I think maybe there's too much of an antagonistic kind of relationship between people that you admire as painters and somebody working in the same medium. So a few things kind of came together at the same time, sort of wondering “where does imagery emerge” and using this image of the rag as a way of having almost an emblem for that idea within each painting. Also thinking about how in the same way that an image will coalesce out of some random arrangement like that about how images sort of emerge from the substrate of a painting itself. And at the same time, thinking about these writers who have sort of occupied my mind in a way over many years. Especially writers, but not entirely, that just don't go away, that are always there and I think in a way, that's a great thing. The reason we read or look at any art is to help us engage the world in a way, but also you can kind of think of it as these super powerful forces that can occupy your mind, almost like an invading army. There's two ways of thinking about it you know, I think most people think of artists as just positive and an artists' relationship to other artists as being inspirational, but I think it can be a little more complex and ambivalent, I guess you'd say. So these paintings, I think, are a way of trying to grapple with a lot of these different ideas at the same time and I don't know yet whether it's been totally successful or not, but it's definitely keeping me engaged.
Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?
Yeah... When I'm six feet under. I don't have any plans of retiring if that's what you mean. I think everybody always goes through periods of being productive and being fallow and I think that's inevitable. But since I'm not doing it as a way of making a living and that's not my main goal, I don't know why I would ever stop.