5.17.01

How about your palette?
It’s part of an experiment to optically splice different visual species into a new organism, which may seem
misshapen at first (like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), but most importantly, it’s alive.

Do you set out to make paintings which simultaneously read ancient and futuristic?
I’ve always been influenced by Robert Smithson’s use of the ancient and the futuristic, as a catalyst for
ideas. Recently I’ve found the subject even more compelling (and necessary), as our culture seems to
become more and more compressed into a fictional present.

Similarly, blurring reality-fantasy boundaries seems important to you?
To me blurring creates the circumstances for change and the idea of change is a vital organ. I remember
years ago reading an interview with George Harrison, and he was asked: “What does the world need
most?” and he answered with something about human consciousness needing to be raised through
Krishna...and I thought at the time, what a stupid hippy answer...and now I think of course!

Are these portraits?
They’re portraits of being stuck inside a big, powerful, stupid, funny, crazy, violent, ignorant, dangerous
head looking into a mirror.

What have been some of the benefits to working slowly?
Escape from Puritanical chains of neurotic productivity and more time for sleep.

11.18.97

You still seem fascinated with the use of marks as a way to differentiate.
I like to use devices that seem simple, but work. They’re kind of magical in their simplicity. Cartoons are
filled with that kind of line magic.

Is your interest in that having to do with the way it creates an alloverness, or maybe, a unified field?
Yes to the unified field. Van Gogh differentiates things in his ink drawings by using marks that also create
a field. That’s what I want.

Last show’s paintings were all red marks on a white ground. Now it’s mostly blue with some red marks on a white ground. What prompted the second color and is there a nationalistic subtext?
For me it’s a natural formal progression. As far as the nationalistic subtext, I don’t mind if the colors have
symbolic meaning; if it adds another layer of meaning to the work, that’s fine.

Any pending ideas for inclusion of other colors?
Brown, black, gold. Maybe turquoise?

The monsters seem to have become more suburban.
I’m still very interested in video-game space, that kind of hi-tech dungeon space (Cubism meets Piranesi),
but I’ve also been looking at a lot of early Fassbinder movies and they have a claustrophobic decorated
look that seems very suburban. That’s seeped in.

And leisure.
As the paintings get more and more complicated, the interaction between the monsters (mutants) needs to
evolve, and that leads to leisure.

I can see your Matisse and Johns influence, but what about Hockney?
I like how a lot of late 60’s and early 70’s Hockney paintings, especially the portraits and pools, get very
realistic, but in such a stylized way that they seem very unreal.

You should curate an exhibition of a few works by each of those artists.
I would also include some of Artschwager’s living room interiors.

What other artists are of particular interest to you now?
I’m really into Morrissey right now, especially that "Everyday is Like Sunday" song.

Often you represent paintings in the backgrounds of your paintings. Whose paintings do you
think of when you paint them? Is there something more for you to play with in that?
I think of Ucello, Pollack and Schultz, and they are slowly incubating in the background right now, but I see
them eventually existing on their own.