February 2004 Archives

If you think about it, there's nothing that separates a painting of something and you're personal idea of something. Both images are formed in your mind and both can have similar feelings attached to them. It doesn't matter if one item is a drawing of a clock and another item is an actual clock, they're both real clocks.

This reminds me of a quote attached to the beginning of a chapter in the book, Art and Physics, by Leonard Shlain which connected the reality depicted in van Gough painting with the reality depicted in complex mathematical equations. Basically, you cannot come to any conclusion except that they're both equally correct.

I think that's one of the most beautiful thoughts you can have. Wrong I guess can just be another Right in disguise.

Once I rebirthed with taking everything off the walls and repainting them white, I thought it would be in my best interest to reinvent my reality, and since I'm a painter, to paint a new reality. Everytime I complete a letter, I cross it off my drawn letter list and repaint the hands of my drawn clock.

I've drawn a still life that will not stand still!

I took everything off the walls - the clock, the letter list, the calendar; I painted the walls white with Gesso and painted a bit without clothes.

It's good to realize that you don't need most of the items that you surround yoruself with and that it's most likely better to do without them when you can.

I wanted to almost have a rebirth in the middle of the painting. One should realize that you can have a birth in some respects in the middle of something - not just in the beginning or at the end of something - for example, I see death as the birth of death, not the end of life.

Everything is a transition, but not everything moves at the same pace or begins/rebegins at exactly the same speed.

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
Pablo Picasso

This film is partly about me. It's mostly about the painting, but the painting has become somewhat of a prop; it's not apparent from the film itself, but the canvas is stretched out and warped, the letters are not painted in any sort of precision, the colors are somewhat off and everything around me is very messy indeed.

I don't think I want to be the, "hero" of this painting, but that's what I've become. Deep down, I do have this urge to be living and working and painting in the height of modernism and there's a part of me that doesn't like the current state of art.

Even with that, this piece belongs in this time.

I turned not only the painting, but the clock, calendar, letter sheet AND the camera itself,

upside down.

What this accomplishes in the film is that everything looks right-side-up, except me - which is the exact opposite of what is really going on. I think gravity is one of the most powerful forces that we face daily. If you study physics (and I do in only in the, "I watch NOVA every now and again" type of way), you'll find out that gravity is actually one of the weakest forces known.

We know that we are "grounded" to the Earth because of our sense of touch - we feel that we aren't falling. When you create a line drawing, you are in fact imagining that you are touching the outline of the object or person you are drawing. Every brush stroke on this painting is the act of myself touching the canvas with paint in a very forumlated way.

I wish there was an easy way to flip the phenomenom of the "feeling" of gravity. Perhaps this want was the reason I learned to walk on my hands. The pull of gravity is perhaps just one of many things we feel all the time, although our bodies choose to ignore it, like a chronic pain.

I've never awoke to feel a hundred miles of air pressing against me, but I do wish this sometimes.

Maybe that's what a dream of falling rapidly is - it's just you're body forgetting to forget it's connected with everything in this world.

For the first time, I've flipped the canvas I've worked on upside down.

It's an interesting feeling. Neglect the fact that I'm writing basically a page of writing out-of-order, have you ever tried to write anything upside down? And then have you ever tried to read upside down? Reading upside down is fairly easy, writing, not so much. 'N's/'U's get you. 'S''s get you. It's a good exercise to do once in a while. It makes you consious that you are writing each individual letter and stops you from automatically writing a word.

Break you out of a complete lockdown on how you write. Going left-right, up-down seems almost natural - but its not; someone somewhere made a conscious decision that THIS was the way, and no other way was correct.

I should write my own story putting letters and words all around the page and only making sense of it all when the letters and words receive proximity.

It took me 4 days to tap the camera all of the way around, it came to about 3 minutes of footage. Throughout the entire filming around my studio, a project of mine was shown in various stages: from some initial sketches to final pieces to larger canvases not painted yet. I guess the idea was that never is a project in a state of complete disassociation with its surroundings. The Kerouac painting isn't the only painting I'm working on. It's has alsi changed in the months I initially started it, even though all the instructions where written well before I even put the first letter on.

In a single shot, you have the artist, back turned, a clock running forwards with the time, another clock running forwards with the time, but in a mirror, so time at first glance seems to be going backwards; the cheap webcam is seen taped to a easel in the middle of the studio - exactly in the center of the frame. It's horizon line is now your horizon line. What can't be seen in the mirror can be seen in the reflection off the glass window - but it shows nothing but a doorway, half a table and some random wires. Everything seems silent, but a large subwoofer can just barely be seen on the bottom right of the frame. It's hard to make out anything, but nothing seems to be hidden...

I clock in. I clock out. Things move around me as I move around myself.

I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do with this film. I forsee an entire solo show of just ONE painting; the Kerouac piece and ALL of the supporting process material - well, as much as I have anyways.

After I draw or paint a letter onto the canvas, I've been tapping the camera ever so slightly. When the film is viewed, you'll be given a panoramic view of my entire studio. This is the first time that I've consciously moved the camera from it's stationary position. After 30+ hours of footage, the camera hasn't moved around and then, Bang! totally out of the blue movement. I like.