I call it the, "Personification of the Building."
As someone who gets lost in architecture (macro & micro), I'm trying to influence my sloppy style of painting with the bones of architecture. The sketch of a building is the beginning point of the figure's skeleton - influencing the conversation of their identity. Ultimately, the skin becomes less influenced by the skeleton of the form, and moreso by repetive strokes.
My wife agreed to be my mentor for oil based media. In the past 10 years, I've only experimented with oil based spray paints. The price of oil paints, versus acryllic, has always been a primary disuading mechanism. Fortunately, my mentor gave me free reign to use her materials. To be honest, following my first several hours of using them, I was ready to abandon oil altogether; I was getting stuck in mud, creating mud, and getting my mud all over the place, literally. I was a wreck.
Through my wife's guidance I was able to postpone my instantaneous gratifications for a completed painting [in one sitting]. Instead, I was persuaded to find an iota of interest, a superficallly inconsequential area of interest [success] to bring me back to the canvas at a later time.
Housepaint on canvas, which has recently been joined by spray paint and watercolor, is agressively & gesturally applied, rhythmically. Starting with a flailing pattern, searching for a repetition I can hold onto, I wander with a suggestion of representation. I mix & muddy up, usually to start over again, leaving an ever-so-slight area to creep into the evolution of the next scene.
It's messy, often irrational with a disregard for space and optical truth. The experience feels so right!
Working with more of my wrist, whisping strokes, I flutter with the unforgiving nature of watercolor; there is no reset. It's portability leaves narrow excuse for not applying pigment to paper. Originally & wrongfully accusing watercolor of needing to stick within Kindergarden domains, it faded pre-conceived notions wrenched since elementary school.
My wife, Elizabeth Depew [elizabethdepew.com], offered me the tools to understand I was wrong, I say I'm wrong.
Mirrors helped me unwind generative ideas and to become closer to film-based photography; I'd develop 16"x20" fiberbased prints resembling WWII arial shots of ghost towns. The mirrors, balanced like a hosue of cards, eventually deserved a permanant home in a 2'x2'x2' box. The current Infinity Box is 3'x3'x3' and is capable of spinning - inspired by the spinning cube on UofM's campus & and the rock that weekly gets painted.
Originally conceived because of its interior rather than its exterior, it now has become a visual staple to both my front yard & to creative explorations my son and I develop each semester. We consider it public art.
My mom restored & ammended antique furniture. As a teenager I never understood it, never appreciated colonial or folk traditions, and never had a desire to add pigment to my world beyond a sharpie on a pair of jeans or my bedroom walls.
Ownership of change - manipulating space(s) via experimenting with how they alter me.
