You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
- Franz Kafka
In college I did welding and steel sculpture; the teacher said, That’s not where your talent is. Then I concentrated seriously on print-making, and became Vincent Longo’s printing assistant. But what I liked most was drawing the human figure.
The human form led me forward. I started painting more than twenty years ago. I’ve always used live models for my portraits and nudes, now over Zoom. I love the Fauvists—the wild beasts of color. Often I use paint straight from the tubes—bold. Color is totally instinctual for me. The painting tells me what to do. I listen. It just happens. Once I draw a face, figure, or landscape on the canvas, the image guides me. It’s the experience of painting, rather than subject matter, that compels me.
Each painting prepares me for the next one. Academics say when you look at a face, you need to measure it, so it all corresponds and lines up. I have never painted like that. Now that I’ve learned those tools, I feel confident throwing them away. Painting teaches me how colors play against other colors—next to each other and overlaying. Orange is my favorite—it pops and radiates vibrancy.
Everything around me disappears when I paint. I lose all sense of time and space. I give it everything, and I’m exhausted afterwards. I’m hyper-focused. I don’t have to worry about making nice pictures. I have a basic rule: nothing is so precious that I can’t wipe it out and start over. I’m not attached. I don’t own.
I don’t have to worry about mixing paints. I look at a color and say, I want it. I mix it. I never thought I had a style, but now that I see all my paintings together, it’s clear that I do. The subject matter is irrelevant. It’s pure process. I never paint family members, or any subject matter that has an underlying emotional component. I find landscapes freeing—especially after a concentrated period of tightly focused painting. They clear the palette (pun intended).
I know when a painting is finished. It definitively tells me. I have no regrets when I put down my brush and move to the next one. I only look forwards, never backwards. Most of my decisions are driven by gut impulse. Each painting session is spontaneous and fresh. I can’t replicate and I don’t try.