 1. Who were your teachers or influences?
Although I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be an artist, after spending less than a semester at both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the School of Visual Arts, I decided that formal training wasn't for me. Hence, I can't credit any teachers, in the strictly academic sense of the word. As a teen I read a lot of books on art (and still do), and that, along with trial and error, is how I first learned to oil paint. Additionally, I've been very fortunate in my career to have been around and learned from many truly great artists, especially Ron English, for whom I worked as a painting assistant. My taste is actually pretty varied, and I have favorites from nearly every art movement. This may be surprising to some, but I also feel equally visually inspired by filmmakers as much as painters – Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, and Dario Argento are a few influences, and the numerous fantasy films I obsessed over in my childhood have certainly had an impact on me as well. 2. What techniques or tricks did you find most useful when learning to paint? Employing grisaille technique when first learning to paint can be very beneficial because it simplifies the process by breaking down values first, apart from colors. 3. What are 3 key principles of making good art, in your opinion? For a work of art to be of merit, in my opinion, it has to have at least one of the following elements (and I'm listing these in order of what I feel is the least to most difficult to attain as an artist): 1. Strong visual impact (whether it be pleasing or distressing) 2. Something to communicate to the viewer 3. Innovation in aesthetic or technique 4. What are the most common mistakes that you see other artists make? I make plenty of mistakes of my own, so I'm probably not in a position to judge, but I will give my sincere thoughts on the matter. I have two opposing sides when answering this question – one comes from my experience as a gallerist, and the other as an artist, so I'll do this in two parts. As a gallerist: Setting unrealistic prices, especially when just starting out, and aggravating curators by missing deadlines and being otherwise unreliable. You really don't want to make a curator's already difficult job harder than need be; keep in mind that your goal should be to have your galleries as enthusiastic as possible about selling your work and showing you again. As an artist: Not remaining true to yourself, following trends, and basically creating the same piece over and over again. If your work isn't an ongoing investigation into your experiences, thoughts, or even your craft, then you're essentially just making home decor... and if what you're aiming to do is to simply to pump out a commodity, there are probably a lot more practical, and profitable, things you could devote your talents to than fine art. 5. Can you break your painting process down into 10 steps, or less, for us? 1. First comes developing the concept for the artwork. For me, this frequently materializes through reflecting on my own experiences, interpersonal relationships, and social dynamics in which I'm immersed, and from there begins to emerge a visual metaphor of sorts. Some of my inspiration also results from both examining the work of others throughout art history, and reflecting on my own art, and figuring out how I can expand upon previously touched on ideas. I usually will write down my thoughts immediately so that I don't forget anything (and at this point I've amassed a list of painting ideas so long that I'll never get around to actually executing all of them!). 2. Once I have a vision of the piece I want to create, and decide to move forward with it, I begin to make concept sketches and lay out the composition. Following that, I'll organize props and models, and will shoot reference photos. Often times I will either manipulate and collage these images digitally, or draw/paint directly on top of of the print-outs for further preliminary development of my concept. 3. I cut and prime my panel, after which I apply the drawing – first in pencil, then outlining it in acrylic, and laying a ground color over the entire surface. 4. How I proceed with my initial oil layer depends on piece. I will either apply my colors directly with an alla prima approach, or create a monochromatic underpainting (lately I've been using umbers for this layer, but much of my older work was done in a blue or green underpainting). If the latter is the method I'm using, then numerous thin color glazes are applied with linseed oil. For the majority of the painting process, I try to keep the work mid-level as far as values, then at very end apply my brightest highlights and darkest tones to give everything a final pop. Once my oil painting has dried, I apply a varnish. 5. The final step in my process is an inevitable plague of self doubt and critique of the artwork, which results in a dread of sending images to the gallery, and not wanting to show the painting at all... then trying to figure out ways in which I can make the next one better. And though it can be vexing, I think that never being satisfied with your own work is a key element in pushing yourself to evolve.
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 1. Who were your teachers or influences?
I can separate my influences into two very rough (and partially overlapping) categories: hand and mind. For the former, I can say, a huge influence on my draftsmanship as a young teenager was Mucha: I, like a lot of folks, was absolutely gobsmacked with his line quality, not only in his finished commercial work, but also in his illustrative work and sketches. I never even particularly liked drawing ladies, but I spent hours trying to master his effortlessness around bottom lips and nose points and slitted bedroom eyes. Trying to master him started me on the path to learning just how much work and repetition it takes to move draftsmanship forward. As for the mind, I’ve been really excited about mid-century movements in the past few years, and their approach to the concept of what makes an artwork. Fluxus, Actionism, conceptual art, and whatnot. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to process what it means for my own work, which is rather obviously still mired in old-fashioned notions of the artwork and hand-work. But I’m trying to stretch my oeuvre, at least, with more assemblage and film pieces, when the opportunity presents itself. I recently did a large installation in conjunction with my solo show at Thinkspace entitled “I’ve Made My Bed, Now’, which was a great opportunity to do an installation in a public setting. 2. What techniques or tricks did you find most useful when learning to paint? Gouache is one hell of a teacher. It taught me that I’m not the boss. It’s so finicky and particular about the way that it wants to be handled, and I learned that I would have to be the flexible material, not it, if I wanted to master it. I learned to embrace more spontaneity and experimentation, less rigidity in my technique, to see a mistake as a part of process to be included and cherished in a painting. For instance, you can’t have rigid expectations of palette with gouache, because it dries different colors than when it’s wet, and different still from when it’s straight out of the tube. I learned to enjoy whatever accidental artifacts bloomed up whilst layering. I learned that “painting well” is rather an arbitrary notion, and that “screwing up” can easily be reframed as “painterliness.” 3. What are 3 key principles of making good art, in your opinion? I don’t particularly like the classification of “good art”, since the terms of judgment are arbitrary at best (and fascist at worst), and “bad art” can be just as useful and instructive as “good art”, if we’re naming one or the other. For me, I think best practices can be boiled down to 1. Make art, 2. As much as you can, 3. From the gut. (Wherein “the gut” is both a full, digesting belly of inspiration and thinking, and the inner, automatic impulses of your own mind.) 4. What are the most common mistakes that you see other artists make? Hey, anyone’s entitled to the work that they make, I suppose I’m no better judge than anyone else. For me, personally, I like to see art where the process of, and joy taken in, the making of a piece is apparent. I think the meat of a painting (, drawing, sculpture, thought bubble) is the human-time and human-hand and human-mind encoded therein, not just the final product, and I like to see how much fun the artist had in making it. I think you see a lot of work that looks churned-out and coldly composed, and it’s absolutely boring to me. Think and play your work. Squelch and touch and poke your work. Mess it, ruin it, violence it. It’s not a quiet, sacred ossification of image— it’s a place of mind-play, expression, material-squeezing, mark-making. 5. Can you break your painting process down into 10 steps, or less, for us? 1. Idea/concepting stage: I work constantly, obsessively, in a sketchbook, hours every day. If I need to make a few paintings, I'll pore over the last month or two of work and pull out ideas. Sometimes, if I'm making a series or a show, I'll keep a side thumbnail page of possible paintings. 2. Narrowing: once I have an idea of what I'd like to use for a piece, I'll try to spend some time exploring it in sketches, considering different angles, inclusions, overlays, compositions. If there are a lot of moving parts in the piece, or if the composition could have a few different outcomes, I might make copier paper cutouts of the parts and move them around until I'm happy, and re-draw that. 3. Transferring to painting surface: it varies how closely I follow the sketches. Sometimes I'll take the general idea of what I've been working on in the sketchbook, and re-draw it on the larger paper. Sometimes, if I've spent a lot of time really hammering into the composition, especially for larger paintings, I'll transfer it with an old overhead projector I have. I'll either use a hard graphite pencil or a light red pencil for this bit. I'll have prepped the surface with at least one wash of color before drawing, just to have something down. 4. Starting painting: Typically, I'll get a wash or two of the background in so that I have have a mental base for the other values in the painting. Afterwards, I'll lay in the general values of the painting subjects, just roughly set where the darks are (and the lights, by omission). 5. The boring meat: After laying in values, I'll fill in with opaque layers, bit by bit, in no particular order than my whim at the time (or, sometimes, in a manner that helps balance tones from one side to the other). I usually blend on the piece, so I spend a lot of time moving between sections, blending them into each other. 6. The fun meat: In between layers, or when I feel like it, I write, draw, and collage in the piece. Sometimes I keep track of hours in the piece, sometimes they're shopping or to-do lists, sometimes it's things I've heard on the radio. 7. Loosening: Once larger areas of the piece are complete and blended, it tends to look a little tight, so I'll go through and mess it up with texture brushstrokes. Hatching and whatnot to undo some of the rendering. |
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