I paint because it is the only activity in which I am not lying. Language fails me almost immediately for describing the experience of life.
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I am most alive when the paint is fighting back. The canvases I keep returning to are the ones where the surface has been pushed past politeness, where you can see the hand digging in and scraping and coming back. Oil paint at a certain thickness stops being a medium and becomes evidence that a body was here, deciding, hesitating, pressing harder than it meant to. Oil is the only material I know that holds time the way it does. It stays open for days.
Where do you find inspiration?Inspiration may be the wrong word for what actually happens-It implies something descending from above, when the truth is closer to scavenging. I am always taking notes from the world, mostly without meaning to. A bruise on someone's arm on the subway. The way a butcher's apron looks at the end of a shift. The particular green of standing water in a gutter after rain. None of this is romantic. It is closer to a kind of low grade vigilance. The Old Masters are a permanent room in my head.
What would you do with $25,000?I would pay for the canvases, paints and studio supplies I need which would allow me to scale up and continue building the series I am currently working on.
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