Some of these ideas I painted exactly as they
were, others I only took hints from. If you look through here, you can probably
match up all the sources with the paintings they became. So in my monochrome
era I drew my ideas from here, but now that I’m doing color, there’s basically
none of that.
That seems like it would remove the physical
catalysts that get you started painting.
That’s why I do it off the
cuff and at a moment’s notice. I love abstract paintings, so I challenge myself
each time, but somewhere along the way I always end up thinking the piece isn’t
really me and switching back over to something concrete. Usually I’ll start out
just messing around, drawing and erasing, and then the stuff I make starts to look somehow like a person’s butt or legs.
That’ll give me some idea of how to progress things, and as I do, the painting
starts to take shape.
So you aren’t simply painting the first image
that pops into your head so much as gradually letting
internal images surface as the painting takes shape?
Sometimes I’ll have a concrete idea in mind—like “I’ll paint a family
portrait”—and I just draw whatever comes into my head. But it’s not like when I paint something while
looking at a material source like I did before; I’m more trying to work from as
“au naturel” a state as possible.