There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time. ― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives I went on… (read more)
Years ago, I had this idea that I wanted to make a painting about excess. I am not a big Rolling Stones fan, but one song, Shattered, came up when I was listening to iTunes. That ending part where Jagger sings, “Pile it up/Pile it high on the platter!” stuck in my head. It was like… (read more)
I have been working on this painting for about a year now. It did not start out looking like this. I had a photograph as a reference for this painting. I don’t normally work from photos; it’s too difficult for me. I start to feel some kind of weird responsibility, as if the painting won’t… (read more)
Painting is a way to see if something is possible. In a real way, exploring a motif is an investigation to see if it is possible to be painted. I wonder sometimes if something cannot be painted. Wondering is pointless, however, because the only way to know is something is paintable is to try to… (read more)
Steve Locke: I think you are making some very challenging and gorgeous paintings, they were a high point of the last DeCordova Biennial. The ones that Lexi Lee Sullivan chose for that show married a haptic and almost brutal paint handling to elegant and bravura drawing. The result was spell binding. Like Vija Celmins, you… (read more)
Page from tonight’s sketchbook. From text to form.
I have a lot of things to remember. That is why I started making these monuments. I didn’t know that they were monuments when I was started, but, like most artists, I don’t immediately know what the subject of the work is when I am making it. As I continued to make them, it was clear… (read more)
I finished a painting today. I had been painting on it for a while. At least 8 years, I think. I don’t mean I was painting on it every day for 8 years. I mean from time to time, over that stretch of time, I would take up the picture and try to get it… (read more)
I am thinking about my palette for paintings and I have been doing a lot of walking lately. Now, I am not the sort of person who has ever been remotely interested in painting the landscape. Seriously, it was something I did when I was in school but I was never very good at it…. (read more)
A detail from the glorious “Self-portrait in a Tuxedo” (1927) on view at the Harvard Museums weird ass “greatest hits” installation at the Sackler. Everyone is usually kvelling over his use of black but the joy is the chromatic shadows in the face. You can see this painting and then go look at the Poussin’s… (read more)