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October 30, 2009

Psychedelicious Painting Daily Progress

Filed under: Painting — Matty @ 3:23 pm

I’ve never actually been able to show multiple pictures of an entire painting on this blog — for two very practical reasons. One, I’ve not started and finished a painting in twelve months now, and two, this blog has been up for those same twelve months. Wait. Are those two things related?

This painting is the first one I’ll hopefully finish. It’s based on a non-concentric spiral image that appeared to be computer generated; I found it online doing a google image search for “spiral.” Why spirals? Well, I wanted to try to do two things: not use any generative detail previously used in my painting practice to start and finish a painting. Meaning, no photograph, no architecture, no image bordering on representation, no color scheme, etc. Second, I wanted to make the new paintings do exactly what the drawings don’t: work with color, get sloppy, fall apart, be singular. That doesn’t really answer why spirals I guess. I had an image of a spiral appear in my head one day, completely out of the blue. Felt like an omen. And the image, I thought, would allow me to reduce painting to a daily practice of mark making, which I figured would trick my head into making and finishing work again.

If you want to see this thing “get made,” then come back until it’s done, scroll down to the bottom, and one by one scrolling back up, you’ll see it happen. Wish me luck. I’ll be damned if I don’t finish this thing.

Psychedelicious One: Byloos Painting Gets Made
So now it’s getting to a choosy stage, by which I mean I can’t just mix up a color and fill in a shape — I have been starting to make decisions about how to spread the colors out, mostly between green and pink, and thereby maximize the effect.

Psychedelicious One: Studio Day Number 19

Psychedelicious One: Studio Day Number 19

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October 21, 2009

Questions for Artists From Holland Carter

Framing the Message of a Generation by Holland Cotter
Published: May 29, 2009 in the NY Times

Alan Mccollum

Alan Mccollum

“…Is same generation a useful basis for writing history? Obviously the answer is yes and no. For years now scholars have questioned the validity of viewing the cultural past and the present through the old apparatus of renaissances, dynasties and “periods.” They see these categories for what they are: packaging designed to sell an account of events that will go down smoothly and leave no spaces blank or questions unanswered. Generations could be added to the list.

Isn’t the point of art, though, to acknowledge that some questions can never be answered, but to ask them anyway? Isn’t part of the job of artists to refuse smoothness and to keep opening up space, formal, temporal, psychic, emotional, whatever you want to call it? In the end the generational model may be most useful for showing us the artists who don’t fit, who aren’t interested, who think old when they’re young and young when they’re old, to whom it may or may not occur as they walk past the hall of fame, “not me, not here, not yet.”

Read the entire article in the NY Times here: Framing the Message of a Generation.