Ephemera
Studio Notes
Let the materials do the work. The paint, the paper and glue will go where they go. Your job is to follow, not lead.
Studio Notes
You have to know when to stop. Let the painting breathe. The relentless attack can kill it. Like a plant you have to observe what is growing. See if you can coax that growth.
Studio Notes
The doubt and mild panic of a new piece. It's erased only when you lay something down that changes the direction, brings it out of the mud. It's luck, really. Skill and experience have nothing to do with it.
Studio Notes
It is a return to all-over painting; it is a return to the attack. Keep at 'em until they open up. Lacérée.
Unfortunately, it ain't working. What I have is a lot of paint and paper on a wood panel. I don't have a picture.
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Studio Notes
Some good things have come from my frustration with a painting in the past. The scraper is my reset tool. Tear it all away and see what's left. As best I can tell, nothing interesting is left following this procedure.
Maybe I am just out of ideas.
Studio Notes
This feels like speaking a foreign language, one at which you are not very proficient. Some thoughts or ideas are communicated, but just as many are completely lost. I don't understand these paintings. Not today.
Studio Notes
Sometimes it seems we paint only to remember who we are. If this act, applying paint to a surface, defines who we are, we mustn't stop for risk of vanishing. A painter must paint.
Studio Notes
Too long off the brushes. This is good and bad. It is a fresh start and a clean break from whatever I was doing before. But there is a relearning, a de-rusting of the painting muscles. This takes time and there is inevitably some ugliness I must work through.
Sometimes I can see the potential of a painting, just one small section. How to pull that out of the mud, that is the challenge.
Checklist
1. Haunted by the past
2. Stupid girl
3. A place made for leaving
4. The little defeats add up
5. The holy man
6. A hopelessness grows
7. "rebuilding the old days”
8. "Ain’t got the change of a nickel”
9. Not for sale
10. Buddha smile
11. ちがいます
12. Moved by inaudible tones
13. Magnetic resonance
14. I’ve got some matches; looking for some bridges
15. Bending to the sun
16. Losing half of the sonic information
17. Out of reach
18. Stitched together
19. The last beer
20. He said to himself
21. The questions pile up
22. Live outside the System
23. Number 25
24. What are you selling?
25. La poétesse
26. How do I get to Wednesday?
27. Simultaneity
28. Change the guidance language
29. Warming old bones
30. Impulse
31. Between yesterday and today
32. Reject empire
33. Degrees
This is a short film produced on the occasion of my exhibition Checklist at be-kyoto gallery in Kyoto, Japan 2017.