COMPONENT PIECES
... Simplicity was achieved, and then of course a desire for the subtleties of relationship emerged. The other thing that showed up was a crisis of the tradition of painting… and I started to question form. Maybe the ideas I wanted to express, maybe they cannot be actualized in the tradition of the painting.
I started to look at sculpture and materials and what happened if the shapes in the paintings (Landscape Abstractions) came out of the painting and existed on their own as real objects in space, with the painting alongside. This happened specifically with the Pale King.
And then, came the question: how much do I need landscape? Can I say the things I want to say - can they be said in a non-objective work? So I tested it.
Painting evolves into environment. It’s been pulled apart physically. The success of that was real. It became about dripping the landscape and powder coated steel as a piece of alien technology existing outside, and even further away. I had to jump off the edge of the chasm into an area where I wouldn’t have the help of the landscape or the comfort of an image to support the making of the thing, and all the elements to make the thing had to come from languages I had yet to explore.
Component Pieces are made of shapes and sculptural things, and most existed on a wall. Many of the works were made with nonpainterly things- steel, aluminum, mirrored plexiglass. Ultimately, they referred to a painting. I couldn’t escape this elemental part of what I do, and returned to it - proof of myself.
This body is a fulcrum point of consciousness. I had to test a number of things and put myself in a position to not have any gravitational help. And it was very difficult - people didn’t understand it. It was an identity shift away from the successful for the deeper.
This body was compulsive, a leap of faith. After the Pale King, and the work that came after it, I was in the space of non-objective works… exploring the unsalable as a test. It was about important investigations that gave me sensitivities that I did not have previously. It widened me as an artist, made me more plastic, more visionary. And the process made me appreciate the image, its fantasy and its aphrodisiac qualities.
Discovering the Materials and the poetry of their own.
And there is a narrative. I went through - I got one component piece and had a show, and once the work was up, I said I don’t want to do this work anymore. So then I wondered what I was going to do, and what work I was going to make. I didn't have a plan, I didn’t know what to make, I felt I had painted myself into a corner. And I was on a little stool in a corner and there were snakes and alligators everywhere - and if I moved, I thought I was going to die and I was going into the studio, and I would put my head down on the work table because I didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t make a mark for a while. I wanted to go back to painting but I didn’t know how to explain it to myself or explain it. I didn’t know the motivation would have been. What would I make, and what would I do?