the daily practice of painting
I believe in work. It has been my most reliable solution.
I have never believed in inspiration or safety as a condition for work or for anything else. The former is unreliable and the latter is a stranger to me. If a sense of safety were a necessity to being an artist, I never would have become one. I did not want to have to depend on something or someone outside of me to make my work. I did not want to have to look for validation or support or welcome or encouragement because I knew from bitter experience that those things are subject to whims and fashion.
I could not build a practice on anything on which I could not depend. That meant that I had to develop a sense of things I thought were worth investigating and a sense of what is at stake in being an artist alive at this moment. The things that interest me as an artist today are the same things that have interested me my entire life. Even though the materials of the work may shift, the concerns are the same across all of the bodies of work. What some people think of as ventures into other media are for me an extension of my practice as a painter.
So I work everyday in some way. These paintings are an example of my daily practice. They 6x6 inches square on clayboard. Most are gouache and a couple are casein and a few are high flow acrylic and they are uploaded in close to chronological order with a few exceptions (the last paintings are the latest). No one asked me to make them and no one needs them. They are the work I do every day.
