In his book Philosophy and Belief David-Levi Strauss quotes the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilem Flusser from his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography, “‘The apparatus functions just as the universe does, namely, automatically,’ which is evil. So we need ‘envisioners,’ producers of technical images who ‘try to turn an automatic apparatus against its own condition of being automatic.’ The unrelenting techno-optimism has a pessimistic counter: ’the world has be come meaningless, and consciousness will find nothing there but so many disconnected elements.'”
My father was a builder and I idealized the blueprints he carried with him. He liked to communicate ideas by sketching things on a napkin, and I learned to do this too. Maps and schematics only make sense locally, where as pictures work as fragments separate from the whole. Technology is a medium that affects composition; it generates problems of scale, distance and touch. The space inside the shape of the canvas is a specific place, in the same way the world outside the frame is specific; this is context. These two places can sit adjacent and relate without one coming to depict the other.
I’m working against the image in that my work is generated through action on the canvas, it is non-representational. There is no authority or idea outside the painting itself. The work is improvisational and spontaneous. Sometimes I use images in my work or make copies or tracings of my own paintings as a way to turn the image against itself. I grew up in Northern California and learned to paint landscapes. Space and depth is significant, I like how the perception of space creates psychological space.
I’m committed to the form of painting as a site of touch, the unconscious, experimentation and spiritual learning.
An image is remote, creating an invisible separation between life (time and space) and information(static). I hope that painting can be away of attaching to the world in a way that is physically and materially alive.
