1. Where and how would you display your work in an ideal situation?
Image a tall stone tower. Let's say 5-7 stories tall. It will have a spiral staircase in the center, and at the top of the stair case, a big white cube-shaped room with tons of strategically placed sky lights and very nice track lighting that adjusts with the time of day. White walls, very clean oak hardwood floors with comfortable benches placed around the hole in the center of the floor where the stair case emerges. Climbing the staircase would make the viewer a bit dizzy, which I think would be kind of fun.
2. If expository writing is good at elucidating and proving a point and descriptive geometry gives us the tools by which to map objects in space in relation to one another, what kind of an apparatus does art afford us? What does art do best?
Well, I'll answer this question as it applies to painting. Good painting asks questions. It's at its best when the viewer has to work to connect the dots. This means that not everything is explained at first, and the viewer is forced to ponder, decipher and examine the painting to get the most out of it. I get very bored when people try and paint a painting just like a photograph. It's equivalent to someone giving you $10,000 for doing nothing; the work would not be worth as much as if you had worked for the $10,000, except for the emotional worth. Good painting asks questions of/for the viewer, and when/if that happens, it is more rewarding and enjoyable. People grow from art.
3. What can you expect from your audience/fans/viewing public? What would you like them to know about your work?
I don't expect anything, really. However, I do wish that everyone did not just see the post apocalyptic world in my work. I don't deny that there are elements of destruction, but I still see the rebirth in it too. The themes I explore are akin to a yin and yang. I think everyone is just so depressed about the state of our economy, jobs, wars that everyone just looks for the negative in every situation. At the same time, I don't want to be known as the guy who is "so cheerful in person, but paints such disturbing subject matter!"
4. Marcel Duchamp said - "Enough with retinal art!" What is your reaction as an artist to this statement?
I would say, "Have fun playing chess for the rest of your life!" I remember going to Philadelphia and seeing some of his work. Duchamp painted a painting for every art movement from Impressionism to Cubism, and Philly had one of his from each - all in a row. It looked like he mimicked the movement, got all he could out of it, and moved on. As if all of Cubism could be explained in one painting! This is not to say I don't agree. I think that there needs to be a balance between retinal and thought-provoking.
5. Do you think that there is still room for art movements in today's pluralistic climate?
I think it kind of depends on how artists persevere. When painting first had to deal with photography, everyone said that "painting was dead." Painting evolved, thankfully, and was more interesting, said more, and it truly was better off. Now, photographers have to deal with all the Sunday afternoon digital photographers. Everyone is a photographer now, and the skill and craft loses some importance. Not everyone is trained to understand what makes good pictures. I think that when everyone can do art as well as everyone else, art will cease to exist.
6. What is one question you wished we had asked you about your art? Please feel free to answer it.
How about the age old battle between form and content. Which is more important?
