9.09

 

Note on painting accompanying the show Girls

at Museum 52

 

My imagination is limited and my ideas are vague. But I want to make paintings that are

thorough - brought to a finish (and hopefully a finish that resonates with experience, that

reveals the contradictory and unsettling nature and complexity of the commonplace). I

think any subject is potentially unsettling, but I choose familiar ones (my face, my

clothes, the stuff in my studio) because I can evaluate them easily. They are legible. I

have studied them, and I know what I do and don’t like about them. I can transform

them, dissect them, simplify them, and destroy them with confidence. They provide

criteria for proceeding with a painting, and that criteria is based on years of observation

and consideration. This is the best way I know.