AE and Automatism

D:\artstatements\aeandautomatism.txt

1:45 AM 9/15/2007

AE and Automatism

I have always wanted to work within the classic American Abstract Expressionist School of painting since I can remember. When I first started to study art, I was immediately attracted to painters working this way. I fumbled around with other approaches, but when I finally did hit my stride in AE, I was elated. This was 1963 or there abouts.

Working within this tradition is difficult because it is easy to fall under the spell of one artist or another. My first giant as an influence was Hans Hofmann. Then came Philip Guston. I tried to merge these two and come out somewhere along my own road. I kinda succeeded toward the late 1960’s, then I got trapped into believing what I read at the time. This kind of painting was dead. Of course the POP folk were now established and the minimalists were also underway. What did I do? I went another course and worked with the figure in an abstracted realist way in drawing, brush paintings and sprayed paintings. This lasted from 1969 to 1973. I tired of this approach and went back to AE. I have never really strayed since. Oh, I worked on a program of abstracted seascapes from 1981 to 1987. In late 1987 I finally came back to AE and have been here one way or the other since. Oh, again, I strayed into geometric abstraction from 2004 to September 2006. Then I came back again to AE and automatism with a focus on non-gesture [as an intellectual insert], paint pouring, paint manipulation with knives and scrapers of various sizes, monoprints from polyethylene plates of various sizes, paint transfer using waxed papers and similar impregnated papers as transfer platforms.

All of my AE work has involved strong use of Automatism. Some of my first solution ideas and moves involved intellectual structures; painting moves and ideas out of my past and their deliberate use in a paining or a conscious choice to use a structure borrowed from another artist or my own past. Some of my first solution ideas arise from pure improvisation. Improvisation in its pure form is the most exciting process for me when it works, and the most horrifying when it fails. At the moment I am enjoying a new found trust in my ability to carry out first solution ideas; locate the love areas and destroy them –paint them out for the good of the project’s forward progress. Over the years trying to save the love areas (those ares in a painting you just love because they are juicy or something) –trying to save them, for me, breeds anxiety and ultimate failure whentry to solve the rest of the painting around the love area [francis bacon audio interview on the subject of destroying paintings]. Francis Bacon speaks to this destruction eloquently in a BBC interview with ?????. So, saving the love area means the painting will fail. I have experienced this at the rate of 100% failure. Now, I get rid of the love area immediately and move on. How exhilarating. I think the new paintings on paper, wood and canvas are much more exciting because I no longer try to save the love areas.

In the end, I still want to continue the AE movement in painting. I don’t buy into the current thinking that this approach to painting is dead. It comes in and out of fashion commercially. But there are many, many painters who continue to work in this way. I find the AE approach still alive and full of unexplored territory. I continue to take this road because the road still offers unseen vistas as I travel it.

funny thing, there is some renewed interest in writing on abstraction. ARTnews April 2007 issue.

Before closing, my brand of abstraction is non-objective abstraction. There is no physical references in my painting. Otherwise, abstract painting can deal with any subject the artist wants to engage from realism to non-objectivity. All abstract painting in any of its forms is subjective and reflects the personality of its maker.

dpn

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addendum

I remember in graduate school how horrified fellow students and some faculty were about my interest in paint and paint application processes considered as legitimate subject matter for painting. Why not? Paintings are paint. Even at their most realistic in imaging, they are still paint on a flat surface. So to me, in 1964, paint and paint application was a legitimate subject matter for making paintings; exploring the painting process as subject was legitimate. It is even more focused and part of my painting experience today – 44 years later. Egad, how time flies???!!!!

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to be continued

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