What do you do?

3:14 AM 10/17/2008; adds 11:13 AM 1/11/2010 (dates of original writing and its update)

Q What do you do?
A I make marks on different supports; paper, canvas, linen, wood, cardboard, ????

[10:05 AM 10/17/2008]
Q What does this mean? Do you call yourself an artist?
A Precise definitions that describe what I do are difficult to organize. As part of an answer to your first question, I use the materials and tools that all fine artists use to create paintings. I am primarily a painter in the fine art sense. Yes. I will call myself an artist. As you can see I have injected the term “fine art” and “artist” to mean a connection between these two as compared to a painter that connects the terms “house” and “commercial” together. I am not a house painter. However, one aspect of fine art painting today is this: Commercialism has crept in to this business big time since 1990. So separating a difference between “house” and “fine art” painters today can be a tricky thing to do. For me, today, much ado about painting has to do with money and not art.

Q Can you elaborate more on this?
A No. Next topic please!]

Q How do you make these marks?
A I use acrylic paints mostly. Apply these paints to these supports using a variety of tools; brushes, sponges, fingers, squeegees of different kinds (cardboard scrap, polyethylene sheets, window squeegee), mono printing from (polyethylene plates, wax paper plates, paper plates, metal plates, glass plates), pouring, etc. I use any way to manipulate the paint as i can and best suits my feelings or urges at the moment the act of painting starts. The technique for application, then, is much determined by the mark each tool makes as it spreads a coat of paint. This is the fun in mark making this way. It is truly an exercise in making marks.

Q What does your art mean?
A If it has meaning in any sense, this meaning must be brought to the engagement by the audience singly or in group. There is no intentional literature applied here. The energy source for making my marks is open and free from linguistic connections. There are no stories being told here. Energy, however one wishes to define energy, is transferred from within me through media (paint), the tool used to make the mark to the support. Beyond that action no hidden meanings are imported to the work.

Q If your art has no meaning, then why do you do or make it; the art; the painting; the marks?
A Why not? Making marks on different supports is as old as man. Making marks with various mark-making tools is an ancient almost indigenous act made by all humans from the age of two onward (I could be wrong on the age here — it has been a while since I last studied mark making by human beings and its history). Once the mark is made, its meaning can be interpreted by as many people who engage with it. A mark on a surface can be revisited many times and mean different things upon each new visit. Meaning in art is in the eye/mind of the beholder. For me, the more photographic a painting becomes, the more literature becomes an automatic connection to this painting. The further away from photography a painting becomes, the more abstract, the more this painting becomes a mirror-like event. In this sense a painting becomes a device for reflections and projections between the maker [made] and a viewer.

Q Several years ago you titled your web site “Marks from the mind”?
A Yes. I think this was back in 1998 or 1999. At that time I felt that I was a mark maker as an artist. I strongly related my motivations to make marks from withing a self defined set of Zen paradigms that had no hard rules really. What I thought my art to be could never be defined as I felt it. The marks were a never ending moving target. We can never step into the same river twice. When we try to define our lives, I think the difficulty in revealing who we are by us is because where we are and who we are is wrapped in this arena of the never ending target. This, of course is caused by time never stopping. Always continuing to from past to future with an extremely short stop, maybe, in the present. I am not sure the present exists. Getting back to your main point, today I am moving my self definitions as an artist to the position of being a mark maker.

Q Are you, then, an abstract expressionist artist?
A No! Yes! I don’t know! I can’t be an abstract expressionist painter in real time because this isn’t the ’40’s when this approach to painting was first introduced. If I am an abstract expressionist, then I am a 4th generation AbExEr. I forgot how many years defines a generation. Most first gen AbExErs were born around 1900 – 1910. I was born in 1941. So my guess is that I am a 3rd or 4th gen AbExEr in this sense. There have been moments in my career that I really liked abstract expressionism. Then there have been moments that abstract expressionism has left the building and disconnected from my mark making. I do, however, use a filtered version of Surrealist Automatism as a main energy source to motivate my working process. This process was used by some of the 1st gen AbExErs. Most recent self analysis of what I think i do takes me back to just a simple mark maker. AbEx, to me, today, is simply another tool to use to help in my mark making.

Q Can you say more about this process?
A No! Well, Yes! Simply put: I like to paint. I like to make marks using different colors of paint and make line and shapes. Most of the time I let the design take care of itself as it unfolds in front of me. The painting, in this sense, exists as a recording of this performance. And, like a finger print, the marks take on my personality. I think all art does this.

Q Thank you for your time.
A Your welcome.

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