Often when I am painting from life I find myself getting into deep conversations with people who are interested in what I am doing. Painting directly from life is such a ridiculously outmoded form of representation and translation of a subject, most people see this in such a novel light they will hang out for hours, something I try to be open to and see as part of the happening of the piece. I find these conversations often get into philosophical and spiritual discussions and I feel like often this has an unexpected impact on the process of each piece.
I recently became interested in representing the machine series through the subject of cars, quite unexpectedly. Over the past few years I found myself having less interest in motorcycles as a subject, though I haven’t abandoned it entirely as a subject. Ironically I found these paintings embraced by folks interested in motorcycles and less understood by folks interested in paintings. Somehow cars as a subject hold some greater common truth, because of their ubiquity as objects along with their absolute necessity to American livelihood.
From the standpoint of formal oil paintings, as still life paintings and portraits at the same time, the motorcycle series explore identity and self. It examines the idea of social roles, objectification and stereotyping. These are paintings of machines and the personification of the machine. The fact that the motorcycle is a fossil fuel dependant, internal combustion machine popularized at the height of the mid century post war modernist period and adopted as an icon of personal expression and freedom, philosophically makes it a loaded and pluralist, multi layered subject.
These paintings were done directly from life of actual bikes owned by friends and people I know; many of the machines in these paintings have been customized in various ways over the years reflecting the personality of the owner or in some cases the previous owner. The paintings explore the concept of the state of desire as an unfulfilled state of being and the way our culture often defines human value through objects and individuality through the mass-produced commodity. The objective is to capture the essence of the moment within each painting. Through representing a familiar subject, I wish to create a universal dialog about transcendence of the material, duality, purity, mortality and time.
