here I go

I watched "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child" last night, and two things stuck with me this morning. Number one, I loved watching him paint. He painted quickly and decisively; even when he made "mistakes" he simply responded to them rather than attempting to hide or deny them. There is a boldness and openness in his work that I see in my 4-year old daughters when they draw or paint. There's no preconception, nor are there hesitations because it might be "wrong." The action of doing it makes it right. Picasso said it, "it takes a very long time to become young" [again].

The other thing I thought about in the pre-dawn was something Basquiat said, "Influences are not influences at all. They are ideas passing through my new brain."

It has made me reflect on how I work, and the importance of what I see as the The Conversation in art and in art-making.

For my first book, I asked my former art history professor and occasional drinking buddy (pre-children) to write an essay about my work. I wanted something very academic, and I must say she delivered. Yet, one thing she said has stayed with me all these years:

Rico's process is at once synthetic and original. The initial steps may be in part imitative of another artist; the end result is by no means the same. Rico has used the fullness of art history and his personal aesthetic experiences to create multifarious paintings. Each of these artistic sources provide him with a new artistic language from which to work.

There are ideas which cannot adequately translate between languages. When Italians speak of style, it carries a very different meaning than it does in English. Phrases like, joy of life, or fully lived, do not carry the weight and fullness that they do in French or Spanish. Likewise, cool simply cannot be translated. To this end, I suppose I've always felt free to adopt new languages in painting. Color expressed through Hoffman, or darkness and light through Caravaggio, or luminosity and spirituality through Rothko or Turner.

I feel as though I'm talking to these artists; while I am making the work and also in a completed work. I'm obsessed with materiality and with learning and incorporating new ways of approaching and utilizing materials. And while at times I worry that I am not "original" enough, I am slowly seeing something of a style in my work emerge and this voice is unique.

I can be a very prideful person and I wrestle with this. At the same time, I am not arrogant nor overly self-confident and it is hard for me to promote myself and my work. I am not shy, but I can be incredibly reserved. I've studied great artists for 8 years now; through film, books, interviews and of course the art itself. Again and again, I have said that I don't care for fame or money; what I want is greatness. I want people to have an experience when they see work, and I want the work I do to survive time and to resonate with the people of some time and culture in the future -that which will replace ours. Like Basquiat, I want to box with the big boys and nothing short is acceptable.

The holiday season begins next week and so my posts will become less and less frequent as we come to the end of the year. This turning away from media and the net is an annual ritual and I feel a very healthy one. I am still trying to get funding for my proposed renovations to the studio (which is difficult and frustrating because I'm told it is not a large enough sum of money, but it is money I don't have), but I am always somewhat at the mercy of the weather. I hope to get a lot of work done over the next two months, and hopefully I'll be able to do so.

I know what's coming. I am already starting to see it, and hear it and walk around it in my mind. I see spatially. I always have. When I was a set designer, I used to drive directors crazy because I failed to understand how they couldn't walk through the set mentally as I could. So at this stage of working through paintings in my head, I can literally rotate them, visualize them from different perspectives and at different heights and imagine surface reflections. I guess I always assumed that everybody could do this, and it was a shock to realize they cannot.

In closing I wanted to mention that another former professor of mine, who is also a friend, had his sculpture vandalized on campus over the weekend. It will have to be replaced. I was pretty upset over the incident and removed my own work, (which I had loaned to the College) as a sign of support for his loss. I had offered to sell this painting to the school, at what I believe is a very fair price, but they declined. I had so many compliments on this piece and I'm sad it won't find a permanent home where it was, because I have to say it looked stunning. I've wrestled a lot lately with feeling devalued and trying to return the proper balance of day job and studio. There is also the constant struggle with my location and isolation. It's been a heady time, but I feel as though I'm coming out of it now.