We build fires in the night and look up into the stars. We have always built fires, alone, with small groups and in ritual. Sometimes we are one with the fire and night and stars and one another; but inevitably, someone comes along and wants to rule. They tell us the fire belongs to them. We should depend on this person, for our protection, for our quality of life, for our advancement, for our freedom. Milena have come and gone. The big man, the chief, the king, the pope, the dictator and all the rulers have tried to sell us the same bill of goods; that they know best, and lining their pockets with our gold is the only way to maintain life as we know it.
It has always been a lie. It is a lie today.
There is no Art World. There are small enclaves of very wealthy people engaged in speculation and some kind of visual product happens to be being traded. It looks a lot like art; and sometimes it happens to be, but none of these people notice. There are galleries along the streets of Chelsea and the Lower East Side and they are selling something that, sometimes, was made by hand in some studio by someone and these someone call themselves artists. These big auction houses and large and small galleries and dealers tell us artists that we need them. That they alone can make our lives worthwhile and we should seek them out and lay our gifts at their feet for judgment lest we risk lifelong obscurity and poverty and madness. It's a compelling and, at times, seductive argument. But we should never forget that we built the fires before they came along with their white walls and client lists. We stared and shouted in the night sky before the glittering lights of SoHo faded into Tribeca. We will make, long after they can no longer afford the rent. We will create without their audiences, -in obscurity, and madness and poverty if we must.
For us there is no business plan. There is only an imperative. We must make, and we must reach, and we must push out beyond the known and the possible because we alone know in our hearts that out in those regions we will build new fires and find new gods and build new worlds. That anyone who offers us freedom in exchange for anything isn't actually offering freedom at all.
There is nothing wrong with the art world. It lives in 200 sq foot studios in the flower district, and make-shift garages, and abandoned warehouses, and storage units, and extra (or not) bedrooms from coast to coast and across the world and it cannot be owned or regulated, and it is immune to your auction houses and soulless collections that collect dust for the sole purpose of making more money. It lives in the faces of the mad, the obscure and the poor in every city in this country and quite a few small towns and rural hamlets too. You will never see the greatest painting this nation has to offer. Those people will die and the work will not endure and great treasures will be lost. There are many, many things that wealth can never own. You don't have to be rich to collect art, that too is a lie.
We don't need. We want; and in our wanting we suffer. That is why people are given power; because we believe their lies that they can end our suffering.
I paint to reach the possible, which always lies just beyond the impossible, I think. I paint grand to see if I can do it. I stretch my physical and technical limitations because I believe that is the whole point of living; and that safety and security and comfort are slow, numb deaths that bring us nothing and surround us with so much that we don't even notice it anymore.
I may never have fame. I may never sell another painting in my lifetime. All my work may end up locked away and destroyed without seeing the light of day. But I will never quit. I cannot. I have tried and tried to walk away; there are better ways to not make a living, as the saying goes. I come back every time because if I do not paint I am diminished as a human soul. So I speak to every soul, whether they want to hear or not.
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