Someone asked me, a while back, why I don’t talk much about my work.
I thought I’d clear the air a little, on this subject.
I love talking about my work. I’ve been blessed with the gift of gab, but only through text form. I could write for days, little liner notes based on certain paintings, their origin, interesting tidbits, etc.
If you talk to me about my work, I tend to ramble, jump in & out of stories, and talking about things totally unrelated to the initial conversation.
I use to be able to give you the exact date and time, but now I just know it was in the Fall of 2005, and I was in my last months before graduation from Trinity. I had just finished a 8ft+ canvas piece full of imagery, words, phrases, symbols, hidden messages & meanings, that I didn’t divulge information about during it’s critique. I just simply introduced the piece as an abstracted self portrait, and left it at that.
Usually I’d talk at great lengths about any given piece; the meanings, attitude, or reasons behind it. But for one reason or another, I had to forgo the usual spiel, and just had the piece hang there without any verbal support behind it. (I was uncomfortable with that, at the time) Probably due to lack of remaining class time.
After the class & critique was over, later that evening I was in the studio working, when 2 fellow classmates were trying to analyze my piece from earlier in the day.
I told them everything.
Every symbol, every word, phrase, image, the meanings behind and for every element of that piece.
The second I finished talking I felt an enormous drain from my body. Call it lack of oxygen (from talking so much), hunger pangs, or general fatigue (after working in the studio all day), or whatever it may have been, I felt a physical and mental change after that last word.
The piece no longer meant anything to me.
After all the code had been deciphered and every meaning was spoken out loud, all personal attachment from the piece had dissolved into thin air.
I no longer felt like it was even work I had done.
Upon this realization I blacked out the entire piece, and used it in one of my last pieces ever made in my 2nd home I called ‘The Art Barn’.
[Twenty-some years ago, Trinity had constructed a small rectangular structure, out of a concrete slab, sheet metal, and drywall, on campus, and was designated as the temporary Art department’s studio housing.
Twenty-some years later, that building was still standing as the Art department’s ‘studio’, by then, earning it’s campus wide nickname as ‘The Barn’.
And it was the place I focused on being the artist I am, honing my skills as an artist, spending more time in that oversized shed than in my own home.
But something about the rawness of that space, made me think clearer, and explore art deeper than any other space I’ve worked in.]
So the canvas piece was painted over with dark flat black primer, and was rebirthed on a rainy December day, as one of my last pieces ever created in that barn.
The piece consisted of 2 8ft+ black canvas pieces and a t-shirt piece, full of more hidden messages, phrases, meanings, symbols, and imagery that I (on purpose, this time) did not divulge. I didn’t even introduce the piece during it’s critique. I set it up, and simply stood in blank silence as my then professor and fellow classmates awkwardly tried to talk about this ‘thing’ in front of them.
I remember laughing on the inside upon hearing wrong interpretation after wrong interpretation. Every question posed to me, was not answered. If applicable, may have given a nod “yes” or “no”, nothing more.
(my 'standoff' was not intended to be rude, I simply didn't want to talk.)
It’s turned out to be the only piece that’s never been photographed or archived, and the piece has long since been destroyed or scrapped for parts.
That brings us up to now.
For all the work I do, and for as confessional as my work has become (especially the shirt work) I don’t talk about my work as much as I use to.
Simply because I want my work to remain “mine”; whether or not it sells, there are always little tidbits & snippets that only I know about.
And, I’ve learned that leaving details in the dark and allowing the audience to add their own interpretations no longer hinders me or my work. In fact, many times it adds the detail and depth that I no longer get from my former studio.
I'm not the wine & cheese type artist. When I had a solo show & had to provide refreshments, milk & cookies (oreo's) was my treat of choice.
While my work sometimes tackles deep issues, inner feelings, and personal happenings, I'm no longer worried if people don't "get it".
I've learned to take pride in the simplistic aspects; If you think a painting is 'pretty', well then I consider that mission accomplished. If you dig deeper, and create your own theories, more power to you.
With that long winded story, go back & view some work & see if you look at it the same way.
--Nick
*Update – The art barn stood up until 2009, when Trinity built a new, state of the art, huge Art & Communications Center. The last time I was there, the barn had been lowered, re-drywalled, and repainted in & out, and was used as a copy shop on campus. No longer looking or feeling like the home it once was.
