Brush, Rag & Paint: A short peek behind the curtain of my creative process

I'm a musician by trade, but ever since I was a kid I’ve always liked to draw. I was comfortable working with crayons, pencils and felt tipped pens. But I could never use a paintbrush. Brushes were intimidating. They never felt right. To be exact, brushes always?seemed?like they wouldn’t feel right. The truth is I never really tried using a brush. But not long ago, I decided to change up that childish notion. I drove to the art store and went on a brush-buying spree. Now brushes have become my liberating tools. Sometimes it pays to ignore your own mind.

The following is an excerpt from interview I gave recently. It's got a few insights into how I think about my own creative process.

Now that you’ve clearly dug into your roots as a visual artist, can you briefly describe how you see the intersection between music and painting?

I’d go so far as to say that they’re nearly the same thing. Music is the manipulation of sound waves for the purpose of eliciting an emotion in the listener. Painting is the manipulation of light waves for those same purposes. Manipulation may be the wrong ter and I’d hate for people to think of its negative connotations. A better word might be “coaxing.” I’ve learned over time that using too much force, whether in human interactions or creative endeavors, seldom brings about the best outcome. I feel, and have always felt a kind of urgency around my desire to create things. It’s a kind of mania really, a strong sort of:?this must be brought about; this must be gently and diligently guided into the world outside my head.

Where do you think this urgency comes from, and how is it expressed in a way that isn’t self-destructive?

It’s hard to know where the will of any one human being stems from. Most of us have no idea of what motivates our will. Without a doubt, part of it comes from a need for attention, a need to be seen. These are normal aspects of all of us. But in some people’s case — I know it’s true with me —there develops an outsized need for acknowledgement. However, standing right beside it, is an even stronger need to explore what is chaotic, unknowable or frightening, and then, to bring a sense of order to that chaos. As far as preventing the urgency from becoming self-destructive, I think an artist only needs to keep working, to keep enriching him or herself with that vital sense of exploration.

Can you explain how you go about "ordering" chaos?

With music, we are given an infinite degree of choice in what notes to pick, what chords to use, what tempos and what timbres to employ. I’ve begun to think that when I play a certain chord, I’m not choosing so much as I’m “de-selecting” all other possibilities. For example, if I play a C minor chord on the piano, I’m depressing the C the Eb and the G keys. I know how that sounds and how it makes me feel a little sad. It’s clear that I am choosing those notes. But another way to the think of it is to imagine that when I depress those keys that make up a C minor chord, I am, in effect ordering the chaos by?not?choosing all the notes I’ve left behind. here is something intensely pleasurable about the order that results from this kind of negation. I feel the same way about the choices that confront me when I paint. At times I am made blissfully cognizant that I am ordering a microcosmic piece of the universe. I am momentarily aware that my work is, in some infinitesimal of infinitesimal ways, akin to an act of God, one that is performed —however metaphorically —by a human hand.

Within this series of hieroglyphics and primitive faces and forms, I get the impression that I’m looking at post-modern cave paintings. Was that your intention?

Other than quelling my desire to create something, I typically don’t start with any particular intention. What happens most often is that I’ll paint one or two lines or figures and then let my imagination amble about. The question of “intention,” in other words, gets answered post facto. While working with both sets of these paintings, the shapes and faces, I started to understand that I’d been looking for a new means of expression, a new alphabet, you might say. Like most people, I’ve had and continue to have experiences for which no words are sufficient to express the depth of what I feel. The sense of wonder, of dread, of joy, of loss, of love, of possibility, of connectedness and disconnection. The themes in these paintings: the many faces and forms are a kind of vehicle that helps me, not only portray some of these emotions, but also feel them at a different level.?

The colors themselves have become another means of my getting at these same feelings. I prefer darker hues. They seem to lead me to what I call a pre-conscious frame of mind —not unconscious, but not fully conscious either. The faces and shapes themselves are created by the same means of negation that I mentioned before. I use a square-tipped brushes in different sizes to narrow my randomly applied, first-strokes of paint. That’s how the brushstrokes take on more definite shapes. I try to keep my intellect out the process as much as possible. I feel my way through the process. I also listen to a lot of music when I paint, bebop, old earthy blues —and atonal classical music if I want to go deeper.

Here is a portfolio of some of the artwork that I’ve done over the last couple years.?Click on each photo to enlarge them.?