SENSUALITY is something to be handled with discretion • a painting colleague encouraged me to enter a work in the Art exhibition of the Erotic Art Festival, insisting it wasn’t as cheesy as it sounded. It was a challenge, and all of a sudden it sounded fun. The central element of anything erotic is, of course, subtlety. And given the whimsical nature of so much 50s/60s pop art (which is still heavily on the charts for me personally) I had a notion of what I might do. And that is how I started Bang. I may have had a daydream about the letters in Lichtenstien’s WHAAM.

After a formal application process I was notified that the piece had been turned down by judge & jury, and I was not a participant.

Some months later I went by to see the exhibition, curious to see. But I detested the whole thing. The few gems were drowned out by loud, overt & inelegant examples.

Well what did you expect? I had to ask myself. And I slipped out quietly, rather relieved to get away clean.

BRUSHES When you start to get serious about painting, a curious thing is that you have an image of yourself as an artist - and in your mind's eye the trappings of the picture are stylized & old fashioned - for example anything modern strikes you as sharply inelegant. I can't imagine including any reference to current modernity- the internet, ipods, etc.

In some kind of rebellious way I enjoy NOT using the eXtra-Fancy zillion dollar Unicorn Hair brushes, that parents of Art student spend good money on from the University Bookstore, but the $3 Hardware Store variety.

Part of it is I can destroy brushes at world record pace, but the rough nature of cheap house brushes does a great deal of the work FOR me. And I say hardware store, because I don't want to mention Home Depot - because in my imagination I am going to an 1942 hardware store- just past the Edward Hopper's Nighthawks Cafe.

The only real trouble is that it is the middle of the night, of course and they're closed.

BANG
2010

Nighthawks
Edward Hopper, 1942

modern brushes, old fashioned imagination

influence revisited Does influence have to evident? When I look at Hopper's Nighthawks, I would say that despite the obvious iconic stature of this painting, it influenced me. Is that different than it influencing my work? Can the abstract feeling of his image do the influencing by itself ?

Could I have done even a semi-accurate sketch of this painting without having looked at it ? If I had, would it represent the feeling of the piece that I remembered.

Or is it that I just like it and that's all ?