Since No One Else is Asking

I've been reading Artbutcher's artist interviews over at artmemphis.net. I've decided it would be a good exercise to answer his questions---to clarify things for myself and to be better prepared for that inevitable Artforum interview. Here are the results...


Artist Interview

*DB: How do you come up with your images? And what does your current work meanto you?

My images begin as quick, small, nearly automatic drawings. Out of a group of 40 or 50, I’m drawn to about ten that I think will make good compositions and I use these as jumping off points for the paintings. I then alternate between spontaneous approaches, intense looking, and more formal, refining periods---often times destroying several serviceable compositions on my way to a final image.
A finished body of work ultimately means communication with your peers—an audience. A way to convince the viewer of your own reality.
Any personal meaning a piece might have is in a constant state of flux.

What exhibit or piece that you have seen has most influenced your workand why?

Still lifes by Giorgio Morandi that I saw in Italy. They taught me a lot about economy and working within a set parameter---that there can be freedom and even endless variation in restraint.

If you could have only one material for the rest of your life what would it be and why?

Black ink. The variances are endless. The dark ink against white paper is striking and automatically sets up opposites that are loaded with symbolic and formal qualities.

Explain your work in five words or less.

An aid against bewilderment.

What is your favorite - movie? Book? Color? Smell? Food?

The Petrified Forest with Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. Its themes are romantic and out of fashion. Both are good for art and life.
The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary or Zola's The Masterpiece.
Chromium Oxide Green
The way the air smells before it snows.
Salmon Croquettes

What "guilty pleasures" of kitsch, low, or unfashionable art do you enjoy, and has your work been influenced by any of them?

Celebrity culture and religious paintings. These two realms are closer than you might think.
I tried to let the pathos,and somber elements of religious works influence my earlier black and white paintings.

What initially drew you to become an artist?

The way I feel when I look at great art.


*Questions taken from interviews between Dwayne Butcher and various other artists.

Rework

I've reworked the images I posted a couple of days ago...With the new images come new associations and titles...

Russian Sonia ,
Escarpment , and
Green Haint

42x42 inches/Latex on panel

Favorite Artist of the Month

America's Rembrandt.
Anybody read Eakin's Revealed? Makes you kinda wish he'd stayed hidden if all the conjecture is to be believed. Seems he was inappropriate to say the least.

Nashville Trip

I've got to find an affordable place down here to rent for a studio! I've just moved everything into the largest bedroom of our house. Robin's not too happy about this since our bed barely fits into the new "cubby hole" that we call a second bedroom. There's no room for Joe's bed on the floor but do we make him sleep in another room? Nope. He sleeps on top of us most nights! It's like having a seventy five pound concrete block on your leg all night. A concrete block that snores!

Anyway, the large bedroom makes a fine studio...especially with some of my more recent paintings out of the way up in Nashville. We took a trip up there this weekend to deliver paintings to Zeitgeist for the upcoming show at Vanderbilt University. I packed the paintings up pretty tight but of course it rained like hell for almost the whole ten hour drive. Luckily everything stayed relatively dry---no damage done! We got in too late to deliver the work on friday night so we crashed at a Holiday Inn just outside of Nashville. In the morning we took the work over and had breakfast at a great place Lain recomended called Fido's. I almost want to move to Nashville just for their Bayou Benedict! Then it was back on the road for the ten hours back. We got back home around 0ne a.m. then slept all day sunday!

All that said... I'm excited about the show. It'll be a new venue for me and I'm getting a chance to show with some artists I haven't met yet, from different areas of the country. The exhibit goes up August 15th and will last for the entire semester. I think an opening reception will be held around the 21st of October. Don't know if I'll be able to make it back up for that but I'm gonna try.

Favorite Artist of the Month

Gillian Ayres (British, 1930)

Ayres decided to become a painter at the age of fourteen, and studied at Camberwell School of Art from 1946-50, before running the AIA Gallery with painter Henry Mundy whom she married. During the entire period of her maturity as an artist she has produced abstract paintings of strong individual flavor owing both to European post-war abstraction and to American Expressionism. The former influence came indirectly through her meeting with Roger Hilton when he was experimenting with free abstraction. Of equal importance were photographs she saw of Jackson Pollock working on his paintings on the floor, which encouraged her to work without brushes and with physical movements unlike those of conventional easel painters.
In later years she continued to develop her almost instinctive approach to color, especially when in 1978 she turned from using acrylic to oil. In recent work she has sometimes continued to apply the paint until the surface gives way under the strain, but the colors retain their brilliance and individual quality.
Gillian Ayres' first solo show was at Gallery One in 1956, although she featured in many key group shows thereafter, for example Whitechapel Art Gallery's seminal British Painting in the 60s in 1965. Her solo shows however, are an impressive list: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1981; Serpentine Gallery, 1983; the Tate Gallery, London (1995) and the Royal Academy in 1997. She has taught at St. Martin's School of Art and the Royal College of Art and was made an RA in 1991. Ayres's work has been exhibited in many group exhibitions in countries throughout the world since 1957, including France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, USA and Japan. She continues to exhibit regularly at Gimpel Fils, London and at the Alan Cristea Gallery, London. Gillian Ayres lives and works in Cornwall and London.

New Ptg.

Three Sylphs, 2006, acrylic on panel, 24x24 inches.

King B.B.

This is the End...My Only Friend, the End!?!

Maybe I'm overreacting. What do you think?
According to Art in America June/July 2006, Jeffrey Deitch is starring in a sort of Art Real World. The show, Artstar, premieres on June 1st at 9PM on Gallery HD---a channel available on Dish Network.
You know the drill. Eight hopefulls compete for a solo show at Deitch's gallery.
Does this mean art's dead?
Better go check. Last I heard he was going for a soak in the tub!

Now

Artists I'm often looking at now...

Then

Before I went to art school I had already done a tremendous amount of reading on artists and their art. It is amazing how one's tastes change. All in all I still find elements of my first favorites showing up in my work. Although my tastes have deepened and changed over the years I still admire the work of those early heroes.

Just Thought You Needed To See This

My favorite Halloween costume...several years ago as a midget merchant marine sailor!

Robin

The writer at her desk...(taking a break to pose fetchingly)

Mel Spillman

Congratulations to Mel on the Koeppel interview in the Commercial Appeal, April 7, 2006.
I've always loved Pier Angeli. Who can resist such a tragic figure with eyes like that?

Click Mel Spillman above to link to the article!

Knowles' Meer Review

Well, no sooner do I complain about Carol Knowles' reviews than she actually writes a decent one. This one is of Kurt Meer's show at L. Ross Gallery. I have to say, I've never liked Kurt's work. He's very talented, technically, but his work is so derivative! Anyway, Knowles loved it of course and I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank.
Even though this review was much more serious and more informative, I never trust a critic's judgement who loves everything.

Dwayne Butcher Review

Congratulations, Dwayne on the write up in the Memphis Flyer. Check it out in issue #899, May,18-May, 24, 2006.

Carol Knowles wrote a very positive review (which the show deserves) but I wish that she would take art and the artists she covers a bit more seriously. Phrases like "...and asks us to soar as fast and as high as we can," are so sugary, insipid, and pandering that they do a serious painter like Butcher a disservice. I'm not saying Dwayne doesn't have a sense of humor about his work---he may or may not---but Knowles should be able to convey the spirit of the work and the artist's point of view without light headed phrases.

I recall a review in the defunct Gamut, where she spent a good two paragraphs describing how she'd like to climb inside one of David Hall's collages and,"... dissolve into the corals and taupes that color..." etc, etc.

It's not only Carol though. A local writer named Beam, here in St. Augustine, interviewed me before my show last February and used many painful phrases like,"...colors that dance unbiddenn across the canvas..." Ugh!


I always appreciate a good review, especially of my own work, but is it too much to ask that they be intelligently written as well?

Anyway, go see Supermandamnfool !

Eleven Hours to Memphis...Eleven Hours Back

This last weekend I had to go up to Memphis to retrieve the rest of the paintings from the Material show last January. Dale and Kristin were nice enough to hold onto them for me all this time.
So, Robin decided to take a couple of days off and we made a very short trip of it! We stayed with Amanda and Paul and Virginia and Victor! Even though we did not have much time at all it was great to see everyone! Finally got to sit down and talk with Dwayne "Memphis' Own" Butcher and his fiancee and I was able to trade Emily one of my paintings for a really nice piece from her last show @ Automatic Slim's.

I think my next trip before, Vermont, will be back to TX to see Bri and Aubrey we want to visit while Robin's mom is there and we still need to get up to Eureka Springs---it's been forever since we've visited my folks there.

!!!People on the great list who've visited us here in FL!!!

Mom and Lew, Bri and Aubrey, Bob and Deb

!!People on the good list who say they will visit us soon!!

Dale and Kristin, Dwayne and Gadsby, Amanda and Paul, Emily, Sioban and John

The rest of you get busy planning your trip---you know who you are!