I approach nature as a way of learning about who I am and what I am. I began to collect my information about making paintings from the physical act of engaging with nature by walking or sticking my hand in a stream to understand what it is. Instead of looking at it, I felt it.
I realized that I had two basic things that I work with in my paintings: the first is organic flow, which is the landscape. The second was an architectural grid or abstraction, which is based on the human perception or response to the natural world. Those two ideas have always been my right hand and my left hand.
I think of painting as something that I started way back when I was a kid and I am doing the same thing now. I am thinking about the same things now that I was thirty years ago. A lot of the times when I am working I am come across elements of a painting I worked on thirty years ago. I can almost remember the exact moment that I discovered or understood a process for the first time. It is a very strange wonderful experience where you can have those flashbacks. It is like timelessness, it is the experience of your life not really having a sense of time about it.
My main interest has always been about the properties of paint, what paint does. Usually, I start with a color. I have not started any new panels in three or four years. I have just been working on things that I started several years ago. When it is all still wet I might start scraping into it and then letting it dry. It does not have any form to it yet, it just has a dimensional mass. I might do dozens of panels all at once with a few variations. I just let the palette evolve until it starts shifting.
Sometimes, the painting gets you to a point where you could see in many directions. The artifact itself, you get beyond it, it is consumed. It serves it purpose in being able to being a conduit to many other things. It might allow you to hook many different layers together but in itself it might not be the greatest thing you have ever done. But for you the kernel of a great experience was there. I always want to get those things back and just keep working on them.
First Thursday Picks April 2008
Between Heaven and Earth: The Work of James Lavadour
