I can reasonably say — well, maybe its not reasonable at all, but its soberly acknowledged — that I hate painting….

….I hate it bec its exhausting, bec every picture starts from scratch, bec it demands to be thought and then re-thought, bec it can undermine my wellbeing, bec I sometimes have to numb myself to drown out the intrusive static…bec it’s brutally taxing. But I do it, nonetheless… I do it bec it tells me who I am… I do it bec it reiterates who I want to be. So, I have no choice but to do it, as much as I try to choose otherwise.

This work is… these pictures are… usually born out of personal observation or experience and/or an auto-biographical referenced figure, sensibility or social commentary - some might say its self referential, which is not always a compliment. But so be it. Or, at minumum, it is what it is.

This work is very much an outgrowth of the work I did in a grimy, old, cold studio near Tiergarten at the Technische Universität…cold, coal gray skies drifting over from East Berlin… Beuys rabbits painted on my walls, painted on The wall….

…

Ive always believed that when the viewer looks at a picture, what they see comes from whatever that individual brings along with them to that point. Even though the picture has “meaning”, there is no mandatory  meaning that one must perceive.  One can see beauty or upset or anything and everything else and hopefully, for my work at least, one sees a whole lot of stuff at once and something in that stuff insists that the viewer pauses.... 

peter de l

Martha Graham reportedly spoke of the artist’s obligation to “keep the channel open,” to remain alert to one’s instincts, even when one doesn’t understand or like them. There is no surer route to closing that channel than denying a part of oneself. • From NYT Op Ed by Jonathan Biss

In truth, the work itself is the adventure… Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life… From Upstream by Mary Oliver

Art itself, like psychoanalysis, comes from deep inside you, somewhere where all of these things are roiling around, coming together, falling apart. Walter Mosely

Artists just want to create an expression of their experience. Paraphrasing NYT columnist, David Brooks ** Side note: I gave Brooks a hard time years ago at Barnes and Noble on Union Square about whether Judy Woodruff served cocktails after the Friday broadcast. He was gracious and a good sport.

I really like the last picture, which has become such a friend. But…it becomes a terrifying enemy because I really want to do it again and …when it’s done, it always seems impossible to paint another picture. 1960 interview with Phillip Guston

In reference to his willingness to embrace accident, Francis Bacon told Time Magazine in 1952 that “Real imagination is technical imagination. It is in the ways you think up to bring an event to life again.”

…all I can say to all that is, “yeah.”