Ultimately, one will love one's desire more than that which was desired. - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Art, like just about every other creative undertaking, is always, to some extent, an indulgence in Nostalgia. The act of Creation is an
attempt to capture and freeze time. In painting this has been true throughout its history — from Michaelangelo's nostalgia for God's creation of man
to Jackson Pollock's nostalgia for the recording of the paint trails on his canvases. True, Pollock's theorized that “The modern artist is working with
space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”, but that is still a sentiment of nostalgia. The reason I go on about nostalgia is
that one of the criticisms of my work is that I indulge in it too much, that I need to exist in this time and place instead of the past. My point is that
the act of physically "making art" seems more nostalgic than ever. This so-called 'digital" age is so bombarded by "culture" that it is essentially devoid
of any. It is an unrelenting progression of abstraction and a disconnection with physical reality. In scientific (particularly medical) endeavors
this is advantageous; it has resulted in - and will lead to - achievements that seemed impossible a relatively short time ago. Creative achievements,
however, are also just data — homogenized and and diluted into a series of binary numbers that one can carry around in a cell phone, and the only
version of reality that most Americans feel is from staged "survival" programs on television. At first glance, it would appear that the
individual is superfluous — a dinosaur. That is one interpretation that people have been making for centuries; maybe it is more true now than
ever before, but it is not the only view one can take. I am not an adversary of technology at all, the very fact that I am posting this diatribe digitally
should indicate that. The web provides me with access to information - and more importantly - imagery, that would have taken forever to obtain years ago,
and I use it constantly for reference and inspiration. Perhaps Keith Haring summed up my sentiments some years ago in this quote: "The best reason to paint is
that there is no reason to paint..." So paint I do, and if my subject matter itself is a nostalgic indulgence of 1950's and 60's pulp illustration, then so
be it. Which reminds me of another quote, correctly or not attributed to Yogi Berra: "Nostalgia is not what it used to be".
More ramblings to follow.
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