In my latest group of paintings, I have come to a place in my work where I have decided to turn my focus inward. Great peace and meditation have always come to me when painting from life. Sitting and painting what you see is a noble effort and I have not abandoned the practice. However, in my latest four works the focus of the subject matter has shifted to the opposite extreme. I have begun to paint straight from my imagination. These works are large-scale narrative paintings, meaning that there is an implied story or stories. I believe this new direction has come from a desire to do both what I find most difficult and the desire to investigate placed meaning in my artwork. This process forces me not to be able to say I am merely painting from life and leaves me alone to deal with the interior landscape of myself.

At the beginning of the year I was intensely wrapped up in learning to paint by looking strictly at my subject. It was important for me to feel comfortable with the process of looking and seeing in order to give myself the confidence to remove that visual focus. Then I was able to metaphorically whip the tablecloth out from under the dishes I was eating from. From this process I uncovered a world that had previously only existed in my imagination. In attempting to paint from this new world instead of reality, there lay the possibility of creating from my mind while maintaining the visual connection needed for my work to be visually exciting. So far, the problem has been leaving the dishes in the same place in terms of my visual interest. Rather than creating from lemons and bottles, the focus of the work has shifted inward flowing instead from my imagination and emotions. I do however realize the importance and vast influence of all I learned painting from life and in no way have discarded my teachers.

When I began painting, the first artist I apprenticed myself to was Paul Cézanne. Cézanne was a 19th century artist focused on painting what he saw. Cézanne painted still lives, landscapes and portraits from life. These were works which constantly investigated the relationship to his visual world. Giacometti, a twentieth century sculptor and painter, who had similar attitudes to painting as Cézanne said this concerning the artist,
"After Vollard had posed a hundred times, the most Cézanne could say was that the shirt front was not too bad and he was right, it is the best part of the picture. Cézanne never finished a work. He went as far as he could and then abandoned the job. That is the terrible thing about painting, the more one works on a picture the more impossible it becomes to finish it."(Lords pg.11)Giacometti called painting the most frustrating and difficult undertaking and felt a kinship, as I do, with Cézannes' struggle to represent his own vision. As a solution to the problem Giacometti often turned to sculpture, because he said in three dimensions there wasn't the problem of forcing the illusion of space that tormented him. In James Lords book, A Giacometti Portrait, the author sits for Giacometti thirty or forty times. In the course of the modeling, Giacometti would rework the painting obsessively and if possible the painting would continue forever as it was impossible him to finish it. Giacometti said that making a painting from imagination was pointless. Having a preconceived idea of how a painting is going to turn out undermined the entire process of seeing, of creating. An artist had to not be afraid to take the one stroke that would simultaneously destroy and rebuild the painting. Giacometti could fake nothing because then everything else in the painting would become false. I have chosen a different approach to vision attempting to go against my personal artistic mentors whom I owe much for my painting's technical development. I can now however take Giacometti's words and draw from his insistent deconstruction of his painted surface. As that is precisely what I have done with my visual subject matter, moving inward to the sitcom world of my imagination.

In today's technological world of moving images where television acts as both babysitter and behavior modifier, it is hard to escape the realm of the moving image. I grew up watching movies and sitcoms and I cannot deny that fact. It is a language deeply entwined in us shaping and cultivating our minds and imagination. The average sitcom runs at a length of about twenty minutes without commercials. The problem in creating a sitcom is to make a smart, light, amusing show that leaves the viewer satisfied in their armchair. By the end of the show the action must be neatly wrapped up and resolved leaving no loose ends. If a show can't complete this task in the time allotted the show is ended with a reassuring to be continued. This leaves the viewer assured that the show will conclude itself, if not this week then tune in next week. This type of circular happy ending is what I have tried to avoid.

My artwork has been described to me as feeling like a sitcom. At first, this bothered me, because I had hoped to leave the paintings anything but neatly wrapped up and concluded. A major difference between video and painting is that painting is a static image meaning that a painting is played out by means of the viewer's own imagination. Not like a moving image which has motion to tell a story. The only way to conclude a painting is to spell out the entire meaning for the audience, working them through the piece bit by bit. I have specifically designed these paintings to be layered with multiple meanings to be investigated and uncovered becoming the opposite of a sitcom's weightlessness. I do however understand that the use of people in action, bright color, and complicated composition are all effects used by the makers of sitcoms. There is not enough time in twenty minutes for building a character. The characterization has to be quick and effective in order to hold the viewers attention. The average audience does not linger at a painting for an extended period so to catch the audience my paintings employ a similar use dramatic composition, color and humor to draw the viewer into the deeper interpretation of the piece. These paintings are the visual realization of my own mental sitcoms, frozen at the climax of tension.

In my painting titled "Mr. Rich" I have used dramatic composition to create this tension. First, the objects on the table break the picture plane, meaning that they don't sit behind the surface of the painting, but assert themselves out of the picture. Then I painted the arms of the center character as strong diagonals juxtaposed against the vertical and horizontal geometry of the room. Due to the abrupt angle of the cropped table the viewer is not watching from a distance. I have attempted to place the audience into the composition by creating a dialogue between them and the characters. We are supposed to be at the table with them adding to the dramatic effect. The middle character, or Mr. Rich, is involved in a direct action with the character to his right. His hand grabs the mans cheeks forcing his mouth open in a dramatic gesture. The character to the left slumps with eyes downcast focusing on the table. Mr. Rich is not looking directly at us allowing us to be somewhat passive observers to this scene, even though our position makes that difficult as we are a part of the scene. The intended mood of this painting is the uncomfortable tension that comes with some sort of unexpected outburst. I would compare the painting to being the guest of a family that is constantly fighting. To make matters worse this family repeatedly defines you as the reason why they should not be fighting, therefore compounding the already tense air around you. The turkey is an over-obvious genital reference trying to create a fake naiveté. In doing so I had hoped to somewhat hide behind the outrageousness of the still life while hinting at deeper gender issues which are complicated and complex.

My depiction of figures has often, in some work more so than others, been defined as caricature or cartoons. As I never intend my people to become cartoons this statement was at first more negative than positive. However I do accept they are sometimes distorted which is a device that lends itself to caricature. Otto Dix was a German painter painting through the first half of the twentieth century, whose portraits I relate to. Dix's portrait work, done usually from life, has also been described as caricature. "As with many of Dix's early portraits, as soon as just a few details are known about the lifestyle and personality of the sitter, what at first sight may appear to be caricature in fact turns out to be the most ruthlessly honest character assessment, using selective distortion to highlight the most crucial aspects of the individual."(Tate pg.123) I would rather my work be thought of in this way. I hope to create character assessments of my imagined people. I want to emphasize certain traits in figures the way Dix does through color, gesture and distortion. In my painting titled "You Aint", I was using these devices to try and reveal personality in the figures. The gentleman to the right of the figure in the small yellow hat is oddly distorted. His limbs are slinky and elongated and his hand is gigantic in comparison to his face. I really wanted to emphasize the hand, which appears as a spider clutching the can it clings to. I wanted the hand along with the face to be menacing in the direction of the small figure. I hoped this would immediately set up a tense emotion in the work. The figure with the yellow hat is also in crisis offering the viewer lemonade with one hand while covering and pulling his box of money away with the other. I wanted to express through his facial features an understanding of the shady character's intentions next to him. At the same time, he is reaching out to the viewer with his face implying his need for assistance. The viewer is then meant to feel like the figure trapped in the window held helplessly out of the situation. Caricature is employed to exaggerate the tension.

Otto Dix's painting "Family of the Painter Adalbert Trillhaase" exploits the gesture of the family's faces to reveal their personalities and intentions. The father is aloof and cross-eyed and the mother appears to be in a state I would describe as a worried pensive trance. Their son above them has a simpleton's look about him with the feeling of an ulterior motive lurking in his smirk. The only figure actually acknowledging our presence is the daughter represented with only a portrait hanging on the rear wall. What are we to think about her role in the family? In his portrait Otto Dix was stabbing at the interior personal workings of this family. Mr. Trillhasse was a man who upon inheriting a large sum of money late in his life began painting in a clumsy broad style that was fashionable of the German expressionists of the time. His work was included in what would have been considered radical art exhibitions at the time. Otto Dix's it seems may have been poking a little fun at this man and his family whose money made them instantly art friendly, perhaps feeling resentment for the untrained artist's acceptance. (Tate pg.121) In Dix's portraits he has readily available the ability to assess characters acutely and accurately. Through the complex intuitive way he depicted the subject matter, he created an implied mood of the sub-conscious discovery of hidden truth.
Max Beckmann is another German artist who painted around the same time as Dix. Beckmann's simplified expressionistic compositions relate well to my work. The style he worked in is more expressionistic than mine using many forms firmly outlined in brushy black strokes. The subject matter however relates to mine in a very real way. Beckmann, in his large narrative paintings, creates scenes by composing and drawing them first in his head. Then he worked from that preliminary sketch to create the paintings just as I have been doing. His compositions are incredibly complex and constricted. The figures are always close to the picture plane almost exploding out of the canvas. I found particular affinity for his work psychologically when he turned to investigating his own spiritual self. Beckmann, following in the tradition of great painters like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, painted mostly self-portrait pieces. He attempted to uncover the self through internal investigation. "Since we still do not know just what this I really is, this ego, which forms you and me, each person in his own fashion must pursue its discovery with great intensity. What are you? What am I? These questions incessantly hound and torment me but, also contribute to my artistic efforts."(Sister Wendy Beckett pg.77) Beckmann through art was attempting to discover who or what the self was.

Beckmann's triptych oil painting "Departure" is a sweeping narrative on the investigation of self. On the left are bound, gagged and mutilated people surrounding an executioner and a gigantic quintessential modern still life. The easy read is of the historical context foretelling of the Nazi war machines imposition on the artist, for example forcing them out of Germany. I think the work delves deeper into what it means to be an artist. Showing what is involved in the constant struggle of creating art that is satisfying to the creator or up to a particular artist's expectations and ambitions. On the right are two figures bound vertically opposite next to a blindfolded uniformed figure holding a fish. The upper three appear to be on a stage while below them a modern looking man beats a base drum. This panel suggests the upper half as the psychological life of the artist. He has become blindfolded and marching to the beat of the drum holding his fish, which I am labeling the artistic practice or brush of his artistic career. He feels as though he is marching along to the beat of a monotonous drum creating the tangled web of depiction that he is stumbling across on stage. In the center painting, there is a peaceful image placed on a tranquil blue sea. There is a woman holding a baby as a warrior stands in front ready to help a man with a crown pull into the boat a net of fish. A viewer can look at the center of the entire composition and make out half of a head I believe is Beckmann himself hiding behind the mother and child. The interpretation that I have created reads the center panel as the artist's blissful dream or heaven where he knows and understands himself and those around him. It is a work about his struggle to liberate himself from himself. Many artists believe that any creative work attempted by a person at some level becomes a self- portrait. I have become one of the artists who agree with this. I don't like to admit it and fight against it, but the battle is never one to be lost or won. Even in portraits where the focus is to draw out the individual it has been impossible for me to remove myself. No artist could attempt to express another artist's exact intentions seamlessly. In my opinion artist and their art are wrapped together inseparably. They are uniquely and distinctly linked to each other becoming as different as fresh snowflakes.

In reflecting on the work "Departure" Beckmann had these few words to say, "It is a departure, yes, a departure from the deceptive surface appearances of life, to those things which are essential in themselves, which stands behind the appearances."(Beckett pg.45) Beckmann, for me, has become a kind of spiritual leader. When I look back on the paintings, I created at first as narrative departure points for multi-leveled interpretations separate from my reality, now I see nothing but myself appearing in the work. They are the embodiment of my hopes, dreams and nightmares and their meaning is not yet clear to me. I can say I appreciate theses paintings' light façade of sitcom humor for it offers me, a way out, an escape from the vast interior that has become the exterior subject. Posing in a sitcom world the paintings can hide behind their loudness. Shrouding the self, the work attempts to hint at meaning conjured out of this new constructed reality of my mind.

Bibliography

Artinger, Kai. Art in Hand, Schiele. Konemann. Hong Kong, 1999.
Beckett, Sister Wendy. Beckmann and the Self. Prestel. New York-Munich 1997.
Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Vintage Books, New York 1988.
Lords, James. A Giacometti Portrait. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York, 1965.
Tate Gallery. Otto Dix. Tate Gallery publications. London, 1992.