My work is too literal, my practice too controlled. Perhaps part of this is the start-stop nature of my working time. Most likely, that's a justification. I am going to make a series of pieces for no reason other than their creation.

It has always been, and continues to be, the case that I am afraid of failure.


Cecily Brown, Lagoon 2004


I've let the image take over the canvas, when in fact the WHOLE POINT is that the image means nothing. But I've never been a 'painterly' or expressive painter.

Hello, wall, my old friend. Can I beat my head against you one last time?

My excitement was short lived today when the 24 by 36 silkscreen I found in the old 'dungeon' at work turned out to have tears in the screen.

Currently working on:

I've been lax in my blogging lately. In point of fact, I'm currently a schizophrenic mix of busy and productive but also descending to new levels of laziness. I've been mining a taxidermist's supply catalog for imagery, to add a bit to the museum pieces, but I fear that the work is becoming too image-based. There is something a bit dicey about painting all these animals, it's not imagery that's been taken seriously when I've shown it. Perhaps I am copying too directly from my source imagery.

To hopefully alleviate this effect, I've recently taken up etching, taking a class at Spudnik Press here in Chicago. I like the idea of working some of this imagery into a book with a bit of abstract text that might serve as context for the rest of the work. There must be a way to force people to focus less on the recognizable subject matter and more on why it's being presented. I should clarify that I see this not as a flaw in the viewer, but a flaw in what they are being shown. (Although my opportunities for productive critique are few these days.)

Also, I have begun to read Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. You can get an idea of the 'seriousness' in which Thornton presents her subject matter from this (and other) videos of the author I found on YouTube. I find her smiling and cutesy mannerisms annoying, and they are also somehow discernable in her writing. But it's a pleasant change to read about the art world in a way other than the hyper-verbose, dictionary-requiring style presented in ArtForum and many other magazines.



I should mention that I read this book in anticipation of AArt Chicago and the other, smaller fairs tied in with it which are set to descent on Chicago in about two weeks time.