Who Is You?
2008 - 22"x28"x13/8" Acrylic, charcoal, pencil, oil pastel, collage, on gallery wrapped canvas.
Finished with one coat brush on Liquitex Matte Varnish #5232
(On Exhibit @ John Allan's-NYC - See Events for details)

January 2008

In my artist statement, I say that my paintings are a collage of random thoughts, feelings and inspiration all mixed together. This painting started the same way, but I ended up merging the randomness together. Here is the convoluted thought process that occurred as the painting developed.

I started this painting by gluing newspaper and pencil shavings to the canvas and adding a few coats of gesso. It quickly evolved into another landscape painting with animals. It was a bit of a mess and I almost painted over it. The mountains had too much color, so I painted them black. I added the tunnel and train tracks for no specific reason, other than I though it created an odd contrast to the nature scene. The trees were made by removing portions of the green grass collage area and gluing them on the mountains. The large pine tree represents the Christmas tree that was cut down for Rockefeller Center.

I was looking through a Brooklyn Rail newspaper and found a phrase that I liked: "No Matter Where You Go, There You Are." It seemed like something the larger animal could be thinking or saying to the reindeer, so I glued it to his body.

I recently saw a Richard Prince exhibition at the Guggenheim, and I really liked his joke paintings where he used repetitive text phrases in his art. When I though about the phrase, I realized "you" could be interpreted different ways (specific or general), so that meant there were four combinations. I numbered them "1" and "2" so I could keep track. That resulted in the phase being repeated four times.

No matter where you1 go, there you1 are.
No matter where you1 go, there you2 are.
No matter where you2 go, there you1 are.
No matter where you2 go, there you2 is.
You is batman.

The reindeer originally had some scribbling on him, and it looked like the word "bat". That inspired the phrase "I am batman." The two phrases were then tied together.

The animal is thinking out loud about the meaning of "you" and repeating it over and over in his head, and then discovers that you is batman.

Once the idea of batman was introduced into the painting, the tunnel became the bat cave. They are waiting for the subway train to the bat cave.

The large dome behind the mountains was originally a lollipop tree in front of the mountains. It evolved into a dome with Gotham City inside it.

Yes, it's convoluted and abstract, but that was the thought process.

Below are some photos of the painting in progress, and a close-up of the phrase on the animal.

On an unrealed note, I found the subconscious origin of the lollipop trees that have existed in my paintings for about 6 months. I was sitting in a chair looking at the lollipop trees in this painting, and then saw a container of M&M's that I just bought. M&M's are my favorite candy.