Faucet Repair

17 April 2025

1957 Brooklyn Dodgers:

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15 April 2025

There's an interview BOMB Magazine did with Sedrick Chisom in May of 2024 where he talks about how, for him, “there has to be a site of disaster in the work” when making a painting that steers it away from the directionless world of endless hypothetical outcomes. That has been in my head a lot this week as I've worked through a couple new ideas. The first came from seeing a solar flare on a walk to the studio—I painted a version of what it lingered as in my memory and it ended up solidifying a bit in paint, its rainbow rings taking on a kind of chainlink feeling. But it was completely lifeless on the canvas, floating there with no apparent context or reason to exist, so I took it off the wall to put aside. But as I did, I noticed that it felt a little like a figure lying supine when it was oriented horizontally instead of vertically. That presented a new path to follow, a new challenge to confront, a more interesting mix of instincts to unpack. It's a bit of a contradiction to try to remain open to wherever the painting wants to go while seeking concrete problems to solve, especially because you can't manufacture those problems intentionally. Or, you can, but then something disingenuous will lodge itself in the paint and you're stuck with it shooting finger guns at you.

Anyway, that painting has enjoyed a fruitfully frustrating journey so far. But I've had another one going at the same time of a blanket in grass (based on visiting Hampstead Heath with Yena last week) that has not yet revealed a good disaster. The whole thing has appeared in graceful hog brushstrokes over well-planned early layers and has settled neatly into the confines of the canvas, which is to say it has no guts. I have given it a couple days to sit though, so we'll see how it feels when I go back in tomorrow, and I do have this one idea that keeps popping up to maybe introduce some mini memories floating over the blanket shape. I'm slightly wary of constructing that as a problem to solve as I just mentioned, but I think it's a vague enough concept that it will take on a shape I can't predict, so I'm optimistic.

If you're reading this, listen to Walt McClements's new album On a Painted Ocean.

13 April 2025

I think I'm going to spend a while making paintings of the things I see on the ground while walking around every day. I'm usually averse to that kind of declaration for fear that it will harden into rigidity, but I re-titled the aforementioned Uvula by calling it Bag on the ground in Camberwell, and something about that choice just clicked. I have a few paintings in this vein on the go right now, and I am enjoying the process of using humble, discarded objects as starting points for paintings that aren't beholden to observation but still maintain a place-specific character—it feels good to let paint expand these objects until their realities are stretched into discovery while keeping the title grounded in the neighborhoods I notice them in. I'm with Toby in that I don't want my work to simply clarify reality, and this feels like a way to walk that line between looking with care while fragmenting freely.

The ground under my feet also has rich potential in its relationship to the concept of the painting ground, which will be interesting to unpack as I get more acquainted with the language hiding behind this impulse. I also think there's something to the fact that in 2025 everyone on their phones is looking at the ground and yet not looking at it at all. Gazes are shifted downward but are only focused on a foregrounded screen. Might be a good time to try a rack focus and get my eyes trained on the background terrain they're used to blurring.

11 April 2025

A little reflection on making music with Calvin now that a few days have passed. Have been thinking about how the afternoon we spent in sound felt like such a literal flow; a drift down a river together, taking turns gently suggesting ways to shape the wind. What I so enjoyed about that process was the freedom we both felt to follow intuitive impulses towards contrasts: humble and giant, human error and programmed machine. And if one of our offerings became a rock in the current, we would only get stuck on it for a moment before eventually floating around it. That relaxed neutrality elevated the whole experience—friction lost any negative connotation. Instead it was just a color to observe and move through, or maybe mix with another to see what would happen. When I showed what we made to Yena, she said it sounded like nature and reminded her of a recurring dream she used to have as a child where she fell down a black hole.

9 April 2025

About to start a new painting that will most certainly not be called Vibrating city, but those are the two words that have stuck in my head and led me to start it. The seed was planted during my recent trip to see Toby in Brighton just before I boarded the Thameslink from Blackfriars—saw another person's silhouette heading towards mine in the window of the arriving train in strobe-like movements. Felt almost like stop motion, little lines struggling to outline its form as it moved. A similar effect filled the rest of the mirrored surface as the glinting river (윤슬) and the buildings on the horizon (they reminded me of an ECG graph) all glitched and strayed from their optical anchors until the train squeaked to a stop. Want to make a painting that circles a similar sensation.

7 April 2025

In my studio looking at a recently resolved painting that I'm calling Urge to perform. Started from seeing a plastic bag on the street in Camberwell as an inviting void. I like how Yena described the piece's core contrast as “filling in versus filling out”—that feels true. Think it is also about solidity coexisting with thinness and transparency and warm against cool; the little asteroid shape is darting into the cold dark space from the angle that the sun fell on the bag. Like Lying in bed, there's something about concealment and enclosure too, the expansive view of the optically small. And its composition feels like it wiggles within the container of the canvas without making too much of show at its edges, which is nice. Kind of looks like a uvula too. Maybe that's a better title: Uvula.

Start. No date, as this is an ongoing list...

Teachers

Joe Brainard, Aubrey Levinthal, Co Westerik, Piero, George Tooker, Brett Whiteley, Catherine Murphy is in the house, Paula Rego, Morris Graves, Sargent, Lois Dodd, Alex Katz, Wilhelm Sasnal, Paul Cadmus, Raymond Saunders, Thomas Hart Benton, Inka Essenhigh, Philip Pearlstein, Hannah Höch, Frank Moore, Frida Kahlo, Chronis Botsoglou, Sibylle Ruppert, Henry Taylor, Sophie Calle, Carroll Dunham, Daumier, Robin F. Williams, Jack Whitten, Jessie Homer French, Jasper Johns, Nyoman Masriadi, Anna Weyant, Justin Liam O’Brien, Rosemarie Trockel, Degas, Ingres is in the house, Ruprecht von Kaufmann, Jesse Mockrin, Munch, Grant Wood, Leonor Fini, Tristan Unrau, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Justin John Greene, Seth Becker, Eric Fischl, Luchita Hurtado, Emile Meunier, Jennifer Packer, John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Noah Davis, Nicholas Bierk, Freud, Todd Bienvenu, Sigmar Polke, Georgia O’Keeffe, Forrest Bess, Gabe Duarte, Goya, Ray Johnson, Ivan Seal, Kyle Dunn, Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman, Gareth Cadwallader, Georg Scholz, Ana Mendieta, Jared Buckhiester, Christian Rex van Minnen, Issy Wood, Dash Snow, Matthew Wong, Austin Harris, Wayne Thiebaud, Jane Dickson, Richter, Andrew Cranston, Raina Seung Eun Jung, Neo Rauch, Paul Landacre, Alice Neel, Clarence Holbrook Carter, David Hammons, Matt Bollinger, Shannon Cartier Lucy, Robert Pollard, Peter Blume, Charles Blackman, Maud Madsen, Ken Price, Peter Doig, Vija Celmins, Josef Albers, Eric Timothy Carlson, Jay DeFeo, Dylan Vandenhoeck, Judith Leyster is in the house yeah, Ken Kiff, Duchamp, Ruba Nadar, Graham Sutherland, Hockney, Velázquez, Jonathan Tignor, Antoni Tàpies, Tschabalala Self, Max Ernst, Hopper, Lee Lozano, Martin Wong, Guston, Leonardo, Marisol, Enrico David, Gregory Gillespie, Cézanne, James Castle, Pyke Koch, Peeter Allik, Kent O’Connor, Heide Fasnacht, Ben Shahn, Brett Bigbee, Haley Josephs, Félix Vallotton…