Public installation at 1430 Second Avenue in downtown Seattle

I usually paint pictures of people in spaces, geometric modernist spaces laden with pattern. I have been studying the structure of pattern for a long time and in this project I wanted to project geometric pattern into three dimensions.

Pattern can be thought of as the relationships of shape that occur when you introduce variations into the repetition of form. The squares in this piece change regularly in size and tone: Their sizes diminish and their values get lighter—which is what I would do if I were painting a flat picture of them— as the blocks themselves recede in space.

Tired of staring at screens instead of people, and missing the sharing of solid space and furniture and things together, I broke my ephemeral, flat screen-world into its red, green, and blue pixels and rendered them in solid form with plywood and paint. In a way it’s what I do as a painter—render an illusion of the solid world on a flat surface—sort of turned inside-out.

The Zoom portraits on the right-hand side are a different sort of attempt to take my flat screen experience and inject some life into it. One of the things I’ve missed the most this past year has been my biweekly life drawing sessions, drawing a human model in company with other humans. The closest substitute I could find was to covertly draw people in virtual meetings. Despite the sneakiness, it actually made me feel closer to them.

The installation, Things That Were Unrealized Due to Lack of Funds, Space, Time, Interest (explanation of title here) is at 1430 Second Avenue in downtown Seattle, viewable from the street at all hours, but best seen during daylight or early evening.

Things that were unrealized due to lack of funds, space, time, interest.

That about covers all unrealized things in general, and last year saw a big uptick in the Unrealized Things index. I took this quote from a typed document, “Project List 1990-91,” left in our shared studio by my late studio-mate/mentor, Drake Deknatel, when he died in 2005. I later hung it on the wall in my subsequent studio, and I look at it frequently. I think of it as a kind of shrine to unfinished projects, a testament to all the ideas we leave behind that never materialize. It had always struck me as funny, too: I mean, lack of funds is a chronic problem for most of us, space can be an issue, time is in short supply for nearly everyone—but interest? If he’d lost interest in these projects back in the 1970’s, say, why was it on the list to pick them back up again in 1990 or 1991? It only occurred to me very recently, after 15 years of staring at this list, that he might have meant other people’s interest. The interested people or entities who might provide the funds, space, and, indirectly, the time, to realize these things.

My own Project List for 2020 included: Reassess the role of fabric in my painting, which means reassessing how I paint, and Finding the Next Big Thing. By which I meant things like subject matter and the shape and size of the canvas. I had left unquestioned the assumption that I would remain a figurative painter.

It didn’t quite work out that way. I did make some new paintings, even had a show of them, and started a few more. With a global pandemic, civil unrest, a racial reckoning, impending autocracy, and general madness floating about, following the project list from the beginning of the year made less and less intuitive sense. Why continue to satirize the American Dream while it’s imploding? Are we moving forwards or backwards in its pursuit? I’m a narrative painter, sure, but not one who reacts to immediate “iss-yoos:” I try to take in a longer view, and a wider one, to understand what stories I want to tell; I like my art (and the art I look at) to have a longer shelf-life.

Funds, space, time, interest: We are always balancing that equation, but this year the four were in constant flux and the math especially tricky. However, out of the flux emerged opportunities to create some things that I didn’t plan on, things I had always wanted to explore but had never made the list because they weren’t my “real” work.

Some building owners of my acquaintance had an empty space (a lot of those these days) and were willing to spend some funds, so I proposed a window installation for them. I took some time—which there is never going to be enough of—to revisit and explore ideas I’d never let myself spend this much time on before because they weren’t painting, i.e., my “real” work. It could be called a “departure,” because at first glance it bears little resemblance to the work I’ve been doing for thirty years, particularly if you like your categories neat. I think of it more as an arrival.

Things That Were Unrealized Due to Lack of Funds, Space, Time, Interest is installed at West Edge, 1430 2nd Avenue, visible from the street 24/7, best viewed in daylight or early evening.