I’ve
always had a good sense of imagination, and I always thought that
one of the great perks of being an artist is that you get to experiment
and try new things. You get to ask, “what if somebody tried
this?” and then you get to find out. At least, that’s
what I think an artist should be.
Out
of my sense of experimenting, and maybe out of the fact that paper
and canvas was expensive, I came up with the idea of creating art
on the backside of the painting. But I didn’t want just another
painting behind the original one; and I didn’t want a meaningless
mess, either. It had to mean something.
One
of my great inspirations was music; not only did many of my titles
come from songs or albums (Carpe
Diem Baby, Take
the Power Back, Alive
in the Superunknown, Nevermind,
Ava Adore, etc.),
but many of the paintings from the 1998 Works and Acrylics series
were attempts to capture the mood of the music. So, I thought this
up: why not have artwork on the backside, like the b-side to a record
single?
And
so the idea of the B-SIDE grew and evolved. I went from writing
short quips and insights about the painting purely for the benefit
of whoever bought that painting, around 1999. Then, over time, I
came to think of them as full works of art in their own right. This
approach took off over the course of the year 2000 and is a staple
now, in 2001. Actually, I like the idea so much I may just feature
B-Sides as their own work one of these days.
But
I digress. You can find out all you want to know about B-Sides from
my next album. For this CD, I want to show you some examples of
the stuff that’s written on the flipside to the paintings
you see here. Hey, just think of it as a preview for that inevitable
book deal. An artist making money…what a crazy concept.
One
common technique for my B-Sides is to write little blurbs and scatter
them around the canvas (or paper). I then number each of the parts,
letting you know where to go to keep on reading. I also offered
a number of “Pop Quizzes”, which sometimes offered the
answers, and sometimes left the reader to ponder. The idea, I think,
is for the viewer to see the whole series of works together; certain
ideas or themes connect together.
Frank
Zappa proclaimed something called the “Theory of Conceptual
Continuity”; namely, he believed that all of his individual
songs and albums are really part of one massive composition, and
every piece of music would somehow tie into one another. I liked
the idea so much, I started using it myself.
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