painting is discovering what’s in front of you…

I started painting in 2001 when i converted the second floor of an old furniture store in Iowa into a studio. i had a lot of empty walls & I could fill them with whatever came to mind. what came to mind was lines & colors & the movement of my body & breathing & the feel of the brush in my hand. everything after that i improvised on the spot.

It was the first time I had the space to use my whole body when I painted. I built these huge canvases before I had any idea what I was going to do. There was something about them that called to me & said Here, you're going to want space to jump in to this. The thing I found within minutes of my first brush stroke was that the large canvases were too big for me to control. They required big brushes & big scoops of paint & big amounts of trusting that I'd figure it out.

The other thing I learned really quickly is that painting is entirely about discovering what's in front of you. That the real painting happens when you stop trying to guide the brush to do anything & simply see what's showing up. It didn't take me long at all to figure out that painting was teaching me about life in a way that words never did. The fun of it now is that my painting changed the way I used words, since I have this whole sense of my body knowing what's true beyond what my mind thinks it can convince me of...

with love,

brian