Not to seem to go on a tirade or assault but i'd like to defend my lack of consistent style. Because there is no such thing as style. Because there should not be a language or style which describes how I am. Because art is not communication. It is existence. It the formations of new worlds and possibilities. And in my age and era, there is no unified front forward like romanticism, expressionism or Late Byzantine nor do I truly believe in such things but rather see these categorizations as tools for art historians and libraries. Each work of art is dictated by it's own internal logic. Paintings are held together or Collapse under the weight of the atoms and fundamental elements the artist uses to compose it. In a word, a good painting is akin to earth; it has gravity, liquid water, and an atmosphere to hold life. To hold the viewer. It is the offering of an unknown and unknowable to the viewer. The viewer is not communicated with anymore than the rustling of leaves on a cold october morning communicates to the student who tramples upon it. It is the immersion in to the unknown and the belief in the unreal that is fundamental cornerstone of all of the arts. This immersion is not a tool but the mechanism that when compared with our present life and the further surreal understandings of objective science that gives our lives meaning through contrast. So, I under this will politely decline from assuming a style. It is has been within my bones to never copy myself. For what is value of copy of me in comparison with the genuine insanity and spontaneity of myself. But if I must stand in line to declare myself anything it would be to be an "Is-ist." I believe in what is. My intellectual lineage derived from Picabia or Gerhard Richter. And even If i could describe myself...Why would I want to (to Paraphrase every teenager i.e. Holden Caufield).
But I must concede you are quite right on ever other front. The paintings are simply not good enough. There do not pass the weight of the world they must each uphold. And you are completely right I must paint more and better. But to focus would be to be ridiculous. Focus is now a dinosaur. You mentioned you know the artist Stars (from Canada friends with my friends Broken Social Scene) but if you are into contemporary Music I'd like to bring up Dirty Projectors Or Lil' Wayne artist that both hold no weight to style or absolute coherence amongst work but rather use ridiculousness and the binder of a handful of topics like love, and being for the former and sex and money for the later. I suppose I ascribe to their methodology that truly anything goes. Any moment in history can be the clay in which you shape the future because with the ridiculous amount of scholarship in the modern era we literally have a living history... A living past that we remix, slice, dice and screw constantly over and over with new interpretations that are whole subjective and temporary. If we wish to reascend the ivory tower we may look to Waves by Virginia Woolf or Italo Calvino's Comicomics or the the genesis of our predicament Ulysseus by James Joyce. These methods and ways and lack of constance is fundamental. Our mental flexibility and spryness is necessary for the dawn of the new golden age of painting or else we will be left with the epic poets in a dusty cave. Painting has life and I intend to give the life i know to it. The life of listening to Beethoven and then The Beatles in the swipe of an Ipod. The life of irony and caricature that breeds contempt across the social network. The life of with which in two google searches I may see Jeff Wall and Giotto in a single ten inch screen. The world is Open, and this is neither good nor bad, but to deny it is to deny the inferno and become ignorant. I wish to find the things in our inferno of a life that are worth saving and often they are no connected by singular style. They merely require the empathy to see them.
As you can see or have seen, I am trying to be a man of letters and painter. But this is not choice. It is necessity. Knowledge and life are unified only through paint because there we find the grace and the ability to see that though we may be condemned to this world we can build from it's never ending pile of ash. And though our names will not be remembered and in the greater Carl Sagan view of our little speck in the abyss... Nothing other than us has ever heard of us... It is worth it all just to dance, sing, and paint because though we will never know what it all means... We will know we are here.
I suppose I am asking for criticism to not be directed against my work as whole because they will not be a whole for another 10,000 paintings. Or perhaps in ten thousand paintings you may only get a small fragment of my mind but It is not my thinking that is important. It is important that I am.
Instead, I think criticism should be directed against the internal logic of each individual painting that must taken account for. And I certain that many of mine do not hold water. There are lessons in warm and cool tones that I need. There are compositional inconsistencies that run amok. There is unblended surface. There is dull surface. There is poor craftsmanship like no other. There is a lack of control. All and all, often the paintings seem deadened by boredom like the crypt of brilliant idea. The tomb of the unknown thought. The mausoleum of the forsaken concept. This I am pleading for you help for. Though, I know I must find it myself through painting and painting alone. If you can give me a fragment of a map. Or some rules to break. It would guide my journey as Charon guides those to elysium.
Most of all, I hope I do not offend you through my criticism of your criticism because that is truly what I do not look to do. I respect you and I respect your words, advice and the guidance you have bestowed.
I will not defend my work of today because I know it still must be better but I am defending the work of my future because there is a reason in this madness; and that reason I know no words for.
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