Teaching Myself how to paint....

When I was awarded a residency at Cite des Artes in the winter of 2006 I had three months to do whatever I wanted to do, in Paris....They gave me a studio next to a pianist and it had a great big paint splattered easel in it. The building itself was on the Seine facing Notre Dame but I was in the back of the building facing a large snow covered garden, it was beautiful! My live/work space was a white room with black curtains, so already I had two musical references going on there.

I walked a few blocks over to the Pompideau to see the Dada show. I remember being impressed with a Francis Picabia paining of a circular form with some words below it and his initials on the upper right hand corner, then I headed over to the Margiela boutique and as soon as I walked in they picked the needle up off of the opera record and put it down on “A Song for Europe “ by Roxy Music It began “
here by the Seine, Notre Dame casts a long lonely shadow “ I was kind of blown away that this song by my favorite band, that I first heard when I was 15 was forecasting the life I’d be living 30 years later. I figured that was enough content for a painting so I headed over to the art supply store and bought a blank canvas, paint and a palette knife.

I had been making drawings of a spiral that came out of me as I played a recording and the Picabia painting reminded me of one of my spirals so I bought black and white paint to make it look like a drawing and Paris got me thinking of Bernard Buffet’s palette knife paintings, So Finally I made a credible painting...