Look, See

Untitled 1-21, 2004-05, HTML, 500 x 460 pixels each (screenshot above, see source page for full size images)

Sometimes I simply begin by making a drawing and seeing where it takes me, and then I do another in response the next day, and then another, and then it turns into a series of drawings over a couple of weeks or so. Whereas at other times I've had a specific subject matter in mind, sometimes drawings just begin with a question: "What would such and such look like?" or "What will happen if I do this or that?" Those questions are behind these twenty one drawings, but specifically I had the following in mind:

Working in response to these few questions is the thing that links these drawings, and after the first few days I simply alternated between the knot image one day and the larger shapes with color effects the next. Early in the series, at year's end, it just so happened a few noted people died, and so a few of these Untitled drawings are subtitled with that person's name; in most of these cases the drawing has some aspect that is a reference to that person. So actually, although I had these original questions in mind as a starting place, it's inevitable that other subject matter creeps into the work from day to day.

At the very end of a lecture at Harvard (see http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/ for streaming video) the painter Chuck Close stresses how solutions are overemphasized, and that the way towards making art is creating or recognizing problems

I feel that asking a question is a way of following a process towards some solution, a solution, but that it's important not to have the solution in mind in advance in order to find something new. There are times when I think, "All right, what am I going to do next, there's only so much to do here?" or "OK, I've been messing with these little accumulations of HTML color cubes on a daily basis for four years now; maybe it's time to stop," but then some new little question appears and I pursue that for a few days.

I think what I'm doing is somewhat unique because I have little interest as an artist in popular imagery, irony, technology, the death of painting, or a logical progression of the technology or meaning of how images are made, presented, or used, and yet these drawings confront all of those issues anyway. I am glad to let go of some kinds of intention, and to let meaning come out of the work, not from my head, which is a good thing, because for me conscious intention makes boring art. I'm happy that the work involves those issues, and I'm happy to let others talk about it, but it's not what I'm in this for, and it doesn't get me anywhere. It's the daily work that eventually gets me somewhere.

I found a way to make an image daily that uses technology that I have at hand (the computer, HTML), uses a presentation and archiving tool (the weblog), and lets me use the same subject matter that I would use as a painter. Everyday another drawing, every couple of weeks another series, every month more bodies of work, all stuff to work with and against. I enjoy the problem and process I encounter everyday.