Head paintings 1992-2008
The Head paintings ‘93- 2009
The Head Paintings began in the early 90’ I shared a studio with the notorious gallery, show ‘n tell on Rose Street in San Francisco. I began a kind of reductive practice, using knives with oil on found wood. I was attempting to make one piece a day, my subject was the human head without hair clothing or any other worldly trappings. The backgrounds are a color field referring to spiritual, psychological or emotional space. These pieces were about the interior workings. They were not intended to portray any specific person, not even myself but I used them as an emotional check in. At the time, I was early in sobriety. My sponsor/ therapist agreed that painting could replace writing about my feelings and emotions. The heads were executed in a short sitting. I wanted them to be as direct as possible, like a sketch. The knives were to inhibit precision and break away from the tyranny as I saw it of the macho brush stroke. I kept track of these paintings with numbers on the back, signing few of them because preciousness was not the purpose. I treated them as a kind of catalog of time, often doing 3 or 4 in a day, but sometimes none. I didn’t want to be overly religious about the process. When asked why I was doing the same thing over and over, I said “Repetition is the highest form of change.”
