I’ve had two distinct phases in my career as an artist. First, I lived in New York City for 17 years. My formative influences came from the art world of New York in the 80s and 90s, and my head was very much steeped in the ideas and discourse of that time. I was a very arrogant New York hipster, but at the same time I had a very childlike nature and a religious fervor for painting. I had the hyper-awareness of the over-educated, but my secret heart was really with people like William Blake and Walt Whitman, outsiders and visionaries.
In 2000 I moved to Las Vegas and completely disconnected from the art world of New York or anywhere else. I didn’t see an art magazine for years. I went out into nature and I started to develop my own visual language. I went in a more inward direction. I sloughed off all the borrowings and influences and began elaborating an alternate reality in my garage like a self-taught outsider.
The most important thing about painting to me is the feeling of magic it can access. I want to see glimpses into a world of magic, so I make them, like handmade photographs of feelings. I bring up images from my unconscious, or maybe I pull the images out of the ether, out of the human energy field around the earth. I don’t care where they come from. I think about what I can do to elicit them, what practical steps. I’ve tried many ways of working and the essence of it is play. Spontaneity and play. I call it Deep Play. It’s where you can be experiencing the most extreme or intense emotional and mental states while you’re working, but still be playful and spontaneous in what you are making. I find that the most deep and profound images come about unplanned and without fanfare, in the course of playful exploration.
I work from emotion rather than thought. My process for a long time has been the elimination of thought as much as possible, by surrendering and doing the first thing that pops into my head, and not editing myself.
I work fast, to stay ahead of my mind. I make things with cut up bits of paper and glitter. I make imprints of leaves. I cut out little figures and arrange them in arrangements. Things a child would do, but I’m an adult. It’s playful, but it’s also a very intense process for me. The essential thing is that there should be a magical feeling about it. I get a feeling of magic when I’m making things, and as long as I get that feeling I trust what I’m doing.