The point of painting is not really deception or imitation.
You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.
I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.
Sometimes you've got to tip your cap when they're painting stuff on the corner. But you can't give up, got to keep battling and make some adjustments.
I grew up with the idea of the cyborg and the robot, but at the same time I felt this intense disconnection between the things I was engaged with and inspired by in terms of fun and play. It seemed like paintings and drawings were so static.
Not all paintings are abstract; they're not all Jackson Pollock. There's value in a photograph of a man alone on a boat at sea, and there is value in painting of a man alone on a boat at sea. In the painting, the painting has more freedom to express an idea, more latitude in being able to elicit certain emotion.
I am obsessed with the painter Jonas Wood, but I don't think I'll ever be able to afford one of his paintings. He's an L.A.-based painter; his stuff is incredible.
I didn't go to school for illustration. I did larger pieces, mostly drawings and paintings, and minored in video, but when I moved to N.Y.C., I didn't have a studio space anymore and downsized to my desk and started illustrating. I started a greeting card company and sold cards all over the city.
I really want to continue doing art. I would love to go back to doing paintings one day.
A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
