More than a year of painting by accident. Composing shapes from root shapes and working from a bottom layer in a preexisting but invisible architecture. You could say this was reverse engineered, or reverse imagined. Most of the inspiration came from music, primarily Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's first album, but many others as well. Original structure came in the form of randomness; Splashing sulfuric smelling jars of red on the middle, testing new screen prints of orchids in odd places, testing a liquitex pouring medium, experimenting with an ink called Union Aerotex, letting shapes form, observing the results, then directing the hand in generality towards an unknown end. There were suen decisions and carfully calculated moves. I must have at least eight complete layers of paint, all of which are still visible. Every time the work came near completion, there would be a vision of something else or a mistake would be caught and so for sixteen months I worked. Sometimes the frustration would take over and the whole thing would be put away or turned to face the wall or somehow destroyed. In the end, I worked in a nine hour session and swore not only to never work on it again, but that i would not sleep until I could be comfortable with it as being done.It was named Monster after it was finished. For all of its improvisational nature, the content was imbedded in a subconscious way over time. There was no point where I said "this means this" and so there is a high amount of subjectivity in its actual meaning, which I like. If you want a hint though, observe the crude nature of the forms, the lack of real planes, the childish illustrations, and the color usages. Those were at the forefront of my mind in nearly all of the sessions once the work had sufficiently snowballed.
