The Beautiful Ordinary

Art always makes a political statement. Half of art is what you choose to paint, the other half how you paint it. I choose to paint workers, people on the streets, landscapes inhabited by family farmers invisible to the corporate life. I grew up the only son of a truck driver when unions equaled freedom and workers were crusaders in the cause.

On a chilly morning, I stand off to the side, color pastels and sketchbook in hand; people are huddled, waiting and watching; cabbies sip coffee; black suits rush by. The bus pulls up, the old guy stands, cane leading, he moves in line to board. The bus, the line, the man and the cane create the moment, and my frantic drawing begins.​

In the studio with fifty colors and just as many brushes, music blaring, I attack the painting. All at once, creation in a moment, cover all the canvas, mark against mark, movement and counter movement, yellow always yellow, gobs of white, cans of turpentine, piles of rags. Paint over paint, colors upon colors makes new colors, sensuous and gestural. What are the essentials, what is real, what is important, what is true?

Two processes are intricately related, the initial inspiration of the street pastel and the physical transformation of the image into paint. These are simple processes as long as you are willing to throw out forty of the fifty initial pastels and from the few that are really are inspirational, make fifty new preparatory drawings. Then you paint for 50 years, hope and pray and with a little luck, the culmination of the processes has magically taken on a life of its own.