Hello Nathan and welcome to NotRandomArt. The current issue is revolving around the problem of communication and identity. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
I believe that in some sense my identity as an artist originates from a need to find a grand leap into a life I believe is worth living. I grew up in Bakersfield, California. My family was poor, and when my mother was arrested on a drug charge, my sisters and I split up, heading into the foster care system. When I did meet my father and left Bakersfield, the whole world opened up as a realm of magical possibilities. I mean, imagine suddenly leaving the desert valley and finding Los Angeles, the ocean, food from every kind of place imagineable, books upon books about space and history and architecture! However, this new found freedom came with an unsettled feeling about lasting relationships to people, places, and things. For a long time I found it hard to not want to suddenly abandon everything, pack up, and move somewhere else, throwing relationships and responsibility to the wind. Since focusing fully on my art, I’ve found something lasting, and I think this has had an enormously beneficial effect on how I communicate with place and others.
Would you like to tell us something about your artistic as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistic point in your life when you are now?
I never formally studied art. My father was always great at drawing, sketching, designing—you name it. When I was a kid I tried to draw like him and it made me mad that I sucked at it. It wasn’t until I was about 13 years old that I suddenly developed the coordination to draw. I sold drawings of people, animals, even video game characters and sold them to students in middle school, gradually moving from graphite to charcoal to ink and then finally oil pastel. Oil pastel was a huge breakthrough. The thick, buttery color and texture of it when smashed into a surface was mesmerizing, and suddenly I couldn’t bring myself to take realism seriously anymore. It was my love for texture that led me to Encaustic wax, and once I found it I knew it was going to be my medium. Not only did I fully commit to the form and texture of wax—unlike with other mediums I no longer considered the practice of it to be a fun hobby—it became an obsession. Between studying philosophy full time at UC Berkeley and biking several miles a day between classes and my full-time restaurant job in Oakland, I took the time in late evening hours to coat objects with wax, strip them, paint them again, and so forth. I knew then that I wanted to paint more than anything else.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
The first work that comes to mind is a strip painting I made shortly after discovering beeswax as a medium. While I was experimenting with wax in college, a lack of funds made it hard to afford the expensive medium, let alone the other materials necessary to make the work itself. I took to cutting thin strips of canvas so I could save material as I practiced applying the medium and adding pigment. One day, the strips were lined up adjacent to one another, and in my head I saw a complete work coming together. I found a cheap used frame and began stretching the strips, one at a time, across the frame. The uneven tension caused the prior strips to loosen, but this effect made me learn something essential about the frame, and the way wax settles into the strips if they lack horizontal tension. Since beeswax will shift, harden, and even melt in varying temperatures, I could see before my eyes something plant-like about the painting—that the strips would flatten like petals in the heat and shrink inward, wilting in the cold. This movement, this lack of stability has come to form one of the pillars in my identity as an artist.
Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
I feel like memory is similar to Benjamin’s snippet in The Arcades Project—that the relationship of the past to the present is dialectical. When I think of the past, or when my past makes itself present through memory in my mind, it is not so much that I am temporally looking backward at my past. My memory is suddenly emergent as an image, occupying space in the present moment and actively manipulating my actions and feelings when it does. Since this is not something I can control, I feel that when I am planning for a work, some sort of image emerges and becomes a blueprint for future intentions. Though it does not necessarily dictate what I do next, it jerks at the wheel, always pushing me into another direction.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?