I don't want art to tell me what I already know.
I don't want to hear that your eyes are beautiful.
Or that love lifts you up.
Or that we'll be together forever.
I know those songs mean something to millions of people. They just don't mean much to me.
For years I wrote songs. I spent countless hours trying to write lyrics that did something unexpected. Not obscure for the sake of it. Just... surprising.
Leonard Cohen could make a single line change the direction of an entire song.
Nick Cave has that same ability. A lyric arrives from an angle you never anticipated, and suddenly you're leaning forward instead of sitting back.
That's the feeling I chase. Not clarity. Curiosity.
I think the same thing has happened in my painting.
If a painting explains itself in the first ten seconds, I'm usually finished with it.
I want an image that makes me pause. Something slightly awkward. Unresolved.
Not because confusion is clever, but because surprise keeps us looking.
Perhaps that's why I find myself returning to unlikely combinations.
Wilted flowers.
Above-ground pools.
Failed architecture.
Pink beside rust.
Art doesn't have to be difficult but I think it should offer us something we couldn't have predicted before we arrived.
That's what keeps me coming back to the studio.
Not answers.
Just the possibility of being surprised.