Paintings

A PAINTER FOR LIFE

AN INTRODUCTION TO MY WORK

By Jon Rappoport

There are two traditions in painting.

One came down through the Egyptians and the Greeks. It sought ways of portraying the physical world in accurate forms. Gradually, after 1700, it disintegrated.

The other tradition started out as a minor footnote in ancient China and Japan. It was simply about the spontaneous line made on paper. Zen. Its advocates believed that something in that immediate action conveyed a living force. This tradition seemed alien and incomprehensible to the Western mind.

In New York, in the 1930s, both traditions met. Eventually, a phrase was invented: action painting. By 1950, New York had catapulted itself to the center of the global art world.

That creative and economic outburst came with a price. Many critics and academics (to say nothing of the public) accused this new painting of being intrinsically corrupt, stupid, and mindless. Behind the attacks lay a simple conviction: abandoning the skill to make a picture that looked like the real world was a sign of unspeakable decadence.

But the action painters were relentless. They pushed forward. They felt they had finally entered the arena of authentic self, where an instantaneous dynamism was ecstatic.

I started painting in 1962, in New York, at the tail end of the action painting era. I was 24. I had done a little work before that, but in '62 it took off. All of a sudden, I was crazy about painting, which was strange, because before that I had never been very interested. I hadn't gone to museums. I hadn't taken art classes. I had been closed off to that whole world. Then, the explosion.

I found I could paint in a realistic way if I wanted to. I could make faces and buildings and so on. But that wasn't what was driving me. I wanted to use paint as a way to explore, to arrive at something my own imagination would then take the rest of the way. That's a nice and neat way to summarize it, but really, I was just painting. I sensed what I wanted to do, but that place had no name. It was many places.

It had and has a lot to do with expanded spaces, and what's going on in those spaces. Events. Energies. I feel them, I see them, but I don't usually attach names to them.

Over the years, I've had a few shows, in LA and New York. I've sold a fair amount of work. The Long Beach Gallery (Long Island, New York), the Lamas Gallery (LA). Private collectors.

A great deal of what I've learned about the power of the creative impulse comes from painting in the studio.

For a long time, I've wanted to make prints of my paintings. Not to refer back to the paintings, but as independent entities. A couple of years ago, I discovered that printers are now working very well from digital files. They call it the Giclee method. It starts from a good photograph, a digital record---and then equipment that can turn out a print that is larger (or smaller) than the original painting, with no loss or change of detail. That's exactly what I was after.

My friend Patrick De Luz did the photos, and PC Photo, a local shop, turned out the prints.

So this page presents ten of these prints. They are all limited editions. Twenty of each. When 20 of a print are sold, that print is discontinued. Retired.

I wrestled with the idea of giving titles to each print. In the end, I decided to number them and leave it at that. I don't want to fence in the experience of looking at them by using titles. I made them---the original paintings---without any particular subject matter in mind. The whole process is about spontaneous creating, and I leave it to you to see what you see and imagine what you imagine.

Some people think this makes things more difficult. I don't agree, not in the long run. I know, from years of experience, that people will approach painting from their own perspective. They will find what they find. And what they find will change, over the years. I like that change.

As I say, I grew up in New York during the last days of what people call action painting, or abstract expressionism. De Kooning, Pollock, Kline, Gorky. Once I started going to museums in New York, I looked at their work often, and I always found something new. I never wanted to pin down what I saw or give it a single story. The idea that you could have a painting on the wall, the same painting, and that you would see it differently every day, appealed to me. It struck me as a fantastic situation.

The world seems to be pretty busy nailing down meanings and describing this and that. I like to feel a relief from that process. I like to exit that process. I don't believe nailing things down is a sign of absolute triumph. It works for machines and accounting books and certain kinds of research, but there is another open-ended universe next door. In that universe, you have more freedom, if you want to take it.

De Kooning once said he liked the idea that a painting could sit there, and nobody would ever be able to say what it was. Ever. For all time. It's there, it's hanging on a wall, in a room where there is a TV set and chairs and a table and a cabinet---and everyone knows what those things are---but the painting on the wall? Nobody knows what it is. Nobody will ever know.

I would add something to that idea. You do know what the painting is. You know it on Monday when you look at it. Then on Tuesday, you know what it is, but what it is is different. It's different again, on Wednesday. You can keep coming back to it. There is no end.

It's appropriate, because there is no end to you or me or anybody. We can delude ourselves into thinking there is, but somewhere along the line we'll wake up.

Waking up has to do with seeing something that has no name and no definition. When we do that, and when we admit we are doing that---and when we know it works---we are on new ground. We are through a doorway we didn't know existed.

We grow up learning about how the space and time and energy of this world and universe work. We become quite familiar with these things. We set up an apparatus to deal with it. And of course, we learn all about objects. Their names, their functions.

But the time, space, and energy of a painting are different. They don't bow down and pay homage to the usual functions. A painting doesn't have to care about that. A painting can be about something else. And a painting doesn't have to get up on a chair and announce what that Something Else is. The painting can just be there. And if that situation makes it a kind of mystery, why not? What's wrong with a mystery?

I'm quite sure everything I've learned in this life started out as a mystery. With painting, the answer to the mystery isn't fixed. A painting is a mystery with a million answers. And if you get involved, each answer is a fluid experience that moves into your bloodstream.

Scientists are very fond of believing that every new technological advance is a building block set on the blocks of the past. "I took the next step." Yes, but from a larger perspective, it wasn't that way at all. Somebody started wrestling with a mystery. Somebody loved that mystery. And somebody made a leap. Not one step. Not ten steps. He found a new direction. He sailed on a different ship. How did he do that? It can't be explained in any ordinary way. He entered the realm of imagination, he took a long swim, he dove down into the currents, and he came up with something he wanted intensely.

Who wouldn't want to do that?

In the middle of the precision of human society, painters go into their studios and make that swim every day.

I hope you find something in these prints, and I hope that what you find evades easy explanation.

Jon Rappoport
May 9, 2007
San Diego

All prints are signed and numbered by the artist, and shipped unframed. Simply click on an image to order. Each print is part of a limited edition of 20.

The paper is Epson luster premium, archival quality. The Giclee process is carried out on an Epson 9800 Pro Printer, using K-3 inks. Note: Every computer screen produces an image with its own slight variations of color. The images below, on your screen, will vary slightly from the exact colors of the print you receive on paper.

JUST CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO ORDER A PRINT.