Public Paintings

When Richter isn’t directing and animating or keeping 3 children out of trouble, he paints. For details, here is his artist statement:

The task of painting in public is unusual and forced.

But I do it, not because it is a natural conclusion or compulsion resulting from my surroundings (most often a bar or pub), but because I can do it, then and there. Before starting 10 years ago, I needed a place and time to paint, and I’ve been gifted a precedent by Latrec to create art in a public setting, so I take a very small arrangement of primary colors and white to my table, and to those who happen to notice, I become a public spaces painter.

My objective path turns away from the observational, becoming purely an aesthetic exercise of color and composition. Subject matter is born from the first few “haphazard” brushstrokes of color mixed from an initial whim, and is further discovered as my hand’s predilection to mark-making decides the shapes a final piece will inherit.

My physical surroundings influence the progress of a piece, but not what I literally see. Rather, one night, I am seated beneath a red neon sign, and my palette choices become subject to that tint. Another night, the terrible 80’s cover band is makes me physically sick, my companions at the table are loudly guessing what I am working toward, and for a moment, the beer I am sipping reminds me of roundness. Through all of this, in addition to Latrec, Eakins, and Mucha, I am influenced by a deep admiration of the great illustrators of the early century: Leyendecker, Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Rockwell. Their compositional devices as well as paint application are constantly at mind, and as representational subject matter solidifies, my primary motivation and connection with reality remains in the rescue of the composition, and the progres- sion of marks from broad to fine.

I am very interested in the subject of my work, but only as it is a result, if not a side-effect, of technical choices coupled with the subconscious proclivities toward characterization. This result, as a piece comes to a finish, is the intersection of the realization of the character/setting and final unifying elements, however bold or minute.

My hope is that the viewer is confused by the presumption that pictures are intend- ed to be about something, and that the artist intends to communicate with his/her viewers through such overt, representational subject matter. Yet presented with work created under purely visual intent, viewers are challenged to find a narrative much in the same way I have: through what they, themselves, feel and see.