Who and what do I look at?

A lighthearted approach at making art, inspires me, artists like Amy Sillman, for her uncompromising ability to bridge the gap between abstraction and figuration, Mary Heilman who’s furniture are simple, formal  and functional pieces, and who’s paintings are loose and fun. Sarah Lucas, her work is embedded with both humour and politics, whilst utilising the simplest materials. Franz west for the easy going nature of his sculptural work and Mikalya Dwyer. These artists have in common a playful attitude in their works that portrays the kind of attitude I endeavour to produce in my own work.

Many of these artist produce furniture, I like furniture, I once calculated that I owned enough seats, chairs, couches including outdoor furniture to seat 43 people at once. That was when I lived in the city. Now that I’m regional I don’t think its quite as bad as that, but f you count the river bank as the bottom of our block then we could go into the hundreds. Why art not architecture or furniture design? Firstly I think I’m  either too lazy or more probable too stupid to study architecture, secondly I don’t want to spend the ten or fifteen years doing other peoples work in order to make a career for myself, but I do love the built environment, almost as much as I love the natural world, humans have managed to build and maintain the most amazing things, our capacity to create ‘things’ is, I think, our most remarkable achievement. Good architecture wether it be historic or contemporary, brings wonder and joy to those lucky enough to encounter it. As does good furniture, in it simplest form furniture makes life more comfortable, and the world easier to function in, it can however also generate pure joy, or lust or even envy.

Why am I looking at artist who make artwork in a joyful or uncomplicated way? I do strive in life to into extracting the maximum effect from minimum effort. This is a terrible way to live, (an un-capitalist way) but it does enable me to have as little impact as possible on the environment. If I can create art that has a lightness of touch, whilst also bringing joy or comfort or something light hearted and fun into someone’s life, then I think that is an achievement. Especially if it’s having as little impact on the environment as possible. I detest the thought of just making more useless shit to add to the piles of useless shit that pollutes our world and our thoughts. I do think that art, like music and film bring joy to people. I try to make art that is imbued with a joyful, hopeful attitude that is a kind of conversation between the world, the stuff it is made from, myself and our culture, made with simplicity in both production and attitude.