JET III Art
They used to tell me that it was wrong to make art in this manner, that I had to pick something and stick with it, and that all my art exhibited in a room should exactly match. I disagreed!
I looked back at salon style, old frames and incorporated the frame into my art in a new way. they told me that the frame should not compete with the art and I said "why can't the frame be the art too. Why can't the frame work with the art in a completely new way?"
I did produce art that looks like the same person painted them, it just is harder to analyze and took me a much longer period of time to work it out. What would work for me, was my inspirational approach as long as I was constantly making art I would never give up making art.
I wanted art that changed, so I invented reversible art. My first drawing was something that you could just turn around upside down or side to side, but eventually I made twice the amount of art one painting on each side and even around the frame too. Then in 1983 I made convertible sculptures that were changeable and move-able.
They told me that art should hang in only one direction. I wanted a gallery director, or an owner, to also have a choice, or decision in the way the art would hang. I also felt that if Picasso had different artistic periods and inventions, why shouldn't I go through different periods and invent new ways of seeing things in my own art. Although Picasso died in 1973 and I never got to meet him, I learned a lot from him and why he didn't care what you thought of his art, or if you understood what he was doing.
I invented something different in 1979 that I called a Giant Progression where each artwork would lead me to the next idea in a process of art creation. No style was out of my grasp and I used impressionism, realism, expressionism, surrealism, etc. My vibrant color was another thing that was not done in the minimal art period. In 1979-83 I was creating art that was based on earlier styles, but made in a completely new context.
In 1982-83 I also re-invented action painting, and by the mid 1980's was making them huge and in front of crowds.
Time and the cyclical nature of the work would alter the work over the course of my lifetime. I worked on multiple pieces at one time over a long period of time and finished some others quickly, some all at once, others very slowly, a little at a time, and others that I was never quite satisfied with were worked on again and again.
I never limited my styles, approaches, or media and had no fear of going back and working on some of these earlier pieces, if I really felt like it. Some of my artworks marked, or signified a specific time period, and I never altered them. If you look carefully by date I was far ahead of my time, and my work was not trendy, or well understood in the 1980's and finally now can be seen on-line and appreciated better over the course of my lifetime.
When I met with Gerhard Richter and we discussed our art, he was the only one at that time (around 1987) that could understand my point, as he either worked realistically or abstractly, but my concept was quite different, however, there were some similarities.
Larry Rivers and I discussed the unfinished aspects of his work which I appreciated, probably due to the many unfinished drawings that I had all at one time and the nature of my small drawings themselves.
Andy Warhol was visibly shaken when he looked at my art and also suggested I go into fashion design, and making of multiples, but I had no interest, only in the designs for myself. My silkscreen pop approach really solidified itself after his death and shortly thereafter.
I always wanted each artwork to stand up individually and each individual to find at least one artwork they could appreciate. Where Warhol wanted to bore you with his art and would accept commissions, this was not my desire.
My prints are usually unique in that each is different or later hand finished differently.
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