FEED THE DOG

Found crushed can, reclaimed doug fir and aluminum plate., 13"x13"x11", 2013

Dog food in a can!
An old tin can, crushed, crumpled and rusted brings back memories. Careful dimensions and aluminum milling helps make the connection between the old and discarded and the shiny and polished.

For some time painting’s window has been open to found objects of all sorts and painting has long made a significant and often times profound place for these in its world. Could painting now not only integrate an object but also elevate that object as well? Could painting open a window onto an object’s inherent formal characteristics and could that object, in return, offer painting’s sacred view a direction it might look for a moment?
Less found than rethought, less retrieved than reinterpreted, less nostalgia than curiosity.

At the beginning of a long trip around the world I began making a series of small collage compositions in city after city. I worked with cut-out colored paper and started from unique, interesting objects found in the streets of foreign cities. Early in the trip I had seen an exhibition of Matisse’s “Jazz” cutout compositions in a Kyoto museum which confirmed for me I was on a fruitful path. My small studies pointed the way forward to the larger work I am now focused on.
PS_ Thanks Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.