WEBVTT

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A couple of summers ago,

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I was doing this painting called "Heaven."

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It was a freely-painted,

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gestural, non-objective painting.

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I'm thinking it's my post-modern version
of abstract expressionism.

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And I'm reading the biography of de Kooning,

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about how poor de Kooning sat in a chair
for years,

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trying to make a painting come out right.

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And I'm painting on my fake abstract expressionist,

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doing exactly the same thing:

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Looking at it.

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Going, poking around at it a little bit.

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Sitting down.

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And I'm reading the book and I'm thinking,

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"Get a life, de Kooning!"

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And then I'm thinking,

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"Oh my gosh, this is hard to do!"

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And I stopped at that point.

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[LAUGHS]

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When I started painting,

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my painting was coming out of sculpture,

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and I was using acrylic paint almost as a
sculptural material.

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I would paint straight up and down

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and then straight sideways,

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covering up the brushstrokes.

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Not sanding them out,

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but just trying to make it
not expressionistic at all.

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Then at a certain point

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I put on my masking tape and
paint all over the place,

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so that you'd have this hard-edge thing
and this gestural thing

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going on at the same time.

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That was a major breakthrough.

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You get both.

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You'd get it both ways.

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You get Albers and de Kooning
in the same painting.