A couple of summers ago,
I was doing this painting called "Heaven."
It was a freely-painted,
gestural, non-objective painting.
I'm thinking it's my post-modern version of abstract expressionism.
And I'm reading the biography of de Kooning,
about how poor de Kooning sat in a chair for years,
trying to make a painting come out right.
And I'm painting on my fake abstract expressionist,
doing exactly the same thing:
Looking at it.
Going, poking around at it a little bit.
Sitting down.
And I'm reading the book and I'm thinking,
"Get a life, de Kooning!"
And then I'm thinking,
"Oh my gosh, this is hard to do!"
And I stopped at that point.
[LAUGHS]
When I started painting,
my painting was coming out of sculpture,
and I was using acrylic paint almost as a sculptural material.
I would paint straight up and down
and then straight sideways,
covering up the brushstrokes.
Not sanding them out,
but just trying to make it not expressionistic at all.
Then at a certain point
I put on my masking tape and paint all over the place,
so that you'd have this hard-edge thing and this gestural thing
going on at the same time.
That was a major breakthrough.
You get both.
You'd get it both ways.
You get Albers and de Kooning in the same painting.