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VIJA CELMINS: I ended up doing this extremely detailed work

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that I detest but I somehow [br]worked myself into this space

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and I’m hoping to work myself out.

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But I hate to abandon a work [br]that I have cared for so long.

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I mean I’ve been working on this [br]little tiny piece for over a year.

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So you know, these two images go together

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but I’m leaving out the comet because I [br]can’t stand an event that exciting in there.

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I mean I had the comet in there [br]but now the comet is maybe,

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I don’t know, millimeters under here.

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I have redone the image many many [br]times one on top of each other

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and I paint it and then I sand it off.

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This little photograph which I found [br]someplace and which I’ve been dragging around.

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I don’t know, it’s a kind of inspiration.

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And a kind of a place to put [br]your mind so that it allows me to

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maybe focus more on the touch.

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You know, my touch on an [br]image that here is like found,

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found by me and that’s, like, described in [br]a touch, which remains part of the work.

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This may be the ninth time I’m painting it.

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But each time I try to articulate [br]it however I’m able to at the time.

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And if I lose it, which I often do, [br]then I paint it again on top of itself.

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I mean somehow I think that [br]the image then begins to

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have a sort of memory in it [br]even if you can’t see it.

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It can build up a kind of a [br]dense feeling toward the end

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and then it makes me happier.

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I’m very suspicious of illusionism,

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so the space is flat and I like that but,

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you know, I have an image that [br]what I’d like for it to do is to

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like give a little so that it like [br]makes you want to go in a little bit.

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So you’re looking like [br]maybe you can look in there.

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And then, you know, be kept out.

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For me this part is interesting [br]cause this is the part

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where I’m like building, you know?

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I’m building the, the work from the beginning.

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I kind of like the idea of laying a field out.

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Then many times I begin like [br]working with an image already on it.

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This time I thought I would build [br]more of a feel thinking of a feel

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that begins to fill up some of [br]the grain of the canvas itself.

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This is all part of the work.

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In fact I often now talk about building [br]a painting instead of you know,

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painting a painting.

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Like I’m building a painting,

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I’m making a structure that’s a painting [br]cause it’s a two-dimensional object…

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This painting has such an [br]illusionistic space in it.

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I think I remembered kind of feeling [br]the joy of being able to paint anything.

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At that time I painted a lot of uh [br]different objects, things that turned on,

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you know, like my hot plate and the lamps,

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everything pretty much I had in the studio.

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Then I started painting images of little [br]clippings and this is one of them.

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So I sort of liked the painting.

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I’m trying to see whether it can sort [br]of hold up to my having had you know,

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maybe thirty five years of painting after it.

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I think I painted this in the [br]middle of the Vietnam War.

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I was remembering the planes,

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when I was in Europe myself [br]in 1944, just a small child,

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I remembered the airplanes.

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They were, I’d never seen one [br]of course but I, I heard them…[br]

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This is an invented thing, you know?

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That it’s not like a copy of [br]nature, or a copy of photograph.

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It’s an invented thing that, [br]that you have in front of you.

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But see these. These are [br]these little nuts that I found

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that have this fantastic surface [br]that’s like this surface.

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I mean I have to say that I’ve [br]always found it impossible

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to go straight from nature,

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although I did do that series of stones didn’t I?

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Most of the changes in the work [br]occur poking around my own life.

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Like when I picked up those [br]set of rocks in New Mexico,

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never even occurred to me, I [br]had them in the back of the car,

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I put them out on the table and I just had [br]this instinctive desire to make them myself

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as if I was maybe a creator myself.

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To make them myself to see how close I could get,

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like a test or something like a discipline.

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I had them cast in bronze and then I painted them.

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And I decided the piece should be the found stone

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and the one that is sort of translated by me.

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But I have been liking these chalky, surfaces

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and I’m attracted to these [br]eye dazzling little things.

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For a while I thought I would just [br]repeat the one image my whole life.

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When I, when I started going down

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and taking a picture of the ocean I thought,

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well I’ll just do this over and over

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and maybe something will show up that is amazing.

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And then of course I got tired of it

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and then I moved on to some other things,

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but not too many.

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One of the things I did is I repeated [br]the image in different materials.

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Like first I started just with the pencil

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and then when I was asked to do these prints,

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the first image I did was a lithograph.

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I have it like a dog with this bone.

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I come on to these things [br]and I maneuver a little bit

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and this a little bit that [br]way and a little bit this way.

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It’s like something unconsciously [br]seeps into the work.

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Some subtlety that my brain [br]was not capable of figuring out

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by spending so much time with it.

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I tell you these images just [br]float through from my life,

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they have no symbolic meaning.

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I mean generally I, I pick [br]images that are already surfaces.

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I did the spider image the first time about 1992

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and I think I like the image because [br]it sort of held on to the edges

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and made this flat plane [br]which I’m so in love with.

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This image has been drawn on [br]a piece of paper with charcoal

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and also with an eraser.

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Just a plain eraser, Pink pearl,

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then that was transferred onto the plate.

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And then I went back in and I scraped.

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I scraped the web once more, like [br]bringing it into more of a focus.

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And an image that is a corny [br]image, right up my alley I guess.

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An image that’s got a lot of associations with it,

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but an image which I of course put in this [br]very cold, scientific kind of dressing.

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Because most of my images....

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Well I guess they are pretty [br]emotional images for some people.

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It’s like one of the elements [br]that I kind of neutralize.

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Even though I’ve been sort of [br]obsessed with this image you know,

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that kind of describes a space, I’m not really,

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I mean you know, I don’t really have a,

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an agenda here where I line [br]them up and do it one way.

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Each one you know, develops [br]how it wants to develop.

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But I like being back in the studio,

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sort of back in the, you know, working [br]with this strange tedious surface.