WEBVTT

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[SUBWAY TRACKS RUMBLING OVERHEAD]

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["New York Close Up"]

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There’s some expression:

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"Your best ideas come to you in the shower,"

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"in transit,
and as you're about to go to sleep."

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I haven’t stopped thinking about what the
next painting is.

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I feel incredibly free
when I have an art idea.

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Being an artist is almost like

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a pursuit of this feeling of freedom.

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[Avery Singer, Artist]

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I love that feeling.

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I live for that.

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["Avery Singer's Next Painting"]

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I’ve been predominantly making
these SketchUp models

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on the computer, as a way of producing
a sketch for a painting.

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These sort of bad architectural models

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that are these semi-figurative scenarios.

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I just get basic line and detail information
from that

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and project it large scale,

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sketch it out on the canvas,

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and then realize the painting using airbrush.

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The way that paintings are made

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is almost the content, you know?

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I would like to keep it a bit more vague

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and explore things with the technique.

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Because the technique tells its own story.

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You can take traditional tools
and employ them

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in the way that they’ve been intended to
be employed for 500 years.

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And then, in the next hour, you know,

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incorporate some kind of new technology

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that bears no relationship upon the gesso
that is, you know,

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something that's been used for however long

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and comes out of a recipe that was 
invented in Italy

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who knows how long ago.

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The juxtaposition of all these things 
produces meaning.

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I try to kind of put things side by side that...

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may have never been seen together before

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to produce a new relationship

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or just to produce a new visual reality.

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I think by 11 or 12, I was already in love
with art.

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And then by the time I was 16, it was just,
like, unequivocal.

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I was like,
"I know that this is what I have to do."

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"I have to go to Cooper Union."

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I grew up here in New York.

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And my parents are artists as well.

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So I grew up in a loft where half of it is
their art studio--

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the other half is, kind of, open-plan apartment.

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So growing up,

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my room was basically a loft bed above my
Mom's studio.

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So that was how I was used to living.

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My parents use Golden paint.

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And so I only use Golden paint.

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This company.

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You know.

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So I’m like a second generation
Golden paints painter.

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[LAUGHS]

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The joke is: everyday of my childhood,

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my dad would just stand in front of me

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and intimidatingly, kind of,

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do this, like, finger-wagging thing.

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[LAUGHS]

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And say, “Never become an artist.

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"Don’t become an artist."

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"Marry a millionaire."

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[INTERVIEWER, OFF SCREEN]
How’s that working out?

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[LAUGHS]

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"No" on both counts!

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I don’t know what it is,

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but I just love solitude.

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And I love working alone,

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and defining my own time,

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and my own life, and my own space.

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You don’t look at the clock anymore

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and then all of a sudden the sun is down

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and you realize you've been painting
for fourteen hours

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and you have this progress in front of you.

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This is your task--

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this what makes being an artist so hard.

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Because I don’t want to reproduce other
people's paintings.

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I want to make my own.