Avery Singer's Next Painting | Art21 "New York Close Up"

[SUBWAY TRACKS RUMBLING OVERHEAD]

["New York Close Up"]

There’s some expression:

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

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

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

I feel incredibly free
when I have an art idea.

Being an artist is almost like

a pursuit of this feeling of freedom.

[Avery Singer, Artist]

I love that feeling.

I live for that.

["Avery Singer's Next Painting"]

I’ve been predominantly making
these SketchUp models

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

These sort of bad architectural models

that are these semi-figurative scenarios.

I just get basic line and detail information
from that

and project it large scale,

sketch it out on the canvas,

and then realize the painting using airbrush.

The way that paintings are made

is almost the content, you know?

I would like to keep it a bit more vague

and explore things with the technique.

Because the technique tells its own story.

You can take traditional tools
and employ them

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

And then, in the next hour, you know,

incorporate some kind of new technology

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

something that's been used for however long

and comes out of a recipe that was
invented in Italy

who knows how long ago.

The juxtaposition of all these things
produces meaning.

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

may have never been seen together before

to produce a new relationship

or just to produce a new visual reality.

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

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

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

"I have to go to Cooper Union."

I grew up here in New York.

And my parents are artists as well.

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

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

So growing up,

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

So that was how I was used to living.

My parents use Golden paint.

And so I only use Golden paint.

This company.

You know.

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

[LAUGHS]

The joke is: everyday of my childhood,

my dad would just stand in front of me

and intimidatingly, kind of,

do this, like, finger-wagging thing.

[LAUGHS]

And say, “Never become an artist.

"Don’t become an artist."

"Marry a millionaire."

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

[LAUGHS]

"No" on both counts!

I don’t know what it is,

but I just love solitude.

And I love working alone,

and defining my own time,

and my own life, and my own space.

You don’t look at the clock anymore

and then all of a sudden the sun is down

and you realize you've been painting
for fourteen hours

and you have this progress in front of you.

This is your task--

this what makes being an artist so hard.

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

I want to make my own.