Davin Spridgen
2/9/10
My Paintbrush
I sit in my room, and its 2:45 in the morning in rainy Seattle; I have been sitting in my pajama pants with streaks of paint on my left pant leg for the last 6 hours painting. I look down at my left thigh under my clamp light as it illuminates the many colors of paint scraped from my palette knife from paintings long since finished. These PJ’s are faded from years of use; the elastic band has begun to separate from the thin royal blue material and the hems of the bottom of my pant cuff are frayed. I remember they were a gift from an old girl friend when I was eight-teen I am twenty-six now.
The non-florescent light spills over my body as I am hunched over my stool, which is also stained with paint. I take a deep breath as I straighten my posture exhaling with the on set of exhaustion. I take my paintbrush out of my water container and hold the long slender wooden handle; the smooth exterior of the handle has cracked from years of use. The rough wood under layer now exposed to my touch. The bristles slightly frayed to reveal its age. The once immaculate brush that shimmered with vibrant white synthetic hairs, now seasoned with use. The Color now is stained with a tinted dark violet hue.
My palette in my right hand is a traditional shape, but is made of a milky white Plexiglas. Small surface scratches cover its surface erratically in all directions, with small pigment remnants of paint from the when I scrape away dried paint in to my small dark blue garbage can that sits beside my easel.
I adjust myself; shifting my weight left and right try and discover a secret undiscovered comfortable position on an intentionally uncomfortable stool. I for some reason think it keeps me focused on the task at hand to sit on such an uncomfortable device. It’s a crazy thing I started doing god knows when to keep me from dazing off. I think its ridiculous too.
I dry my brush off on a rag that has also seen better days, and load it with some acrylic paint. I sigh again and hold my breath as I apply the brush to the surface of my hand stretched canvas a skill I have just recently begun to practice. I let my breath escape my lips slowly with a slight groan, a trait I recently have discovered to be an idiom gifted to me from my father.
It is 3:15am; I have class at eight in the morning tomorrow. I finish my last portion of my painting as it fidgets on my rickety easel. I hunch over after drying my brushes on the rag trying to avoid the excess paint that lays on the rag like a mine to a mine field. I dry it. I place it in the disgusting, yet comforting Mason jar with paint stains and a deteriorated label.
Like so many other paintings I have done, even though I know I need to sleep, it’s hard to walk away once I get going. I wind down. I sit with my head cocked to the side looking at the now occupied space, where once was nothing but negative space resided. Now, in its place is a, face, flower, pattern, gun, or a personal child hood iconographic symbol, a whatever. I have done this before. Many, many, many times.
I am free to space out now. I let my mind wander and it always comes back to my current project. What’s next? Maybe ill add a glaze here, or a series of highlights there. It’s the same every time and im addicted to it. Art and creating to me is a wonderful, immersive, and beautiful addiction.
I begin to wonder about all the things that have gotten me to the place I am today. I wonder about the many historical events that have shaped the stage for my current affinity for the art I have come to love emulate and hopefully, help evolve. If my brush could talk, what would it say? What stories would it tell me?
I imagine it would say something about the birth of acrylic paints. My brush would tell me this remarkable substance is made from pigment suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion. My brush might comment on its versatility and adaptability to different surfaces with the use of mediums. I remember the day I discovered retarder, a substance used to slow the drying time of acrylic paint. My brush would tell me that it could tell how much I like that. I would have to agree.
One of my other brushes might interject and tell me that had I been born before the 1950’s I would have had a hard time trying to get my hands on acrylic paint, because that was the year that they were made most readily available commercially. This bush might say that it took the use by Mexican muralists using these early latex paints to push the production of artist grade acrylic paints in the early 1960’s by a company called Liquitex.
I would reply, “I did not know that.”
Acrylic paint is for the most part non-removable; solvents like isopropyl alcohol can remove fresh paint, but are less effective against a more established piece of art. Acetone, can remove paint, but will also remove it down to the surface it’s painted on, like a canvas or a wall.
A very knowledgeable paintbrush would say.
In the midst of this conversation, I note the way acrylics can be used to layer paint upon paint quickly due to its drying time. My mind begins to see a pattern where the effects of my child hood up bringing are conjured up in the regurgitation of these cartoon’ish images in my own art. These bright colors and and stylized characters could be linked in history I thought to the Fauism art movement. As the paint bush had been reading my mind, he might say that fauvism is derived from the French word fauve, meaning “wild beast”. And that these artists where known for their use of bright colors.
As I begin to think of the indirect links to my own artistic history, I think to my other interests, which are similarly rooted. I think of my influence of comics, graffiti and anime as points of inspiration.
In comics I remembered the exceptional line quality of magnificently inked super heroes. That in turn had come to affect my tedious, and meticulous nature in the art making that I would produce now. A brush might recall my obsessive desire to reproduce images from my favorite comics and anime. A brush might also recall me spreading from my anime influence because I found it artistically stagnating. Like so many others, I was striving for uniformity, but I had no personal identity with my art. My craft wasn’t me, it was some one elses dream I thought.
My paintbrush would agree.
I began to find myself identifying with a different artistic community. That was inspired by smaller sub genres beyond the recognition of the artistic community at large. It was for people like my self who had influenced by pop culture, music, graffiti, and sarcasm.
A paintbrush would probably say, that it was called lowbrow.
That particular paintbrush may then be so inclined to further its explanation in saying that it’s a visual art movement born out of California, La to be specific, it is also known as pop surrealism. I might begin to think that these paintbrushes are awfully smart. This paintbrush, if so inclined my tell me that entire magazines have been dedicated to this movement such as “Juxtapoz” which was established 1994.
I would then reply to that particular paintbrush that I know that because I read that magazine all the time. This paintbrush may then go on to state that lowbrow artist where received by museums, and critics with hesitation and uncertainty. But artists like Mark Ryden who has roots in lowbrow, has had work in museums all over the United States.
I began to think of my time in San Francisco, specifically in the S.F M.O.M.A bookstore where I first identified Mr. Ryden’s paintings in a book with photos of his work. I then started to think of my place in the artistic community and how if I did have this conversation with my paintbrush I might be able to identify my self with an artistic movement that is bound together by a unified sense of alienation. This alienation that binds us would in fact be instrument of our own unity. And through this unity would give us a sense of community broader that one particular medium. It could be oils on canvas, acrylics on plastic dolls, stencils of records, graffiti on walls, prints on t-shirts, or something that I have not invented yet but it would still be in the category of lowbrow.
I shake my head and climb into bed with my paintings all over the walls and a canvas cradled in my easel and fall asleep wondering if any of what my paintbrushes would say would give me a greater sense of purpose and understanding.
My paintbrush would probably say, “yes it would.”
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