The Stamp Paintings

     Generally speaking, when a person composes an image, every line of that composition is a specific mark made with specific intent. I look to create images using the strayed edge of those controlled lines, to utilize the mark of happenstance. To achieve this, I work through a system of guidelines set by appropriated images taken from art related magazines such as Artforum and Art in America. Using these pre-existing images dictates the size of the image, the color palette, and the initial composition, as I directly paint (reproduce) the photographic image to begin my process.

     I regard that my paintings can be considered as detached 'collaborations' (willing or not) between the original artist and myself. Whether the viewer sees this interaction as destruction, a palimpsest or an enhancement of the original is irrelevant. What is important to understand is that the appropriated images merely set the playing field for which the game is to be played.

     Once the chosen image has been reproduced, a loose piece of canvas is pressed and pulled on the surface of the painting. It is in this printing press like approach, that I relinquish control of my actions to that of happenstance, as the loose canvas piece is used as the primary tool to transfer and move paint about the image. When more paint is applied to the surface of the painting, it is only a reinforcement of the original image or aspects that have come about through the stamping action.

     My process yields two correlating bodies of work, the 'preliminary' paintings and the loose paint filled 'stamping' canvas pieces. It is in the presentation of both finished canvases that the work itself becomes a referencing mechanism for the concept which has been applied.