This series was executed in the midst of my Men in Boxes series. I was tiring of the emotional context of that series and needed a diversion, a break from the hard work of painting, so I came up with this project which was something geared more towards the production side of things – a project which required little attachment, less commitment and less concern involving the success of the project. To do this, I had to draw upon two things, my brief education in commercial art, and the spirit of Andy Warhol. Thinking of Andy’s methods of deteriorating serigraph images, I sought an image that I could do repetitively. I found this in a photo of Andy’s own image as a boy-child nearing young-man.
As Jackson Pollack has said (to paraphrase), “a man paints what he is.” I find this to be axiomatic, and totally true. Everything I paint is a self-portrait, and even if it sounds far-fetched, from my own point of view as an artist, it’s true. I paint a tree, and its actually a painting of me being a tree. I paint a woman, and its actually a painting of me being a woman. I paint an Andy Warhol twelve times, and these paintings are actually paintings of me being Andy Warhol twelve times. Of course, in this instance, it didn’t hurt that in photos of the both of us at that same age, we do bear similarity.
This series was executed by a mutated, monoprint/monotype * process of misuse of materials, processes and techniques to get what I wanted. Invention was key here, being I had none of the equipment or materials traditionally used for printmaking. After successive layering of colors was completed, hand-embellishment was called upon to finish the prints.
* if you’d like to read more on the monotype/monoprint processes which I so crudely ignored to do my thing with Andy, here’s a brief introduction to that world of printmaking from the 15th Street Gallery in Boulder, Colorado, written by Steve Grant.
How a Monoprint is Different from a Monotype
The Art of Gregory Evans 