Prior to the OLtGaSm, my work often
had a different tone. Nostalgia and other works like it were really
the beginning of an approach which would become the OLtGaSm.
In these works I was really beginning to become comfortable with adding
images to each other, appropriating images and acknowledging the range
of my interests and obsessions in my studio practice.
Nostalgia is a composite drawing; that
is, the three drawings were not intentionally designed to be configured
as shown here. This piece was done during a time when I was breaking
the rigid ideological and conceptual constraints that I had imposed upon
my work (and work habits). At this point I was beginning to allow
myself to draw WHATEVER interested me at the moment with no intention or
theoretical rationale for the decisions made regarding subject matter.
I simply drew whatever I wanted to make a picture of; one day it may be
an ancient Assyrian sculpture, another day a still from an old horror movie
or a 1950s pin-up. Some days I would find myself drawing only triangles,
or ovals, or circles. Many of my long-time interests arose and I
borrowed freely from them: self-portraiture, DeChirico, Picasso, Durer,
automatic writing, symbols, movie posters and more. These were mostly
modestly sized drawings (approximately 22 x 30") and soon I had a stack
of them. As I shuffled them around my studio they became like a deck
of cards. Often by accident one would be placed next to another and
two seemingly disparate source images would share some formal and/or conceptual
coincidence and create a resonance where maybe there shouldn't have
been.
That is how this triptych came to be. Individually, each of the drawings is competent but somewhat predictable. By adding them to each other they create new layers of meaning and implication. The first panel is a graphite drawing from the ancient Assyrian relief portraint of king Ashurnazirpal. The third panel is a charcoal drawing which borrows from my favorite Durer print, an engraving entitled Melancolia. The center panel is a mixed media drawing which is my original exploration of symbolic form.
posted 10 July 1999