Someone should. There’s a lot of it out there, and it needs a home.
You’ve explored a lot of painting styles. What’s been a favorite and why?
My favorite painting style is sabotage, which is French for “sabotage.” What it involves is identifying the best parts of your painting, and then removing them. What’s left feels more honest. I do this style regularly and take it very seriously.
Do you have any favorite painters?
Julie Mehretu, Pierre Soulages, Richard Artschwager. I have others, but I’m not here to provide free advertising.
How would you describe your own paintings?
I like to think we hold our history in our nervous system. The way we respond mentally and emotionally to color and shape is dictated by our past experiences. The dialogue I have with a painting is a back-and-forth: making a gesture, then emotionally responding to the new addition, which in turn motivates me to respond physically with another addition. This happens hundreds of times in each painting and the result feels far more like a self-portrait than any depiction of my face.
Why painting? [After stand-up and not other mediums]
After I quit stand-up comedy, I was tired of words. I felt drawn to a visual medium. Working large was physical and gestural, pulling me out of my head. Painting was the cheapest way in, so I used six-by-three-foot pieces of cardboard and brown packing paper.
I also like collecting hobbies my parents can’t brag about.
You’ve practiced a few different forms of art. Have you found that they influence each other? Or, have they led to any interesting discoveries?
They absolutely influence each other. More so, it takes the pressure off trying to express all your ideas and impulses into one medium, which can be stifling. Some ideas are better suited to a visual medium vs. a verbal medium.
Surprisingly, my ability to articulate ideas verbally has also improved as a direct result of painting. In my show 300 Paintings, by superimposing visual and verbal mediums, I’m better able to describe the ineffable mental states associated with Bipolar.
Does your opinion on artwork change the more you create?
Most of my opinions were formed and protected by intentional ignorance. I tried to make as much art as I could before knowing too much about art, because once you know, you can’t unknow. I wanted to form my own opinions before learning about the official ones.
Aussie comedian Sam Kissajukian brings audiences on a hilarious and wildly original rollercoaster ride in this deeply personal gallery talk-meets-stand-up performance.
