Danny Gregory has a wonderful interview with artist Walton Ford here. I liked his comments on art journaling, but the whole interview is well worth a read.
Danny: So what role does journaling play in your work? I know you were very influenced by Audubon and by his work in the field. How does that sense of process and discovery go into your paintings?
Walton: I like to see Art as a tool. Audubon cut things out, pasting things together, scribbled notes to printer on it… The process of making was part of the work. The drawings weren’t the end result, the work was the final engravings so he allowed himself the freedom to be so cavalier with his work, not precious. I make my paintings look like they have that attitude, that feeling of unfinished ness, like it was done in the field. The writing focuses it, explains it.
I make 10-foot watercolors of tigers in which the stripes tell allegorical stories about Vietnam. Paintings so large they are experiential, like a diorama, filling your peripheral vision. I make them life size because, well, when you see a beaver, you think of it like the size of a woodchuck with a weird tail, then you see what it’s really like, it’s awesome, it’s totally startling, the size of a 50 gallon drum, it’s freaky and I like to that in my work, the fun of finding an animal that large and more grotesque than in your mind’s eye. When its life sized, when it’s extinct, it’s shocking. Flocks of millions of passenger pigeons that have never been painted before. It’s like a time machine too. To see things for real that can’t be seen anymore.
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Danny: Is it important to be an artist?
Walton: At the end of the day, the only thing that human beings have to feel proud about is what sort of art did that culture leave behind, what sort of music, food, creativity, writing, the objects they made. That’s the value and legacy that will endure. In traditional societies, the making of things was tied to the survival of the group. They didn’t worry about justifying their motivations. They all knew they were doing it for the interest of the group. The rugs on the floor, the paintings on the wall.
Danny: So what’s changed? It sure doesn’t feel that way today.
Walton: People nowadays are made to feel self conscious about drawings, about singing, about being different. And professionals are to blame for mystifying the role of the artist to the point that people feel stupid if they don’t understand things. And there is no attempt to educate people as to why the things that they may not understand right away are worth understanding. And then there’s this tortured pathetic version of an artist. Ed Harris showing Jackson Pollock as an inarticulate bastard, Kurt Cobain blows his brains out. All this stuff adds up and people don’t want to be involved in this kind of thinking or being or making stuff. They’re interested instead in Hollywood people who aren’t that interesting but who corporations make money out of.
Danny:So is it worth it? Would your recommend that people try to make a living as an artist?
Walton:The advantage I have over people who don’t do this for a living is that I get to do it to think about it all day, every day. I get to wake up each day and just think about making some thing cool.
Danny: That does sound cool.
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