The artist didn’t feel she had much to say about her work because, she said, her work speaks for itself. She also seemed much too comfortable with titling all of her pieces “Untitled”. I questioned the artist about her process to get the story behind the canvas. I fashioned her profile to match her voice and words as closely as possible. I insisted on titles for each painting. She came up with some great ones.
TSUNAMI by Joanne Kaufman
Seeing, Painting and Erasing
I am going to tell you about my process because I’d like to help you connect with what you see in my galleries. The story found in each work will be yours to imagine.
Seeing
As a painter I work from prompts. That could be anything I see or hear or read—at anytime. What happens after that has nothing to do with representation or narrative. As I work, I keep asking what am I
seeing?Interview With A Canvas
The work of painting is like an interview. I try to ask good questions and hope to be surprised by the answers. If I have an off the wall idea while I’m in the middle of a piece, I’ll try it because I’m willing to risk losing what I’ve done to see what might happen next. I invite accident into my process.
My process is intentional and selective at the same time that it is totally up for grabs. What directions I go, what the painting decides to become… it’s all fluid.
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