Why do we paint?

I am a media artist who paints. In a world with so many options for imaging and imagining the world the question must be asked — why paint?

For some it seems like the only way the true path the old religion. To take something that's been done for such a long time and make it relevant to this new and dangerous age.

why paint...why breathe...

The world is full of jagged contrasts. Light and color, image and content, word and picture, deities and demons, beauty and terror, good and evil, grace and hysteria, joy and despair. Duality reigns supreme.

To take the viscous material of paint and spin it out to a picture remains my constant fascination and obsession. And instead of life drawing classes we have cartoons and television. Possibly the last great figure painting took place during the Golden Age of magazine commercial illustration. Finding source inspiration in the great digital landscape; the net of ether, the great big google-y blog.

My materiel of choice is One Shot oil paint. Like it says you have to get it basically right the first time. It's the paint of the old time sign painters. Thick and impossibly glossy gorgeous in its toxicity. The line draws itself if you let it. Oil enamel you can really push and pull.

Like the Japanese I want to examine the relationship between the unthinkable and the cute. All painting is self-portraiture I believe. Describe the inside out.

I want to do this more than anything else. And I want everyone to see what I do. Put the energy in and get it out.

I used to work in television and the frisson there is that you have a mass audience. But it is timebased and ephemeral. I want to create one perfect frame at a time for all time.

And that's why I paint.