What Art Is, Part 3: Fact and Fiction
Fiction painting operates by illusion. It tells stories, expresses moods, and creates imaginary spaces. Fiction painting addresses the question, ‘What does it look like?’ Fact painting constructs meaning through the way it is put together. With fact painting the question is, ‘Why would somebody do that?’ Perhaps all painting has elements of both fact and fiction, but I think of my work as fact painting.Raw canvas, visible ground, and exposed nail heads in my work draw attention to the process of making oil paintings, foregrounding its deliberateness. I want the work to be openly purposeful, made to be looked at. I intend my painting process to be completely transparent. I want viewers to see how the paint was applied, to know what they are looking at.
Faux Formica (oil on canvas, 2005) is a small square painting simulating wood grain. As a mimetic artwork, this painting invites judgment against its external referent, either wood or plastic laminate as hinted by the title. But the title is unclear, and may be understood to refer to either the painting as an imitation of laminate, to laminate as an imitation of wood, or to wood as an imitation of laminate. The work addresses the nature of illusion, and the complexity of searching for something original in a context of fiction and illusion.
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