Q: Can you describe your creative process and how you approach creating a new piece of art?
A:
i am a realist portrait painter, but the abstracts have become the most spirited area of my work. The canvas begins merely as a place to spread leftover paint from the portrait palettes with a knife and also wipe off the extra paint from the brushes as I clean up from a portrait session. At a certain point of coverage and buildup, the thing starts to have a life of its own, a painting that has energy and wants to go in a certain direction. So then without too much regard for aesthetics or design i try to engage with the thing in a way that let’s it grow organically, like a plant, instead of a picture to be executed step by step.
Q: What inspired Marine Abstract, this specific artwork you have chosen for UNTITLED SUMMER?
A:
What inspired this series was an inner resistance to doing yet another painting, creating another image… we are awash in images these days and i started to think: what’s the point of creating yet another? at the same time, working with this medium of oil paint still feels vital, and i still want to do it, so i decided to proceed down the path of not knowing what i’m doing - which after two decades as a figurative realist was exciting and fresh - letting the painting lead me into the unknown.
This journey led me into some new low tech breakthroughs, like transferring passages within a painting or between paintings with saran wrap, which can be seen in the lower right quadrant of Marine Abstract, my piece which is part of the current show at Chelsea Walls… another technique in the middle right hand side of the painting is a straight edge created by disparate colored strokes which originated on top of a piece of paper place over the canvas, which creates an implied edge in the painting and introduces a straight edged vertical into the rather gestural picture.
Q: What emotions or messages do you hope to convey through your artwork?
A:
I’d like the audience to see that the painting was created in such a way that i didn’t really know where i was going, or even what i was doing, but that i was there to observe the process and capitalize on things that i saw as beautiful or mysterious and let myself be led. the reason i think this is important today is that it might be a stance to take that can help us cooperate with each other, let go of our precious opinions, and pay attention to what other people are saying and how things are unfolding
Q: Can you discuss any significant influences—artists, movements, or personal experiences—that have shaped your artistic style?
A:
i suppose my abstracts are somewhat conceptually influenced by Helen Frankenthaller, who described an intention to create paintings that ‘happened’ - I feel sympatico with this approach and try to shepherd them along, letting them be what they want
Nick Weber's Marine Abstract is Now On View at 231 10th Ave.