These are some paintings I made. I am not unique, and neither is my art.
Steve Gallant Running, 2020, Oil on aluminum, 4 x 5 in.
Sleeping Soldier, 2020, Oil on linen, 14 x 18 in.
Plane Flying Into a Mirror, 2020, Oil on canvas, 14 x 18 in.
Mormon Boy, 2020, Oil on aluminum, 4 x 6 in.
A Landscape, 2020, Oil on board, 9 x 12 in.
I think my main activity in life is trying to get unlost from my own head, and if this pursuit yields some writing and some paintings now and then, it isn’t my fault.
The things I paint are things I see in my brain before I paint them. After successfully avoiding painting them for several months, years, etc., I eventually start to paint them. They always change a lot when I try to note them down, and I want the material evidence of this struggle to stay visible. I listen to the news, I try to engage with the world, I try to witness it and would also like to make it better, and these paintings are what happens when those things meet. In the future, I hope to paint pictures of such subjects as Harvey Weinstein’s bathrobe, Emma Goldman’s ice cream shop, and my own knees. I like for paintings to be small and icon-like, I don’t think you need to make a big deal out of how much wall space you can take up.
I don’t paint with more frequency than I do paint. I spend a lot of my life asleep. I also write about stuff. I think when I write I do a better job of communicating something specific, rather than something nebulous, as is the case here. In the past I have concentrated on writing art criticism, but I like architecture a lot more than art now becomes it seems more about real peoples’ lives and less about inside jokes. My Master’s thesis is an impossible tour guide to the Medinah Temple, a former Shriners auditorium in Chicago’s River North that is now a Bloomingdale’s home goods store.
I made one short film, about my quest through the suburbs to find a stranger who once painted this specific shark, and I would like to make more.