6
TIM EBNER
I've got this one photograph of a bear that I've been using for all the bears. It's perfect. It really works. I've got the lights and darks all set up for me and I can just go crazy. This one came a little bit earlier and there's more of an insistence on what they are, on what things are. I think what's happening ... the other painting ... everything was a little bit more suggestive and now it's starting to become a little bit more definitive. And I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to kind of save that off. In the other painting, there was sort of an ease that happened to it that I really liked. Now in finishing it, in tightening it down, in defining and defining, I'm hoping that it won't get to a point where it is overdefined and then dead. I'm thinking that in this painting it's sort of working here for me because of just the obsessiveness and craziness involved with that grass. I wanted it to almost appear natural, but it seemed so artificial. But it kind of works. There is a naturalism within that picture that gets it to work for me. But if you were to sink it up with the tradition of painting, or something, or getting the field of blades of grass and water to work, that would not be the way to do it. There would be other ways to get it to be more convincing.
I think if it was an endless field of grass it would be too meaningful. It would turn into this metaphor. And by including the horizon I'm thinking that this bear's in a fucking swamp. And, you know, he's wading through the grass and he's picked up this bass, or something, and if it was just grass all the way up to the horizon then it would be, oh, you know, the endlessness of ... whatever ... it would be too much of a metaphorical space. Too much.
M. What's the thing with the fish, the same with the elephant, with the tail coming through the ...
I don't know, but I kind of like it. It sort of works for some reason. I didn't want to repeat myself but in order to get ... At first, the tail was not there and the same thing with the elephant, the trunk was not there. But in order to activate that area, I had to put something there. So I thought well I'll put that fin in. He's flopping. And the same thing with the elephant.
M. That [disk] shape Is that the same thing as in the old work?
It's just something coming over from it. Yeah. You know at one point it was a ... You remember the abstract paintings, they were in actuality like that. And then when I started to do the oil paintings, I would have them kind of floating around but sort of flat or facing you. It allowed things to be read ... as starting at one point and then moving back into another.
M. You know you've got a wicked flower there. That's a wicked flower.
I did that with my fingers. Thank you!
M. Same there. That little ... It's wicked.
Thank you.
The grotesque? Yeah, I kind of like that. This one's about that. This one had ... like the two figures at the bottom, I thought there was a sort of insanity to them. But I thought that this character at the top had a sort of elegance to him
M. Yeah, but there's also, a kind of cruelty in this painting.
Yeah. I can go on all sorts of ...
M. He's got that sort of elegance, but then you fucking, sort of castrate him.
Yeah! Yeah! ... Right now, this one seems to be resolved. I'm not sure. But I think it is. I'm really tired of it. I've worked on it a long time. And it changed a lot. I'm not sure what gets them to ... each painting is different. The elephant one, I don't think it's resolved yet, but I keep working on it. I might just scrape the whole thing out. I don't really know.
I work on a lot of them at a time but I can't ... I'm never satisfied ... It's hard for me to finish them. You get to a point where it's almost right and then you ... like that elephant thing ... there's something not quite working. I could completely fuck it up. And then that will start it going on again for another month. And then in the meantime I start other paintings because I just can't ... So it becomes this ongoing ... working on three or four paintings because you just can't ... Then I've got to make stretcher bars, and then I've got to make ... it's not a methodical kind of thing. There is a methodology to it, but it's not necessarily one that I like. (laughs)
