7
TIM EBNER
Tell me what's different about this one?
M. You know what's amazing is that this bear is the same as that one. The same bear and yet ...
Very different though. You can't do it twice the same way. You're just in a different place.
Paintings are good. I like paintings. Paintings are a lot easier to look at then talk about. It gets pretty hard.
M. What do you think about talking about paintings?
Well, I just think it's a bit of a disappointment. I mean in the long run, they all are, in every way ... Maybe we're trying to get to a certain place of revelation where everything makes sense and you feel as though you've composed that, or you've arrived. But it never does that. I know it never will. I mean if I was really good at painting, I don't think I'd be painting. It's just you're always faced with your inadequacies and I'm always trying to overcome them and I will not be satisfied with them. And that's why I start another one. And in each one there are certain technical or intellectual conquests or there's a mastery in it, but little by little ...
M. You 're always faced with your inadequacy. Why are you answering it with painting ... instead of language?
Because, I don't think for me, language is not as sensual. Not as 'essential', but 'seductive'. That inadequacy is something I love. That's part of me.
M. But why does it take this form? What is it about painting?
You asked that before. That's the great question. That is THE question. I know one thing. All of my anal retentive capacity can find a great place to live itself out on a canvas and I don't know why. I don't know why. But it's just the directness ... the immensity of the possibilities ... with the palette. But the limitation of that frame, of that scale, and the amazing capacity for absorption and bounce of canvas, and the unbelievable practicality of it. I just don't know a better way to do it. In this house. In this room. It's just perfect. You know. But there's something so immediate. Also, it has something to do with the fact that you know it's not real, that it's not even convincing as something being in reality. You understand the artifice of a painting right away. It's really apparent. When I look at a painting ... when I make it, it's one kind of experience ... when I look at it, I know that it's just paint on canvas. I don't get sucked up into a world per se. When I make it, it's different.
M. Then you're sucked in.
Yeah. And I like that edge. I like knowing that I'm working on something that is so clumsy and real and awkward in its form. But yet I can put something on top of it that gives it an illusion, or a sensuality. But it's just a thing. It's just a sludge, it's just gook. And you try to make something out of that. It's nice.
