Unintentional art resonates with me very much. Whenever I draw, I almost always try to remove myself from intention, or direction. Not to the extent that someone like John Cage did, or other artists using chance procedures—as in, I don’t necessarily create situations in which random events are created independently from me—but I do try not to draw something, but instead just draw. If I try and draw something it usually results in an uninteresting piece. Although this is far from new or innovative, a lot of people still don’t understand this. I’ve been selling art on the street for the past 5 or so months, and many folks viewing or buying ask me what I was thinking about or why I drew something or what it’s supposed to be. I do understand that these questions can be important, and there’s nothing wrong with them, but I don’t have very clear answers. A specific drunken lady in New Orleans once got very, very mad at me for not being able to explain one piece to which she apparently related emotionally. After talking with her for 40 minutes at least, I had to physically remove her from my post, as my explanations were apparently insufficient, and she violently demanded more.
With painting, it’s the same thing, except there are many more variables, which is exciting : How the mediums relate with one another, how something is applied and dries, what can be revealed from before, after additional layers of medium have been applied. Most of this goes without saying. But it became very emphasized when I saw this hand dryer in a filthy bathroom in a San Francisco park. Perhaps years worth of stickers, graffiti and grime had been applied to and removed from the hand dryer’s surface. What resulted happened to be completely gorgeous, and is right up there with some of my favourite abstract expressionist paintings. Furthermore, capturing this image on a cheap cell phone, emailing it to myself, downloading it, and posting it here contributes to its ephemeral nature ; it is unstable, will probably be forgotten, exists in a variety of forms and is appreciated in a variety of ways.
Evan Lindorff-Ellery 