Image: Little Pink Viking, detail. Complete image below. ©James Cullinane
When I look at art by other people, I try to leave my attitudes about my own work behind, and look with care. I try to move beyond “like” or “don’t like”.
BY JAMES CULLINANE
The work I am currently doing started with a look back at small “suitcase pieces” I had done while traveling ten years ago. They were small collages and paintings that explored the possibilities diagrammatic or didactic imagery such as architectural dictionaries and instructional manuals might have. To return to this period in the work I was doing then has provided a new way into my current practice.
I am only interested in pattern as a product of process. In this group of works, geometry and pattern are built up patiently until the edifice begins to topple … until process is built on top of process without concern for appearance of the thing. Then and only then after lying on wait for weeks or months, can you hope to escape down the labyrinthine path that geometry has created. A painting may begin to form if it’s not wrecked or compromised along the way.
Artist’s web site jamescullinane.com
Artist’s gallery RHV Fine Art New York
RHV 683 6th Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718) 473-0819
Gallery Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 2 – 7pm
Current exhibition Aqua Art
Image: Salome, detail. Click here for complete image. ©James Cullinane
The Magazine of Yoga Six of 1: The Arts Interview
One
Is being in a flow or a particular kind of space part of creating or part of working for you? Can you describe anything about it – how you get it, what it feels like?
Yes, there is a specific kind of mind space or flow that occurs when I’m doing my best work. It is not unlike that weightless effortless feeling that can happen during a marathon that you have trained well for. Time unfolds like a bright banner and stride and joy take over.
Rimbaud said in 1871, “It is wrong to say: I think. One should say: I am thought.”
I never know what a painting will look like.
Two
T.S. Eliot famously said, “There is no method except to be very intelligent.” Yes, no? Maybe so?
Yes, true. But there is plenty of method and deep erudition in The Waste Land coupled with a spiritual and psychological collapse that led to a poetic breakthrough. Not the type of thing that could be repeated as technique or method.
“Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”
Three
Is there some place or attitude you begin from in yourself when you look at art by other people?
Yes. I try to leave my attitudes about my own work behind, and look with care. I try to move beyond “like” or “don’t like”. Your taste is not that interesting. Leave it behind and LOOK.
Image: Persephone, detail. Click here for complete image. ©James Cullinane
Four
Does anything (consistently/ frequently/ randomly) move you to make art? How did you find yourself making the kind of art or the particular work you are involved in now?
There is no specific external event that leads me to the studio. Being awake and alive to natural phenomena as well as alert and open when painting may led to work that matters.
I currently make paintings and drawings because it still matters to me after 40 years of work.
Five
Favorite overheard remark
A very large woman on a street corner near Port Authority Bus Terminal
with a very small chihuahua on a pink leash wearing a pink tu-tu….in a wistful voice,
“No, I have never been to Russia … “
Six
I’d rather be…
I’d rather be a mole in the ground
a rootin’ & a diggin’ ’till I bring that
mountain down.
Half a Dozen of One/ Six of the Other
Six words my gallerist/ artist’s statement/ mother use to describe my work:
“Pattern emerging from an open process”
Six words my best friend would use to describe me:
intelligent, angry, loyal, obstinate, well-read, gentle
Six words to repeat:
Work begets work. Temperament before technique.
Six words to ignore:
Can’t, Don’t, Should, Shouldn’t, Quit, Stay
Six artists to look at:
Velázquez, Matisse, Joseph Cornell, Duchamp, Blinky Palermo, Barnett Newman
Six places to find yourself in:
in nature
in love
in the studio
in intrest
in struggle
in study
Image: Little Pink Viking. ©James Cullinane
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© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.
