Mickey Squared

• Size: 14″ x 14″ x 1.5″
• Substrate: Canvas
• Medium: Oil pen on Acrylic

Mickey Squared was the last piece where I executed a sense of control. Mind you, this is very thing that seems to define me as an artist. I’m known for a sense of rigid lines and every color has a place and everything makes sense. I work with a 1/4th angle brush to the bone until its obliterated. I used to strive for physical perfection in my work. I worked endless nights trying to make sure that every single line, angle, and square were perfect down to their measurements. This almost seems self defeating in a sense, since perfection in the cleanest line will read as a graphic design execution, and therefore removes the organic human quality of the piece.

It wasn’t until I found Roy Lichtenstein’s work at LACMA, that I let go the very idea of perfection. I saw he left pencil lines in around his circles and remember feeling this massive weight lift off of my hands, as if I was automatically granted permission to be human for a second from a teacher who had no idea I was a student. I remember being by myself, pointing at the painting and spontaneously screaming “A-HA!!!” at the piece, causing all the fellow patrons to quickly turn to look at me.

I forget that I am creating a body of work sometimes. It feels as if I’m having those dreams where I’m working, and the result never changes, and I’m left waking, realizing I’ve been dreaming the whole night working. My mind saturated with thought, process, that the art itself is a testament to my OCD behavior, striving for the perfect number, closing in on the perfect pattern, relegating the odd, and embracing only the even. The art is the process, not necessarily the final result.

This was, for the time being, the bungee cord piece. Where I stood at the ledge of creating my index of safety, before jumping off into more treacherous, and certainly more experimental work. I knew I’d be able to, and eventually would go back to structured pattern… but this was the first time I had the idea to even think about jumping into the depths of my imaginative capabilities.