As a younger person, I always thought that if 2 was good, then 2,000 is better, 2,000,000 is best, and after that, I’ll eat it all!  Conspicuous consumption was the name of the game, and my paintings and my mind really reflected that.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to go to Bali, where I saw painters who could integrate literally hundreds, if not thousands, of figures on a relatively small canvas or panel.  At that point in my life I was not an artist, but the paintings intrigued me, and I brought home a couple of them.

Later on, as I started to really think about art—and my art in particular—I was wondering, “Why I am jamming so many things onto the canvas?”  I pulled out my Balinese paintings and came to the conclusion that in their case, on an island where the economy was much tighter than ours, maybe the idea was that the more things you could put in the painting, the better value it would be; the more, the better.  I think this had something to do with my own thinking.  To me, minimalism was always not as good as maximum production.  It meant a lack of something and a detraction.  It did not mean “simpler.”  That could be because as a young person, we were coming out of the Depression, and everyone was very conscious that each thing was precious.  If people had more, those people were looked on as leaders.

The older I get, the more I try to subtract.  With the culture we live in, I believe we’re running away from “more,” because all we do is get blasted with messages about what car should we drive, what should we eat or drink, and how do we keep an erection for years?  Half the time, the minute after we buy something, we don’t know why we bought it in the first place.

For me, it comes down to quiet solitude, which was out of my sphere as a younger person.  I don’t know whether that comes from just being so turned off by the noise around me; or dementia; or maybe I’m learning something.  But it seems to show up in all different ways in my painting, which really reflects what mood I’m in on that particular day.  Am I the mad dog in the meathouse, or am I Socrates thinking about his navel?

Matt