The Ends 2

ink on four 4x4" clayboard panels, digital finish  |  © 2012 Darick Ritter

I like this go-around much better than the first.

I have no big commitment, though, to make sure The Ends turn into a larger series of shorts. It's possible this could be the last. I say that because I see them more as an experiment in linear story-telling that I believe I need practice in.

This is something I've never had much experience in, working primarily as a modern (contemporary, abstract, untraditional, etc.) painter. And a painting for me is a physical object to be looked at, confronted. It's all of that de Kooning and Rothko and Pollock that I was obsessed with when I was younger. That kind of art was about what was physically happening on the surface, first... for me. That's why most of my previous work has a relief-like texture, avoiding traditional window-like viewing spaces (Van Eyck, Vermeer, or even artists like Thomas Hart Benton).

Now, I believe I can't get away from familiar, object-oriented picture-making because I see it's separation from abstract work only as an illusion of propaganda from artists of different styles competing with one another. And I couldn't figure out how to put things I was actually thinking about - like science-fiction, fantasy, myth-making, or religio-spiritual experiences - into paintings who's antecedents were "all surface".

Making comix like these helps me short-circuit all of these mental entanglements and makes my contribution to the "story" of my work much simpler and honest, I think.