John Paul

 

Location: ground floor of 1625 10th Ave, Brooklyn
Website:  johnpaulpaintings.com
Instagram:  john_spencer_paul

The state of mind I aspire to in art is an argument and a romance, lured by the subject itself. "Subject" is for me now narrative figuration, directly observed or abstracted into metaphor.

Admittedly this approach is naïve - a kind of optimism in the language of painting -and hopefully my ability to improvise.My hero in art from those days is Knox Martin, who taught us to "activate" a painting or drawing, to avoid stagnant forms. By that I mean to "see" graphic tensions and rhythms, using the tools of color and line- to invent layered and dynamic possibilities. His method included a radical analysis of the Old Masters.