by Earl Miller
from Artfocus magazine, Winter 96/97 issue

Abstract painting in the 90's is now considered as traditional as the academy. Do you see yourself as a traditionalist?

People refer to me as a Modernist. But I've taken tradition, moved past it, and stepped into new realms. For example, the whole concept of using multiple canvases to portray minimalist ideals, and using the wall as an important aspect of my paintings.

You are from a younger generation than most local abstract painters. There aren't many young abstract painters - the only Toronto painter in the news recently has been David Urban - and his work differs vastly from yours. Where do you see yoursetf fitting in?

Abstract painting is actually becoming more popular with the new generation, which is the 70'S revival generation. Art schools are being run by people who are 40 years old. They grew up when there was a big explosion of abstract painting, so they're now bringing it to a third generation.

Your technique of encaustics is often being used by young painters, "the third generation" if you will. I was wondering why and when you chose to work with it?

I started encaustics around 1990 or 1991. I like the speed of encaustic versus acrylic or oil; encaustics solidify almost instantly. I take a very 'luddite' approach to painting. The paint is all self-made. The colour is ground pigment, then I mix it. I'm not using, say, oil wax, which a lot of painters use.

I apply the wax in very thin layers with palette knives, and putty knives used for drywalling. I heat the wax, which flattens it and allows the pigment to drop which, in turn, causes layering. When you look at it, you're drawn into the painting as opposed to being pushed away. All the movement on the surface is below a perfectly flat shape of wax.

I was tired of building surfaces out front - that textured look which you associate with acrylics and oil. Instead of pushing you out, my paintings draw you in. I find a lot of people want to come up and touch the paintings, because the surface is relatively smooth, with all the action underneath it.

How did you arrive at encaustic abstract painting from the Pop inspired realist paintings you first started exhibiting in the early-to-mid 80's?

I started working mainly with what I knew, which was comic books. I was producing Pop art while not even knowing who Lichtenstein was. My only knowledge of Andy Warhol was the cans and the brillo pads. I didn't take the art school route, so I didn't have art history training. I am completely self-taught, other than a little direction from tutors here and there, and from friends who are painters. Even with encaustics, I never took a lesson. I used the Artists' Handbook, and I spoke to other artists who had worked with the medium.

Your sculpture and also your painting, has always had at least some three-dimensional elements to it. How did this come about?

My work was always three-dimensional. When I was doing my early work, I'd have Spiderman and a web - the painting itself was flat against the wall, and the web came six feet off onto the ceiling - that sort of idea.

Then I decided I wanted to play more with the concept of paint. That's when I started doing acrylic abstractions, but at the same time, I was incorporating a third dimension. I don't exactly know what initially drew me to the concept of the third dimension, but my paintings have very much become objects. The paintings I produced between 1989 and 1991, included three to four inch deep metal and wood structures, multiple structures. These were installed so there was actually a couple of inches gap between them and the canvas.

I think maybe deep down I am really a sculptor more than I am a painter. But I have such an affinity with colour that I don't think I can escape. In that way I'm like John Chamberlain. Maybe I'm actually a realist painter, but realist painting is usually flat. I believe chiaroscuro isn't something you draw, it is something you build. I found I was getting terribly bored with filling in small little squares and grids. One day somebody watching me paint said, "Why are you painting this when you could take a photograph?" I realized: yeah.

While you've abandoned realism, the influence of popular culture is still very much in your work. For instance, the colours of many of your recent encaustics are based on TV commercials. What has led to your ongoing fascination with commercial culture?

I watch a lot of television, I'm the first one to admit. I grew up in an advertising family, so my father always worked on this concept of the demystification of the television commercial. Television is where I find my imagery to portray. Brice Marden found his imagery at his home in Italy, where he'd look out and see the groves of olives. His work is based on the landscape, where my work is based on the "televisionscape".

There are few senior abstract painters in Toronto working in the way you do, that is, working with either encaustics, the "third-dimension", or Pop culture. Nonetheless, are there any painters here who have influenced you?

David Bolduc has been a big influence, not in how he paints but personally; he's such an incredibly positive person. Also, other painters, like some I've just shown with [in Fire and Ice at The Art Gallery of Mississauga]: Claude Tousignant, Guido Molinari and Yves Gaucher. The Art Gallery of Mississauga show was an experiment in showing the history of geometrical art and Minimalism. I got very favourable press for that show Blake [Blake Gopnik of The Globe and Mail] picked up on my vision.

Are there any other artists you look towards internationally?

Ellsworth Kelly; he's a colour master. Also, I'm a fan of Robert Motherwell, again, you'd find his colours are very much in my work. However, I haven't picked up an art magazine or art book over the last four or five years. The art in art magazines, and what has been crossing into the big leagues in the didactic 90's, that was driving me nuts. I'm now trying to paint on my own.

Several years ago, you published a book of limited edition lino prints with the concrete poet, Victor Coleman, entitled Waiting for Alice. Has his poetry, or that of others, helped to shape your work?

Concrete poetry uses pages, as well as words, to express meanings: one line may be in the top right corner, the next line in the centre, the next line in the bottom left hand corner. That's what I've done, in the sense that the wall is an important aspect of my work. All the separate canvases, which are combined to make one piece, have gaps of one to two inches between them. What happens, is the wall is an integral part of the work, as a piece of paper is for a concrete poet.

You have a strong interest in jazz, a form of music that has influenced abstract painters since the 50's. You collect records, and you also host a jazz show, "Why Not" on CKLN-FM. With jazz being so important to you, has it had an impact on your painting?

I actually have a jazz band. I play with the poet, Victor Coleman, and Vince Mancuso, the painter. Then there's Guy LeBlanc, who's a jazz guy, and Andy Pasco, who's a filmmaker. What I find - what I love - about jazz music, at least non-vocal jazz, is that you're allowed to put whatever frame of mind you want into it, so it doesn't regulate how you're supposed to think. It's totally abstract in that way. Also, jazz, at least the jazz I listen to, is a concept built of layers, and layers, and layers, of sound which builds not to a cacophony but to a symphony. That's what I feel my paintings do. By layering the wax, the pigment, and the colour constantly, the painting slowly changes and builds up into its own composition.

Recently, your art changed direction from encaustic abstractions - dramatically. What I'm talking about is a series of boxes containing mostly found objects - coins, rubber stamps and toy skulls - objects which are forged or collaged together. What caused this dramatic shift?

One day in late 1994, I was playing with my son's alphabet blocks, and I came up with an idea for a box. I was going to get little cubes and cover them with "A"s [a pun on the quintessential Canadian "eh"]. It's about Canada being insecure, how embarrassed we should be by it. The red tone of the cubes represents embarrassment. The yellow underpainting of the "A" lettering is about the lack of faith in ourselves - you're a chicken. I called it The Canada Box, a box of insecurity. That box took almost a year and a half to do, because I always put it aside - I didn't want to do a one-off box. Then I was in New York, and I saw these little acrylic cubes, and all of a sudden - oh, next box! And from there, it just flowed.

You have to open the boxes themselves to touch the work. What was the reasoning behind this?

I believe art should be participatory, even though I've taught my son not to touch art, because we've all grown up with that whole concept of respect. All the boxes are meant to be very participatory, something you can put on your coffee table or put on a side board, and it sits there like any other box you have in your house. But the plaque [the title of each box is engraved in either silver and brass] invites you to come and open it.

Your work has, from time to time, contained political content. Political issues are actually predominant in these boxes. What has caused your work to become so politicized?

I worked on the Left for a long time. For about ten years, I was part of the management team of a community radio station (CKLN-FM). I do have a lot of strong political ideas, but I don't want to air them on the radio. The boxes are a release for the built in angst within me; they allow me to make statements through them.

There is one box entitled "Be Strict". What I did with that piece was I took the terminology used by the Parti Quebecois, for whom, "be strict", basically meant survey every "no" until they found one they could say wasn't going to work, so they could throw it out. The P.Q. had thrown out a large number of these 'no' votes, that they said were improper. Inside of a cutlery box are microscope slides of 10 examples of the miscast votes, with a magnifying glass set up on top of it - a very in-depth investigation of the votes...

The material you use in the boxes, such as this old microscope is very innovative. Where do you get the matenal for them?

Either I already have the objects, or I've come across ones that bring out an idea. For example, with the War Crimes box, I went out and searched for skulls. I found a kids' hollowed out skeleton key chain at Funorama from which I cast all the skulls. I like this kind of hands-on approach, it gives me a stronger relationship to the work.

An exhibition of the boxes, Please Open, opened at the Lonsdale Gallery, last September. Where do you see your next body of work taking you?

Hopefully what will happen is that I will incorporate more of the boxes into my painting. I have a large series of sketches of the next paintings at home, so I want to continue on with them, but the boxes will continue also. I'll start painting when the boxes aren't as much fun, and they're slowing down on being that much fun right now. I'm getting the urge to paint again. I'll then take six months off from the paintings, and I'll come back to the boxes with a new vigour. It's just a constant learning experience, each phase I work in - the sculpture came out of the paintings, which also led towards the boxes.

Are you concerned about the public, or the art world, perceiving you as an artist who switches styles too oflen, possibly even labelling you as inconsistent?

Not really. Joseph Cornell was as good a draughtsman, watercolourist, and filmmaker, as he was a box-maker; Barnett Newman was a painter and a sculptor; and Picasso did it all.