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Tom Ferguson 1969-70 |
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All Interiors 12"-ish square, Interior 10. to Cityscape index |
I would usually use sunday or monday to stretch up the week's canvases, being loose, not measuring the wood so they'd be not quite square... and i'd paint around the edge, continuing the image there. The 12" square suited my attention span at the time, allowing me to finish a painting in one sitting then shift to studying music or writing or reading - fiction, politics, philosophy. Attending Art School had given me a direction. I realized I could LEARN! I could hardly contain myself, wanting to do everything - study philosophy, filmmaking, fiction writing, music, politics. I felt like I was born to do these things and I was getting a really late start, no time to lose! There was also the factor of self-esteem... I had found an identity and was anxious to fill it out. The interior was all around me so I used some of the seemingly endless compositions - on the kitchen table, then beyond it, there in the corner, a small table, a vase... I had discovered that Painting was organizing color and that insight freed me to do it, to just engage in the activity and let it grow. When I dropped out of school I drove a cab and later worked in a gas station. I moved into the lower of a $45 a month duplex with a fellow art student. We got married to please her macho father who was very sensitive on the subject of propriety. When I started producing 4-5 paintings a week I also started doing summer art fairs, selling paintings quite cheap and living cheap - no TV, no phone, rusty VW, the occasional album for a clunky stereo. I spent my reclusive days painting, studying music, reading political books, writing poetry & fiction, short stories, delving into my new-found intellectual & creative heritage. In December of 69 I took a job at the post office, working 6 tedious months, saving $1,000 or so for a planned Europe trip. I couldn't paint while working full time, never could but I did some writing and my first songs. The friend who lived upstairs had sold me a guitar for $10 and thrown in 10 lessons. He also turned me on to Bob Dylan. I've always been kind of approach-avoidance regarding perfectionist personalities which is abit self-destructive since Type A people tend to be impatient with my shortcomings... and so it eventually was with my first intellectual mentor. But that's about judgement and i've grown less vulnerable to it, from myself and from others. |
contact back to Main Bonus(!) Images These two paintings were done for a gallery at the request of a client who subsequently disappeared. He or she wanted something, or so they said, in the style of post-impressionism, Klimt, Van Gogh maybe, something like that. So I did the paintings on spec, expecting to sell them but ending up with two paintings I didn't really want to put forth as mine yet... it was fun to do them & one eventually went into a collection: Interiors a la France! Most of the interiors and some of the cityscapes were painted around the edge of the canvas to emphasize the objectness and eliminate what I then considered meddling, framing. Here's a couple shots showing that aspect on the first interior. These interiors were so well received that occasionally I would do a new one as a gift. View on here. |
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