Doug Waterfield

Artist’s Statement • February 14, 2006
 
I have been producing art for almost thirty years in some for or another.  This journey has taken me through many levels of experimentation in my work.  From this oeuvre, I would consider the work from the last 18 months as my most focused and mature of my career thus far.  This is the result of several factors, most notably my pursuits of my MFA requirements, and an opportunity to work with Paul Maxwell, a fellow artist and Arkansan who currently lives and works in San Diego.  Maxwell introduced me to the medium of molding paste, which has afforded me something that I have long been searching for  - originality.
In my efforts to be original, I have purposefully tried to avoid producing work that look like the work of other artists.  This, however, is a frustrating prospect.  I was trying so hard to be original that I lost some of the spontaneity and energy that gives a work life.  I had to give myself permission to be influenced by other artists, and allow that influence to naturally become a part of the work I was producing.  In this way, I am able to take the ideas that I get and allow them to gel into my own personal vision.  Like most postmodernist painters, I am a synthesist.  I am able to take what I learn from other artists and combine it with my own ideas to create an individual philosophy of art.
               With the medium of molding paste, I am able to produce works that utilize texture as the dominant design element, and in an uncommon way.  I have not seen anyone else producing work that is like mine.   I am able to take high and mid-relief texture and use it as a foundation for each piece I produce within the context of industrial style.  One of the key influences evident in my work is the theme of the industrial, and by that I primarily mean unconventional materials and subjects.  I have always been an admirer of art with this type of format.  The Russian Constructivists, the Merz of Kurt Schwitters, the collages of Picasso and Braque, Futurist painting, the cityscapes of Leger and Stuart Davis - all of these have weighed heavily on my philosophy.  I relish the idea of taking material that isn’t necessarily intended for artistic purposes and transforming it into something else.  It’s one of things I find most appealing about incorporating collage elements, that is, the duality of each element.  Each component incorporated into a painting retains its identity with regard to its original context, but it also gains a new character as a compositional element within a painting.  This applies to paper items I use (sheet music, dress patterns) as well as the mechanical gears and cogs that also find their way into my work.  I also like to use metallic composition leaf as a design element.  The shiny metal recalls more industrial elements in each work.
               The theme of industry and every day household objects as a means to make art has as its primary goal relativism to the viewer.  By using recognizable and familiar elements, I can connect to the viewer, if only in a peripheral way at times.  I find that one of the main problems of contemporary art is its alienation of the viewer.  For me, the viewer is a vital and necessary component of the work.  If the work has no viewer, then what is its purpose?  It is important for me that the viewer to be able to connect to the piece in some fashion.  Complete understanding and empathy from the viewer is an unreasonable assumption to make, so I settle for at least an appreciation for the composition, or even the sheer enjoyment of looking.  I feel safe in assuming a rudimentary appreciation for harmonious composition from most people, so that, along with the incorporation of familiar imagery, it completes the circuit between me and the spectator.
               The process of making art is also a critical factor for me.  Like the Action painters of half a century ago, I want to leave some evidence of my presence on each canvas.  This may take the form of fingerprints or instinctual mark-making.  I want my industrial style to utilize a more human-friendly, organic approach to the rigid geometry of the theme of mechanical, thus softening it and making more accessible while at the same time, humanizing the work through mark-making as well as elements of randomness through occasional drips and splatters.  This marriage of the organic and the industrial is what I believe I have created to be an original concept.  There is also the theme of repetitive pattern in some for or fashion, which is intended to emulate the workings of machines, or machine-made goods.  As far as content, I do not usually incorporate a deeper narrative content into my work.  There is nothing politically or personally motivated behind the forms other than their relativity to the theme of the industrial.  I don’t presume to be able to change a viewer’s point of view on a particular topic, not do I use my art as a therapeutic device to air out my dirty psychological laundry.  The industrial is cold and impersonal by its very nature.  To imbibe it with more than that is hypocrisy.
The act of creating art, for me, is a sublime, almost Zen-like experience.  I begin with the application of the textures in molding paste.  I add, take away and rearrange according to my own instincts and experience.  Once I have built a framework, or skeleton for the piece, I begin to add the flesh, that is the color.  Color is a difficult element for me to control.  I tend to allow my emotional response to bright, untainted hue to dictate my designs.  When this happens, my work becomes too simplistic and overbearing.  It also conflicts with the impersonal motivations of the form.  It is only through careful trial and error that I am able to successfully incorporate color within my work.  Color must be controlled.  It must be subtle.  It must be used carefully, like a corrosive acid.  Just enough can do wonderful things, but too much can be toxic.  Once an effective palette has been achieved, I look for collage elements to incorporate into and complete the piece, which will also be given a treatment of color.  I have lately been favoring sewing patterns for this purpose.  The thin tissue of sewing patterns have a subtlety to them as well as an industrial feel with the use of directions and type and dashed lines.  They begin to take on the appearance of blueprints.  I would like to be able to incorporate actual blueprints into a piece, but I haven’t been able to procure any as of this writing.  I have also been using old watch and clock parts as design elements, and the results have been extremely satisfying.  They add the industrial component while at the same time functioning as interesting forms in their own right.  There is the implication in including these elements that hey should have some sort of utilitarian function.  Someday, I would like to be able to somehow arrange the gears and parts onto the substrate so that they actually moved against one another like some sort of useless Dadaist machine.  Then the viewer would be able to physically interact with the piece as well, becoming a part of it through active participation with the piece, a concept I find extremely exciting!
               I think that this is ultimately where I would like to go with my art.  I would like my pieces to become more and more engaging.  I feel that the more that a viewer can interact with the piece, the more likely they are to develop an appreciation for it as well as a desire for understanding.  This preoccupation with the idea of the viewer’s role being so dominant is a direct result of my experience as an educator.  I want people to realize that art doesn’t have to be mysterious and nebulous.  It can be fun, and pleasing.  I want people to understand WHY they like something.  There is a certain joy in seeing people change their minds about art, once they understand the motivations behind it.  I want them to grasp why they feel that this work more or less appealing than another?  If I can demystify art for the common man, then I feel I will have done my job.  So many artists feel the need to be aloof and secretive because they don’t want the viewer to become bored with the obvious.  This is a legitimate concept, but it has, in my opinion, been taken too far and the viewers have become alienated.  This alienation leads to apathy and the work then becomes unsuccessful and incomplete.  With my industrial pieces, you see the framework, the implied skeleton; the mysticism is skinned away, revealing the inner workings of a non-existent machine, or at least the memory or experience of that machine.
As far as specific artist that have influenced me, I have mentioned Paul Maxwell. Paul Klee is another dominant figure for me.  There are also elements of Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, and especially Marcel Duchamp and Jean Tinguely to be found.  Klee in particular appeals to me in his search for the raw, expressive power of the primitive, as evidence in his extensive use of simple, totemic iconography.  In fact, I began with a similar sort of search in African and Native American textiles before it evolved into the more mechanical works I am currently producing.  I also relate to Tinguely, Ernst and Duchamp’s concept of the useless machine.   Machinery, moving parts, industrial materials, kineticism  - all of these ideas weigh heavily on me as I produce my work.  Machines aren’t supposed to be art, they are supposed to perform tasks – there’s the appeal!  To create a machine that allows people to better understand art – that would be a feat.
Each piece I produce is an influence on subsequent work.  I may find an appealing design element or device and incorporate it into several works while I “work through” the concept.  This helps me in retrospect because I can look back and see where I have come from in a very linear way.  The exciting part is that even though my work has achieved greater focus recently, I am still searching and experimenting.  I am not sure that I want to find “the thing” in my work that I’m looking for, because it has the potential to make me complacent, and complacency leads to stagnation, which is definitely something I’d like to avoid.  And so I continue to produce works, as much as I possibly can, in an effort to understand myself and what I want to achieve.  I rarely do any preparation (sketches) work for my pieces.  I prefer instead to construct them as I create them; to allow each piece to determine itself.  This adds the spontaneity and energy I mentioned earlier back into the equation.
I will continue to experiment and explore in my art, because it affords me the joy of discovery when something finally clicks.  I usually don’t go back and rework old paintings.  For me, it’s a bit counter productive.  I would rather learn from my experiences and move ahead.  However, I have been able to go back and resurrect a few pieces that I had “killed” earlier, so perhaps this practice is not entirely without merit.  Art for me is also a necessity.  It is a catharsis, but a private one.  It is work, but it’s a healthy release.  It’s a realm of concentration and clarity of thought for me as well that helps me center myself.  Each work is an automaton child; a product of thought and experimentation, of trial and error and rework.