The thing about making art outside is you’re at the mercy of the elements. Turner tying himself to the mast comes to mind, even if it never happened. Also, the outside is endless; not like a room with walls on each side and the back, making for a natural composition. You have to cut off all the flora and buildings, etc on your own, arbitrarily, somehow.

I hadn’t carried the French easel out to the alley for a couple years. Can’t pinpoint the reason for such a long break but seemed any day I was thinking to do it, the weather was wrong or there was some book waiting to be illustrated or some movie that just had to be watched right then. It all sounds like a bunch of excuses.

The practice of working from direct observation goes back a long way and is one of the ideas most important to me. Any time I pick up a pen or brush I need something to look at and react to. There’s nothing inside my head or heart that is the basis of what I make. To be sure, the experiences and events I write about have spent some time in my consciousness, but they didn’t originate there, so, to me, it’s not unlike hauling the blank canvas and easel out to the alley when it comes time to put it down on paper.

Over the years, the words and images I’ve made have had to go through multiple stages before ending up in pictures or books. Fewer and fewer are a pure direct response to a subject in real time but that is always the goal. I want it to feel immediate, like you’re right there. Not made up or invented or even recalled but responded to in the moment. It’s kind of impossible but I keep trying.

The times it’s hardest to pull off is when I have to work from a photograph. Nothing takes me out of an experience as quickly as looking at one of those frozen images. The trick becomes to pretend to be in the actual place or looking at the real person rather than the machine rendering. It’s a kind of self-delusion that I never feel quite right about. It’s a shortcut and a cheat. The people who get these paintings don’t seem to mind but it bothers the hell out of me.

I’ve been at it a long time so I can fake it pretty good but not ever well enough to fool myself. When I’m not physically in the place and the time there always something missing. That’s why setting up the easel in the alley the other day was so satisfying. May not be a ship’s mast but I was for sure out there.