Look with your nose.
Most of my paintings could best be categorized as Symbolism, or symbolic, by which I mean they have more to do with the painted figure's circumstances, than with the figure's formal representation. By formal, I mean such academic criteria as drawing, anatomy, foreshortening, contrapposto, and so on. The minority of my figure paintings are of this more academic type, that is, formal without intentional symbolic meaning.
While self-expression is my intended motive, I will never completely abandon formalism, aesthetics for aesthetics's sake, in art. This is not a reaction, a hatred for progress, or anything like that. Just the opposite. My satisfaction comes from the irony of painting a symbolic subject as formally as if it were a still life, or portrait, or any of the usual repertoire of subjects of the academic painter.
This, despite the fact that the subject of most of my paintings is a derelict, a “bum,” sprawled informally upon a doorstep (not his own), oblivious to both private and public disapproval. As I have attested repeatedly, it's not even a matter of sympathy for the poor outcast-from-respectable-society. That response I find to be mostly hypocrisy. What I fear more, is that ALL is vanity, not merely the sentiment of pity.
When I look at the denizens of skid row, I see a wide range of Earth tones, and of contrasting warm-and-cool neutral colors. It is a feeling for that which the French denote as nostalgie de la boue. Anyway, you must admit I have a refined palette for color. It is well-seasoned, neither fresh, youthful, nor raw. I like to think it is experienced. What-so-ever anyone may think of the overall effect of my derelict paintings, they can't be dismissed as “eye candy.”
Certain art lovers have expressed enjoyment of the balsamic aroma of the oil painting studio, with its fragrance of exotic resins, and distilled, refined solvents. Looking at my paintings, on the other hand, evokes in the viewer's imagination the pungent odor of ammonia. I understand. It's a reflex. My paintings make you want to hold your nose and take a step back, if not to turn tail, and run.
Everybody knows what a bum is. It's not a mythical creature. As everybody knows, a bum smells bad. A doctor might make fine distinctions between the body odor of, let's say, kidney disease and keto-acidosis, or between disease and simple bad hygiene. We recoil as much from offended senses, as from the prospect of a serious health condition.
Think of that delightful painted sketch by Manet of a sardine drooping limply from a too-small plate. Does it not bring to mind the actual smell of fish? And, while on the subject of great French artists, are we not reminded of tourists from the United States who, upon returning, complain of the bad odor of French people? But, we say, that's culture!
Witty remarks about odor abound. It is almost a sub-genre of Satire. Around 1985, when it was published by German writer Patrick Süskind, I listened to a reading of his novel Perfume broadcast by National Public Radio. I listened as I worked in my studio. In the novel, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is an idiot-savant of the sense of smell. The dramatic conflict of the tale is over his compensating disability to personally emanate no odor whatsoever. People look straight through him as if he were not there.
He is The Invisible Man of the sense of smell. Tragically, he is a stranger to love. Only consider the importance of scent to love! Odor is an attribute of identity. One may recognize someone by the person's distinctive odor without so much as a hint, otherwise, of the person having entered the room. Ponder the importance of the sense of smell. Bad odors like the smell of leaking gas are vital to averting disaster. My issue is not with a bad odor, but the cause of the bad odor.