Studio Thoughts

    I got my first studio in 1989, a few weeks after the earthquake. Before that, I had painted in my apartment. Whenever I worked on a new painting, that was all I worked on – I simply worked on that painting until it was finished. If something went wrong, I’d keep at it, and paint and paint and paint, often making it worse. 

When I got my fist studio, for the first time I had space to spread out. If a painting went badly, I simply put it aside and began to work on something else. What a revelation! Why hadn’t anyone told me this before? I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning.  

    My first studio was at 22nd & Bryant and had spent its first one hundred years as an indoor bocci court. San Francisco used to have dozens of them. In 1933, there were 36 indoor bocci courts in the City. 

I sometimes describe what makes a good studio as “puppy feel” – as soon as you open the door, the studio should jump up and welcome you. That way you never hesitate to go to your studio. 

I always try to build some unstructured time into my studio day – time spent doing things that I don’t know in advance. Some of my best ideas come about this way. Sometimes even entire bodies of work. How else to explain The String Paintings? Such a quirky & intricate working method all came about because one day I picked up a ball of string and a palette knife…

    My studio is a Meditation Hall.

    Through martial arts training as a young person with too much energy, I learned to control my movement through breath. This training naturally seeped into my arts practice – how I hold my brush – how I move my brush – all of my work, whether carving woodblocks or moving melting wax, is a matter of breath. Perhaps that’s why I love to write with a fountain pen – breathing through ink.

    Movement though breath is the making of art.

An art studio is always a very crowded place, even when the artist is alone.

Every studio contains a village of friends and mentors, family members and neighbors, the artists that came before and hopefully some of the artists that will come after.