EMC: As I moved into contemporary art I found few role models. Soon I realized I was more interested in talking to poets and writers than to artists and, so, poetry became a good sounding board for the work that I was doing—whenever I got stuck I would go back to poetry looking for a door. So, still, when people ask me 'what are your influences,’ I talk about literature.

KW: So is there a direct association? Between the poem "October" and "The October Cycle," was that an intentional association you made when making the work or was it something that seemed to be appropriate after you were done?

EMC: They’re closely connected.

KW: Introspection, contemplation seem to be key elements in these paintings. Is that where it starts, do you know you're making an image that is aimed in that direction?

EMC: I don't think so. My paintings often come from unfinished business—without plans, without aims. The introspection and contemplative quality of the work is really an outcome of my need to have so little in the work, often by means of sacrificing many things I like. Everything distracts me. The system in my work—if there’s such a thing—is a system of silencing distractions.

In the “October Cycle” and the poem “October” introspection is brought forth by the impending winter. Winter is a time to go back to nothingness, to find oneself in a barren landscape.

KW: That led to the black?

EMC: The "October Cycle" was influenced by two events—the birth of my daughter and the writing of "Guide.” Usually, my work are environments that include painting, photographs and sculpture, but the forces of these events and whatever else was going in my life, led only to painting—and only to black paintings. Everything was very narrow.

KW: I had written next to this [KW notes] 'children' because it strikes me that was a key, that you became a father and lots of things changed for you.

EMC: They did. My preoccupations about memory, time and the temporary became more acute around the birth of Gabriela—they took a new embodiment. Suddenly, what was a preoccupation about time in relation to memory and the past became a concern for the present—I realized my time with her was short. In a painting like Gabriela I, where the sketchy traces of a figure throw a baby up in the air, trust and risk rub against hope and fragility—against the temporary.

KW: The time aspect is also apparent. I thought of 'Slaughterhouse Five' and the idea that you can't stay in one place in time. It struck me that was what a lot of this series is driven by.

EMC: Time is the central issue, I think. Time is an insurmountable gap only negotiated through memory, remembrance, regret, longing, love. I think we are rarely blessed with the ability to see the present for what it is—all that there is.

KW: That took care of memory and mortality which I had written down next to each other. Is there anything to the use of tar that is specific to the more philosophical elements of it. Or is it just a material you found interesting?

EMC: At first I was interested in the viscous problems—and history—of tar and feathers. Then I discovered the way it stained the oil colors and I liked this interference into my process and my wishes.

KW: That element of the tar is just something you have to figure out as you go along?

EMC: Yeah, I never know how it's going to act up.

KW: That's what we talked about yesterday, about the colors and how they seep in there and how the new work is layer upon layer upon layer. Is that a material you're going to continue to work with?

EMC: I think I will. I have gone back to using techniques I’d put away a long time ago—things I learned in the academic years like glazing which allows control of the way the tar stains.

KW: It seems to me there's a lot of importance given in the paintings to light and reflection, what reflects and what doesn't. So you're dealing with 'I want the tar to look this way here and this way there' which leads into the feeling of the piece.

EMC: I believe in the possibility of painting but I try to undermine it–to figure out its boundaries and how far it will go. Reflections destroy the image and often nudge the painting to exist near self-destruction.

KW: In the painting down here [Thing and Deception], there's an obscured word in there.

EMC: But I'm not trying to create a puzzle. The process destroys things—even for me. I can't tell you what’s behind the paint. The process buries things.

KW: Is there some sense of finding beauty in this material people think is the ugly smelly stuff you put on your roof or on the street?

EMC: Often what people call the beautiful is really the pretty. The beautiful—the sublime—is seldom charming. The tar surprises me but I exert effort against its charm so that it doesn't become a whimsical thing. At the end, I like when the painting pulls away from its methods and hardens into something inevitable. That inevitability is in the direction of what I’d call the beautiful.

KW: That kind of turns the classic 'the good, the true and the beautiful' on its head. I think that's one of the reasons people have some difficulty with contemporary art—they don't understand that idea can change from Renaissance painting.

EMC: There are limitations to the measurement of art in terms of craft, particularly today when most people, including those in academia and the art world, are not very good at discerning skill. I cringe when I see what passes for academic drawing at the universities.

KW: Some people are going see your painting of outlined figures and are going to think of them as ugly or simple. My usual answer to that is you go in your garage, get some tar and come up with that.

EMC: Maybe they will do a better job than me, but can they sustain it? Reproducing something is not difficult, but sustaining the intellectual consequences is very difficult. Minimal work often elicits the most stupid responses—'I could do that.' But few can because leaving the black square alone is not easy. That's one difference between art and physics; in art, everyone is an expert.

KW: On the idea of art and physics. It seems to me that some of your art is almost rational inquiry as a scientific method. But you're asking questions that there's not going to be a specific answer—there's not going to be at some point a right answer. That has to be interesting for somebody who has a scientific mind.

EMC: Rationality is efficient and often the most useful approach to most questions but there’s a boundary beyond which it doesn’t work. That’s where art begins. Art is a leap in consciousness but its workings are mysterious, unspoken.

KW: Which leads right to this—I have written down 'can art be explained'. On some level the answer is yes, but if it's real art, I don't think it can't really be explained.

EMC: If we mean a definite explanation then the answer is no. Of course, we can say a lot of things. We can even sound like we're really knowledgeable. But the nugget of what makes the painting great is not being talked about.

Some historians make me feel that painting is just a matter of knowing the references, the symbols. But that’s not the case. Madonnas by Cimabue and Giotto may have the same iconography but they are not very similar. The issue is that the key distinctions between those two artists don’t make for good papers because quickly—within three sentences—one begins to sound like a fool. So it’s better to talk about semiotics and iconography, which are safer.

KW: But you run yourself in a circle with that.

EMC: Yes but it’s circle that many like.

KW: You stand in front of one of your paintings and you have an experience. But you can't turn that experience into 'this is what this meant.'

EMC: That’s why I talk about my point of view, without attempting to explain the work. I speak about what motivates me.

KW: At some point yesterday one of us said something about people not necessarily being that interested in art. I was thinking about that and I think it is because they engage it and they don't know what they've engaged with.

EMC: I think that's true.

KW: Does that make any difference to you? Do you make this work for an audience or do you make this work for yourself?

EMC: A poet friend of mine talks of his desire for a “third reader”—we have ourselves and, usually, somebody we know that shares the work, but that third person is not easy to find. I think this is a good and modest way to think of audience.

I would like for others to have a relationship with my work, so I try to bridge the distance with talks, interviews, books, and so on. I'm interested in that bridge. But there are restrictions and limitations to that. Access, often a unit of socially committed work, is not my goal. No one is more accessible or popular than Thomas Kinkade. But we know he’s no revolutionary. All I’m trying to do is work I can believe.

KW: As you have come more into the art world so to speak, have you had to keep that more as a central priority. Is there the possibility of getting sucked into the business or becoming a star?

EMC: It's always a possibility. Corruption is always around the corner and I don’t feel like I'm above it. I keep reminders everywhere in my studio and I try to look at alternatives to the lightness of the art world. Also, I try to make sure that my kids don’t see a “sell-out” when they look at my paintings. And to make sure of that sometimes I have to go against my own hand and the people who feed me.

KW: Eventually those lines intersect and it could get real ugly, real fast

.EMC: If one is lucky enough to have any type of success, every new offer comes with dangers and with possibilities and it’s not always easy to tell which is which.

KW: You do photography, sculpture and painting. Do you expect to continue that?

EMC: I'm interested in the dislocation of my own expectations. I don’t want to know myself as a look. Instead I want to get closer to the consciousness doing the looking, and in that it’s helpful to have the painting collide with the photograph, with the sculpture, with the words. That’s what I like about Beuys—the inclusions and the collisions.


KW: You've anticipated my last question—again.


EMC: I think it’s interesting you saw Beuys in this work.

KW: I see it in the sense of all your media and his statement that everything is art—or whatever it was.

EMC: Beuys blurred the line between art and life. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s true—I don’t know enough of his life to know if it gained something from the art. In any case, he has been an important influence on me.

KW: It's probably as much attitude as it is imagery. The accident, the idea of here's what it is, the life/art no separation, those things come through whether they're explicit in the rainbow over there to a person who wouldn't know Joseph Beuys from a box of rocks.

Do you feel like you're at an interesting, pivotal point. With your two kids now and your life going that way and your art profile increasing and your art changing? Do you think about that explicitly?

EMC: Yes. In retrospect it’s easier to say 'that was an important turn of events,' but it’s more difficult to realize what’s happening in the present. I've spent the last year and a half trying to figure out where to move. That idea of a move is really a question of what kind of life do I want to have in relation to my family and my work.

"The October Cycle,” as Dan highlighted in his essay, was a turn in the work. Superficially it shares qualities with work I did before but it’s definitely an evolution as well as re-invention. It's almost if as though I was a different artist.

EMC: This is the sad way of things. That's why one of the most exciting aspects of my visit here was to look at the Pinkham Ryder in the next room. Here and there one can still find something of substance. There are people out there—probably a relatively large number—that haven’t bought into the diminished expectations of our times.

KW: I'll give Jeff Koons this. He saw that said 'I'm in"

EMC: Oh sure. He’s in.