← Statement

Not knowing it was impossible

A recurring mechanism across the artist's early self-taught period: not knowing a given synthesis or technique was supposed to be difficult or impossible is part of what made it achievable. Named directly by the artist in relation to Self Portrait 1995 (BB-OGP-1995-010) -- 'making things possible because it wasn't taught.' The artist's early practice was entirely self-directed: no formal art training, self-taught technique (including canvas preparation), preceded by independent reading in philosophy and literature and looking closely at art history before ever picking up oil paint. Loosely resonant with (though not identical to) the 'naive art' tradition of untrained artists working outside academic rules of perspective, proportion, and color theory -- and specifically with Henri Rousseau, a self-taught painter the artist actively admired at the time (particularly The Dream), whose biographical parallel (inventing imagined worlds -- Rousseau's jungles, this artist's invented SF coastline) was only recognized by the artist years after the fact. The artist has stated this autodidact period ran strongly up until he left San Francisco.