Interview in "Tattoo Extreme" Magazine from Taiwan

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Jul 182012

I’ve been interviewed in the this month’s issue of “Tattoo Extreme”!!! I have a four page spread of words and images. I don’t know if this magazine is available in the States, but it is international in its scope – they cover tattoo art and tattoo events all over the world. I must say I feel humbled to be side by side with all of that great tattoo art! I have a feeling that my good friend Jake at SLC Ink (I did an exhibit there in 2010 – see review) must have introduced them to my work when they covered the Salt Lake City Tatto Convention (I’m not sure why, but SLC has a very active tattoo scene – there are more tattoo shops there per capita than anywhere else I have ever been).

Here is the interview as I wrote it out.  The published version is slightly condensed with some changes in the illustrations.

 1. Could you please introduce yourself? Ex. about your art learning background

I go by, “David Normal.”  I was born March 19th, 1970 in San Francisco, California, USA.  My father, Mark Naftalin, was a Blues musician (Keyboardist, Paul Butterfield Blues Band).  I was fortunate to be exposed to an artistic atmosphere that derived from the American ‘hippie’ counterculture and also from the African-American Blues tradition.  As a child I met some of the all time great Blues artists and the exposure to Blues music taught me to value “soul”, i.e.; the passionate and sincere expression of one’s innermost feelings, as one of the important characteristics of art.

“Smell the Secret Furniture”, Collage with “cut-up” style poetry, 1989.  This piece was influenced by punk collage art popular in photocopied “zines” in the 1980s Punk scene, and was part of a zine I self-published at that time.

As a teenager I was into Punk Rock, and it too showed me the value of “soul” as well as the importance of doing things for yourself.  So, I never went to art school because I didn’t think that it could teach me much about self-expression, and I also believed that I could teach myself any art skills I needed.  I have traveled extensively  and have sought after those people and places that I think have a lot of “soul” and learned from direct experience.

2. Could you tell us why you did the works? custom order? concept of image? any reference before you did?

“The Human Tree” Oil on Panel, 2010.  Sketches for this piece were begun around 1990, yet because I quit painting for 14 years it was not made into a painting until 2010.  The image has a personal meaning of resuming painting, and so the Roman soldiers are actually “unsawing” the tree.

The work comes from within my soul, from within my heart.  I think my heart must be a bit like an oyster that makes a pearl.  My heart is covered in a thick shell to protect it from being broken, but somehow a tiny drop of poison was trapped in there like a grain of sand.  It’s the sort of poison that infected the apple on the Tree of Knowledge and this poison makes me empathize with, to get an impression or a feeling of, all human suffering.

“Traffic Jam”, Oil on Panel, 2010

This empathy forms around the grain of poison as a way of softening the pain the poison causes and the empathy takes the form of visions, and the visions need to be expressed – I have to express them or I will be overwhelmed by pain.  The formal expression of these visions are the works of art, and they come from my heart the way a pearl comes from an oyster.

The work does not derive from any “custom orders”.  It is always comes purely from within myself.

“Concept of image” means to me defining parameters of an aesthetic.  I try to define an aesthetic for an entire series’s of paintings.  For instance, I am working on two different series right now.

“The Pool”, Oil on Panel, 2008.  This is an example of one of the paintings from the “Illuminations” series.

The first, the “Illumination series”, are oil paintings that are made on wooden panels, use only imagery from my imagination, have complex compositions, and have a strong influence from medieval art and German Expressionism.  The second series, “Ultra-Shorts” are acrylic paintings on canvas.  The images derive from short animated montages I have made, and the compositions are simpler.

“Menage a Trois”, Acrylic on Canvas, 2011.  This piece is an example of one of the paintings from the “Ultra-Short” series.

These “Ultra-Short” paintings are based on collage and have a strong Pop art sensibility.  So, for both of these series I have defined specific formal aesthetic rules, and the works are created within those boundaries.

3. Could you describe your life attitude? or some life expreience to share with?

I think that philosophy involves constant exploration and experimentation.  I don’t think there is any ultimate good or evil, and so one must constantly try out different ways of living and thinking.  Art is one way of documenting such philosophical experiments.

I believe that through honesty we become more aware and with greater awareness we become more compassionate.   I believe that, conversely, if we are dishonest then our awareness becomes diminished and as our awareness dims so too does our capacity to understand the feelings of others, and in that way we become cruel.   Real compassion is based on how one deals with life and the sensations of life directly around and within you, and not upon believing in a religious or political doctrine.

“Chemical Imbalance”, Oil on Panel, 2010

Ideology is often a kind of self-deception that allows people to believe that they are being good because they follow rules, whereas genuine kindness might require them to break all the rules they know.

The above is not my only “life attitude”, but it is one insight that I have had and continue to be aware of.

5.  Any other hobby or activity you joined? or what you used to do in your lisure time?

I’ve been interested in altered states of consciousness all of my life.  It has been my hobby to document rituals of trance and spirit-possession.  I traveled extensively through South East Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia) in search of magic rituals.  I have videotaped may of these ceremonies and plan to make a documentary called on the subject, “Loose Spirits”.

Lately I have taken in interest in Japanese Rope Bondage.  I like it aesthetically and have been producing life drawings based on scenes of “Kinbaku” (Japanese Rope Art).  I recently traveled to Japan and had the opportunity to make drawings based on the work of the master rope artist,
Arisue Go.  I am also fascinated with the psychology of BDSM, and believe that it revolves around ecstatic states of trance, and so my interest is a further exploration of altered states of mind.

6. Any plan for you in the short term of the future?

Illuminations Installation at Sancho Gallery in Los Angeles

I have plans for my traveling exhibition of “Illuminations”.  The Illuminations are my own unique method of presenting my work as free hanging, self illuminating light boxes that show my paintings and are similar to stained glass windows in appearance.  The Illuminations were displayed last Fall in Los Angeles.   They will be shown in Berlin (EAGL Gallery) at the end of April and in Tokyo (Super Deluxe Club) in Oct. 2012.

Interview with VASA Transmedia Global Project by Stephanie Fetter

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Jul 242011

Below is the transcript of the interview.  You may view the original page here:

http://vasa-project.com/blog/2011/03/interview-with-california-based-visual-artist-david-normal/

David Normal is an artist based out of California who has experimented with animation, design and now focus’s on illustrative oil paintings.

    1. Can you talk about your past and what initially drew you to creating?

I am told that I showed a remarkable talent for music as a child and precocious musical accomplishment was expected of me.  However, I had a superseding predilection for drawing that began as a toddler.  This was strongly encouraged by my parents, yet unlike music studies or school there was no pressure for me to accomplish anything and so it was a natural pastime for me and my skill in art flourished, as musical abilities languished and schoolwork was neglected.

Collage made when I was between the ages of 8 and 10. My father, at that time, was keeping a box of collage material. Much, if not all, of the clips in this collage were from his collection. Also, possibly, I was cutting things out of old issues of Esquire Magazine to which my parents subscribed in the 1970s.

I saw exhibits of Picasso and also the German Expressionists as a small child and can still remember the wonder I felt in seeing such mighty paintings.  I had the ability from an early age to focus on one drawing for days on end, and I also tended to define my art endeavors conceptually, and so within my childish “oeuvre” there were paintings that were meant to be touched but not looked at, drawings whose goal was to portray “happy” demons, and sculptures based on the African masks I admired.  I copied M.C. Escher, science fiction illustration and boyishly had an obsession with hot rods.  I was often bored and frustrated during my childhood and drawing gave me an escape to an engaging place of fantasies.  In grade school my peers recognized me as the best “drawer” in the school and that gave me an identity that I did not have otherwise.  I have painted, sculpted and made collages since earliest childhood and while I feel that all is rooted in drawing, I cannot say that I “worked my way up” in any kind of linear progression of skill and complexity.  I got my first airbrush at age 10.  I started doing computer graphics at 13 using “Macpaint” on the very first Macintosh computers.  Yet even now at the age of 40, I am striving to hone my skill in the essential practice of drawing.

2. Do you draw strictly from the subconscious thought process?

When I am composing a drawing and I have to think about what I am doing then it is “conscious,” but if it is just spontaneous and there is no thought, that is; if there is no critical analysis, then I would say it is “subconscious.”  I am constantly using both modes, however I prefer the spontaneity and richness of the subconscious.

Idea sketch for sculptures (never realized) ca. 1993.  The drawing shows spontaneity of visual and verbal processes.  I am coming up with ideas in a “stream of conscious” fashion both verbally and visually here.

Using pen and ink I spontaneously express visions from the subconscious with great rapidity.  I feel the need to develop them into more formal compositions in more demanding media (mostly oil paint these days).  It is in this process of formal development that much critical thinking takes place.  Symbols and shapes are arranged and evaluated and often much that is new is developed, but it is a much more conscious effort than the initial improvisation of the idea sketch.  As a painting develops I begin to have a sense of it’s subject and to some extent, it’s meaning. These realizations limit the free play of the subconscious mind.  So, generally speaking, it is a process of bringing something from the subconscious into the conscious.

3. How do you choose characters, subject matter and particular objects to go into a painting?

“Chemical Imbalance”, Oil on Panel, 18.5″ x 21″ (47 x 53.3 cm), 2010

I don’t really choose my subject matter – it seems rather to choose me!  I find that certain symbols and themes reoccur and I feel that I am making variations on a theme as I explore it.  In this sense I am not unlike a music composer who develops and elaborates a theme through a series of movements in a symphony or songs in an album.  There are symbolic and thematic interconnections between my paintings and I like to encourage these.

“Cognitive Libertines”, Oil on Panel, 20 x 25 cm, 2008.

For instance, in “Cognitive Libertines” the central figure is sitting on a stump, and in “The Human Tree” a tree is being cut down and will soon be a stump – a thematic connection is there and while the former painting was painted earlier perhaps it is actually a later chapter in the same story.
“The Human Tree”, Oil on Panel, 64.1 x 55.8 cm (25.2″ x 22″), 2010

Sometimes in the process of painting I myself am the one that is “stumped” in so much as I
cannot think of what to put in a certain character’s hands.  In “Chemical Imbalance” I was
at a loss for what to put in the x-ray in the right female figure’s hand.  At that time there
was a cheese grater that someone had hung in a tree on the road to my house and my wife
and I always thought it was so strange to see that cheese grater there.

Detail from “Chemical Imbalance” showing the “Interdimensional Cheese Grater.”

It seemed so like a universal non-sequitur – and since I wanted something ersatz I chose to put a cheese grater in the x-ray.  I made it an optical illusion, a sort of “interdimensional cheese grater” and as such a faint allusion to Escher’s lithograph, “Belvedere”. Interestingly, it was after completing this painting that I discovered that I was lactose intolerant and so much of my own not insubstantial “chemical imbalance” was deriving from cheese.  So, while I was consciously trying to contrive an absurdity, unconsciously I was sending myself a clear message, i.e.; that cheese was the source of much of my poor health.  Yet that is a very personal thing, and I would be surprised if many people concluded, “Oh! The painter must have been sick of eating cheese!”

4. If there were an ideal way to present your work, what would it be?


“Illuminations” installation at Burning Man Center Camp 2010
I have long been interested in displaying my images on a translucent substrate through which light could filter and thereby illuminate the work.  Originally this was an interest in painting on silk and producing paintings that were essentially dyed through the fabric.  However the aesthetic that I favor does not lend itself to unsized silk painting (i.e.; batik painting, or French silk painting), rather the tight detail work is best realized in oil or acrylic.  Eventually that led to printing my images on back-lit media (sign maker’s material) and affixing them to edge-lit acrylic sheets.  This is my current mode of display, one that I call “Illumination.”  My current series of oils are in fact  entitled, “The Illuminations” and all of them are being reproduced as these glowing, self-lit pieces.  What I like about presenting my work in this way is that I can hang the work in the middle of the room.  In this way the work takes on a kind of sculptural presence – “2.5D” (if you will).  Further, the work illuminates itself, and there is no need for any auxilliary light in the gallery.   Finally, this method of display breaks up the standard gallery routine where paintings are on the walls and people are in the middle talking with each other.  In an exhibit of the “Illuminations” the glowing, central presence of the work dominates attention and there is an oddly sacred atmosphere.

5. How important is process to you? It seems that process plays a major role in generating art: from the birth of the idea, to the making and then the final product.

“Creative Process,” is very important to me but documentation of my creative process is not (currently) a part of my end product.  There is a trend – particularly in academic circles – for documentation/discussion of the process of creating art, particularly those aspects that are philosophical, to be a part of the art product presented to the public.  This preoccupation with “process” has turned many artists’ focus away from their craft, and towards something that seems more like philosophy than art.  I am an artist first, and my work is made to stand by itself without any explanation of the process that yielded it.  I think the word “process” has become a secular surrogate for the word “inspiration”, and I approve of this change of vocabulary because I think it indicates that creativity is not some thunderbolt from Jove, rather it is a natural power of the human mind wherein high achievement is accessible to anyone willing to undergo the “process”.   Yet, to direct the public attention away from the art itself and towards an exegesis of the artist’s inner machinations seems to me a digression into shop talk at the least and indulgently narcissistic at worst.However, documenting my process could become important in the future when I engage in more systematic explorations of consciousness for the purpose of deriving artistic inspiration.  I plan to build a flotation tank and then do experiments in altered states of consciousness through sensory deprivation and psychoactive drugs (such as Salvinorin, Dextromethorphan, Hyoscyamine, as well as sundry phenethylamine and tryptamine derivatives ).  I will render the visions and experiences in drawings and paintings.  This process would require careful documentation of the consciousness experiments and the artwork would, in a sense, be documentation of these experiences.  In such a scenario documentation of the process might be an important part of exhibiting the work, but even then I would strive to have the work speak for itself and not be dependent on an auxiliary treatise for it’s appreciation.

6. Would you like to incorporate sound or media such as film into your work?

Front Side of Flyer for “St. Valentine’s Midnight Masquerade Debauch”, 1997 happening I produced with Kim Jordan, Rex Mundi, and all the cream of the then crop of San Francisco underground provocateurs, bon vivants, goliards, beatniks, and other wayward dilettantes. Original drawing executed in scratchboard.

I’ve never been satisfied with painting alone.  I’ve had extensive forays into 3D animation, performance art, documentary film making, sculpture, and more over the years.  Definitely it is a current goal to make use of my skills in computer graphics as an adjunct and support for my painting practice.  I envision a studio that integrates “traditional” (hand made) art and CG Art techniques into an efficient work flow where the two disciplines support one another to yield a more powerful product.  In fact, as soon as I am done with this interview I am going to get to work designing and building my new studio with the capabilities I have described above.
At some point – hopefully soon – I will finish my documentary film, “Loose Spirits,” that is about spirit possession ceremonies in folk religion in South East Asia.  I have over 70 hours of footage – some of it quite remarkable – that needs to be edited.Already I have two short animated films to my credit, “The Bicycle Ride,” and “Pyramid.” I may do more animation in the future if the right situation arises, but for now I am focused on painting.

7. I read that there was a large gap in your career in which you quit painting all together for a number of years and then came back to it. Do you think that time helped or hindered your career? What made you stop painting?

“Schism”, Acrylic on Canvas + Collage, 16″ x 20″ (40.6 x 50.8 cm),  1994.
One of the last pieces I made before giving up.

Most certainly the long “fallow period” has been a hindrance to my worldly career as a painter, since had I continued steadfastly from my youth to the present day presumably I would have built up a reputation and a following for my work by now.

It is inaccurate to say that I quit “all together”.  Throughout the 14 years from 1994 when I quit at the age of 24, until 2008 when I resumed at the age of 38, I was always engaged in making visual art. What happened was that I quit pursuing painting with the single minded devotion that is required for developing a serious body of work. I have always had a plethora of creative interests I could not simply settle on painting, but needed to explore and try different things.I should add that the original reason for quitting painting was a crisis of faith.  In February of 1993 I was assaulted with a pistol.  I could have died, however, upon having the .22 pistol shoved in my face I spontaneously and automatically made a prayer and said, “Please Lord, Don’t let me go – I have paintings to make!”  The bullet passed through my deltoid muscle, and grazed my neck.  Only soft tissue was pierced and so I survived remarkably unscathed.  Even though I had always been an agnostic by nature and had certainly not come from a religious family, it was hard for me not to feel compelled by what seemed an act of divine intervention, a miracle, in response to a prayer.  I was moved to become a more spiritual person and I also felt that my purpose as an artist had been divinely ordained.  As I recuperated from the gunshot wound I turned my attention to painting with great zeal, and yet I found that the world did not care about my paintings.  I was too sensitive to weather any rejection whatsoever and I felt that heaven had rescued me and tacitly blessed my purpose, only to turn it’s back upon me and leave me to fend for myself.  It seemed to me a betrayal, for if I had been spared from death for the purpose of making paintings should not heaven also provide for my material wants?  These questions haunted me and increasingly I felt that God had betrayed me, or that it was all a coincidence and there is no “God”, and that in either event why should I continue painting when there was no reward for it and so little in the world to encourage me to continue.

When I resumed painting it was because I felt that I had a covenant to fulfill in exchange for my life and that time was passing but I was not upholding my end of the bargain.  In 2008 my right shoulder – the same shoulder that had been shot and never fully healed – gave out due to excessive amounts of computer animation.  This infirmity was a not too subtle reminder that I need to accomplish my paintings.  Now I am stronger than I was in former times and I have the resilience to continue working no matter what suffering of the body or anguish of spirit may bedevil me.

David Normal website: http://normal.bz/

Interviewed by:

Stephanie L. Fetter

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