Perspectives on Jack Whitten and the Birth of Abstraction with Jamele Wright, Sr.

What if paint is the vehicle and you are the medium? We dive deep into Jack Whitten’s Notes from the Woodshed with guest host Jamel Wright Sr., tracing how a life shaped by the Jim Crow South, pre-med rigor, and carpentry precision produced a studio practice built on invention. From the famed developer tool to a crow’s nest for high vantage points, Whitten redesigned the act of making—choosing systems over spontaneity and treating process like a living experiment.

Jamel brings a rich perspective as an Atlanta-based artist and professor whose work spans Georgia red clay, Dutch wax cloth, and large-scale textiles. Together we map the long road to abstraction—Turner’s atmospheres, Monet’s shadows, Cézanne’s form, and the New York School’s debates—while centering the Black artists too often written out of the frame. We talk Norman Lewis, Joe Overstreet, Sam Gilliam, and the way community quietly powers discovery, even as art remains a solitary grind. The result is a candid look at research, journaling, and “recipes” that transform failed trials into the first real painting, then the next ten that lock in the language.

Along the way, we wrestle with Whitten’s audacity—“May the history of Western painting die within me”—and why abstraction can be activism: engineering new tools, removing gesture, and insisting on thought as freedom. If you’ve ever wondered how to balance materials, memory, and ambition without losing your voice, this conversation offers a field guide. Press play, then tell us what rule you’re ready to break. If the episode resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—your support helps more artists find their way.

Follow Jamele Wright, Sr. at https://www.instagram.com/artthenewreligion 

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Welcome to another episode of the Just Make Art
Podcast.
Today's episode is going to beall about Jack Witting.
Now, this is not our firstepisode about Jack, and it's
safe to say at this point itwon't be our last.
Both Tom and I are massive fans.
We've been talking about thisbook, Notes from the Woodshed,
for quite a while.
If you have not yet read thisbook, just please do yourself a

(00:26):
favor.
If you only read one art book in2026, make it this one.
If you buy it and read it anddon't love it, I will refund
whatever you paid for it.
Now, you do have to return itback to me so that I can regift
it to somebody else, but that'smy you'll love it guaranteed.
Please go get this book.
Now, for today's episode, we'vegot a special guest host, Jamel

(00:49):
Wright Sr.
And Jamel's somebody who I'vegot a tremendous amount of
admiration and respect for, asboth an artist and just a human
being.
He's become a great friend ofmine over the last few years.
Jerry Soltz in How to Be anArtist says, form a covenant.
We talked about that in ourJerry episode.
And I take that to mean that itis our responsibility as artists

(01:11):
to surround ourselves with otherartists who both challenge and
inspire us.
And Jamel definitely does bothof those things for me.
Over the last few years, we'vehad a lot of wide-ranging
conversations about art, and I'mjust grateful to call him a
friend and a mentor.
I know Jamel well at this point,but you may not, so let me give
you a proper introduction.

(01:32):
Jamel Wright Sr.
is an Atlanta-based visualartist and professor whose work
investigates the intersectionsof landscape, memory, and
diasporic abstraction.
Born and raised in Ohio, Wrightmoved to Atlanta at age 22,
where he became an importantorganizer of art, jazz, and
poetry events throughout thecity.
Seeing that many young artistslacked meaningful platforms, he

(01:54):
founded the Neo-Renaissance ArtHouse, a grassroots gallery that
nurtured and elevated a newgeneration of emerging
creatives.
This experience led him towardhis own artistic path.
Wright earned a BA in arthistory from Georgia State
University, focusing on Africanand American contemporary art,
and later completed an MFA fromthe School of Visual Arts in New
York City.

(02:15):
Wright's studio practice spansGeorgia red clay, Dutch wax
cloth, gesture drawing, andlarge-scale textile
installations.
His work explores presence,duration, and the in-between as
active structures within blackexperience, often merging
material experimentation withecological and historical
inquiry.
He is exhibited widely,including solo exhibitions at

(02:38):
the Gibbs Museum of Art inCharleston and the Albany Museum
of Art, and his work is held incollections across the region.
Wright has participated inresidencies at Surf Point
Foundation, the Vermont StudioCenter, and Mass Mocha.
And he received the WingateArtist Fellowship at the
Zuckerman Museum of Art.
His public commissions includemajor works for the Montgomery

(02:58):
Museum of Art and HartsfieldJackson Atlanta International
Airport.
As a faculty member at ClarkAtlanta University, Wright
teaches studio practice, AfricanAmerican art history, writing,
and professional development.
He recently co-curated InnerVisions, an exhibition on black
abstraction at the Clark AtlantaUniversity Art Museum.
He approaches notes from thewoodshed with a deep connection

(03:20):
to Jack Wynn's devotion toprocess, improvisation, and the
studio as a site of becoming.
And I'll just add, Jamel's workis tremendous, so please go
check it out.
He can be found on Instagram atArtTheNew Religion.
We've had a lot of conversationslike this.
Most of them aren't recorded.
This one was.
So I really hope you enjoyed it.
Jamel, let's dive in.

(03:41):
Hey, let's dive in.
We've been talking about thisfor a while.
Yes.
And um I have been reallylooking forward to it.
I'm super excited to have thisconversation.
I have to first off um justthank you for recommending this
book to me.
I had heard of it before, but inone of our conversations, um,
you're like, you gotta read thisbook.
And it has been a game changerfor me.

(04:03):
So I gotta thank you for that.
I was trying to recall um how orand when we first met.
I think it was Ty actually whoconnected us somehow.
And I I believe it was when Iwas gonna be, I w I was about to
be in Atlanta to do a project.
And I asked Ty, hey, who do youwho do we know?
And when I say who do we know,I'm asking him who does he know

(04:24):
in Atlanta, and that's kind ofhow we started chatting.
But I guess let's jump in withthis.
Maybe just give a broadoverview, just your experience
with with Witten's work andspecifically what do you love
about this book, Notes from theWoodshed, that we're going to be
talking about today.

SPEAKER_04 (04:39):
Uh well, I'll start off by adding to what you were
saying about me suggesting thebook to you, was kind of based
off of you know what I wasseeing in your practice and how
you work with materials.
Um and thinking about JackWitten and the way that he
worked with materials, the waythat he worked with paint, the
way he experimented with paint,the way he was um creating

(05:02):
devices or creating tools towork with paint.
He was always rediscoveringpaint.
So I thought that those two umwith you and with that would be
a really good connect.
The book or Jacqueline'spractice, we think about the

(05:23):
2,000 years of painting, right?
Abstraction probably startedaround uh 1870 with like, I
believe with J.W.
and Turner.
When you look at some of hisseaside paintings, and the way
if you look at the backgroundsof those paintings, then you'll
see these kind of notes ofabstraction.

(05:44):
It almost feels like knowingwhat we know now, it almost
seems like he was bubbled onsomething, but he didn't know
how to quite do it because thecamera hasn't really been
invented yet or hasn't reallybeen explored yet.
So you can't really leave theleave the the history paintings
or landscape paintings orpectoral figurative painting.

(06:06):
Then you have Monet who doeslike these gesture paintings
where um they're not calling agesture yet.
He's just trying to uh show usthe light, the way the light
looks upon an object.
Not the object.
He's not as invested in theobject as much as the light and
the way that it appears on thatobject, and how the light then

(06:29):
reflects the color of the objectthat he is painting.
So he's able to do somethingwhere most people had not done
before was the that was coloringshadows, where typically shadows
were always just black.
But he was able to find like theblue in a shadow or these
additional colors in shadows.

(06:50):
So you have like these earlykind of precursors of like um
the impressionists that werekind of verging on like
abstraction.
And then you have Shizan who iskind of verging on removing the
figure as he's continuing topaint this mountain.

(07:11):
And as he paints the mountainand the landscape even more, you
can see how the houses justbecome shapes, and the mountain
just becomes a shape and thenhe's kind of breaking it apart.
It's not so much about themountain as much as it is about
the act of painting, thepractice of painting, and the

(07:32):
practice of excavating this, youknow, this landscape that he's
he's doing consistently becausehe's almost painting this
mountain consistently, and thenwe have like cubism.
Cubism was kind of like blockingthings out, and then you have
cubism that begins to break downthe form and flatten it.
So when you have George Barackand Picasso breaking down the

(07:58):
figure, when you see Matisse andPicasso start looking in the
African mass, so there's thisinteresting catalyst that's
happening at this time wherethese ideas of painting are now
leaving the photograph andleaving the figure, and now
we're just really thinking aboutpainting, but we still aren't

(08:24):
sure like what does it trulylook like to leave the figure or
an object or a landscape.
And then something magicalhappens.
Norman Lewis, Jacket Pollock,Jacket Pollock, when he looks at
a painting that he completeswith Lee Krasner and says, Is
this even a painting?

(08:45):
So we had to go throughsurrealism, we had to go through
Dada, we had to go through thesethings that are allowing us now
Kadinsky who is usinganesthesia.
So that's what Kadinsky had,where he's able to uh do that.
Um so and then you have HelmhalfClint who does, you know, begins

(09:07):
with geometric abstraction, andthen Genie Stro Strobel who kind
of starts these splatters, andthen Jackson Pollett sees those
and begins to explore that.
And now we're starting to seewhere the camera no longer has
influence in the the painter'slife, and then people are now

(09:31):
because of Deschamps are nolonger thinking about painting
for anyone else.
It becomes individualized.
And now we're trying to expresshow we're feeling which is
really interesting because thisis happening after World War
One, World War Two, the warsthat will end all wars.

(09:54):
And because of that, then youhave these different kind of
aspirations that's happening.
So by the time we get to ChatWitten, we're talking about
civil rights.
We're talking about the factthat, you know, he was born in
Bessemer, Alabama, inBirmingham, Alabama, which I
find really interesting becausehere you are the Jim Crow South.

(10:14):
Here you are dealing with notonly racism, but uh you know, he
called it apartheid.
You know, he's seen Klansmen,he's seen lynching, he's seen
then he goes to Tuskegee wherehe got an opportunity to be a
pre-med.
So that kind of gives you a hintthat he believes in an
experiment, he believes inexploring.

(10:35):
He's you know, and in a timewhere America has been explored
and conquered and colonized, hebecomes a modern day explorer.
But he changes the media, right?
It's no longer land, but it isthis kind of ephemeral, liquidy,
plasticky substance calledpainting.

(10:58):
And when it gets to him, atfirst he's trying to fully
express himself through thepaint, and then he finds that
that's not enough.
And that's what we see in hislife, this kind of quest to
create something that kind of Ibelieve opens it up to what is a

(11:18):
not a painting that isreferential to to the past 2,000
years of painting, but that istruly, as he says in the book, a
Jack Winton painting.

SPEAKER_00 (11:30):
He was acutely aware of where of his place in
historical context.

SPEAKER_04 (11:38):
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (11:38):
And that that's really evident throughout
throughout the book.
It's interesting, you know, aswhen you were mentioning his
passion, his drive to developsomething that is was uniquely
his and his use of tools toaccomplish that.
I just I was thinking I know Ishared this with you because I I
uh I called you shortly aftervisiting the show at at MoMA

(12:00):
this past summer.
And one of my favorite thingsabout that show was seeing the
developer, you know, they hadand so you know, being uh being
a nerd when it comes toprocessing tools, just looking
at the way that he constructedthat.
And I don't know which iterationthat was.
I don't imagine it was his firstattempt, you know, to make that

(12:22):
particular version.
But yeah, that was uhabsolutely, absolutely
fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 (12:27):
Yeah.
You know, we talked about umpainting as a art, making art as
a solo sport.
I often call it a solo sportbecause you spend so much time
alone.
Yeah.
But I would also say that likemaking art is really built on
community as well.
He had a really strongcommunity.
Like uh, who um was makingpaintings with his comb is where

(12:54):
Jack Whitden began to seeanother way of making a
painting.
And he began to make these combpaintings, these these pick
paintings, right?
Hair pit paintings.
And then um the rumor is thathim and I just had his name

(13:15):
William De Cooning.
People call him Bill, butWilliam De Cooning became
friends with I think thatWilliam De Cooning is actually
kind of interesting too, becauseWilliam De Cooning is actually
friends with a lot of theAfrican American contemporary um
painters during that time thatoftentimes.
I gotta jump in.

SPEAKER_00 (13:35):
De Cooning was Dutch.
Oh, Dutch.
Okay, great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those are my people.
I'm like three-quarters Dutch.

SPEAKER_03 (13:42):
Well, you live in Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 (13:47):
Anytime you see a D or a van or I mean there's a lot
of others that that's a that's adetailed sign.
Almost always.
It's uh great from the from theNetherlands.

SPEAKER_04 (13:56):
So um, but those guys, you know, when it came to
painting, like they would showthese paintings of the New York
school of painters, and NormanLewis was one of those painters.
But oftentimes they would haveNorman Lewis stand on the on the
side, and then they would cuthim out of the paintings so that
it would look like this New Yorkschool of painters were all

(14:18):
white.
I say that because they all usedto meet at the same bar, the
Cedar Bar, along with theAfrican American painters, and
they all would talk together.
You know, they all knew who eachother were.
But you know, the New Yorkschool versus these
African-American artists areoften excluded from these

(14:40):
conversations.

SPEAKER_00 (14:41):
He was he was a member of the Irrascibles.
Yeah.
But was not on that iconicphoto.

SPEAKER_04 (14:50):
Right.
So Norman Lewis is consideredlike one of the first abstract
expressionist painters, uh,first black ones.
But then you but then when yougo down this this line and you
look at who's alongside of theCooney, there were people like
Joe Overstreet, there was EdClark, there was Jack Witten,

(15:11):
there was a whole school ofpainters alongside of Aggar
Goings, who like I had alreadymentioned, but out loving.
Um there were all theseabstractionists that were around
the same time who werecontributing to each other, and
I believe were contributing tothis New York school of artists

(15:35):
as well.
Because then you have theyounger generation, which is the
the Roshenbirds and the JasperJohns, uh the Sytwamblys, Joseph
Alberts, who's kind of anoutlier to all of that, but he's
influenced the way we look atcolor.
When we go back to New Yorkschool, we talk about Rothko.

(15:55):
All these people knew eachother, they were in
conversation.
So to say that like an artist isjust discovering on his own, you
know, there were manydiscoveries that were happening,
there were many conversationsthat are happening.
And um Jack Whitden mentions,you know, some of his
conversations with De Cooning inthe book.
But I was saying all that to saythat De Cooning, the story is

(16:18):
that De Cooning helped JackWitten create the developer.
He told him he needed a tool.
But other sources that wereclose to Jack Um Witten at that
time, says Joe Overstreet helpedhim to develop this tool.
So we have these um differentsources, these different um

(16:42):
witnesses to what's happeningduring this time to create these
new languages, right?
So, yeah, so I think that thathelps to kind of give us some
context when we're talking aboutthe book is kind of having some
of this background information.

SPEAKER_00 (17:02):
Absolutely.
I want to come back to somethingthat you mentioned earlier just
because I'm curious.
We'll get to the book at somepoint, probably.
Great.
But uh I um I'd love to hear youunpack that idea.
I I think I know what you meanwhen you say that art is a solo
sport that also involvescommunity, but I'd love to hear
you talk more about that.

SPEAKER_04 (17:23):
Well, I mean, art being a solo sport means that
like you spend a lot of time inthe studio by yourself.
It's like for me, my practice isprobably like 90% research and
10% actually making the thing.
What people see is the 10% in avery large scale.

(17:45):
But oftentimes people don't knowhow long it took me to get to
that.
I'm currently researching somestuff now, and I've been
researching it for like maybetwo or three months of just like
reading and resourcing andselecting materials and trying
some stuff and it not being thatsuccessful, and then you know,

(18:08):
eventually I'll be trying somemore stuff here soon.
Um, and then that won't even bethat great, and then I'll
finally get to a point where Ihave the opportunity to really
like do it the way I want to doit, and then it's gonna be
rock'em sock'em, right?
But the thing is like peopledon't see that part of it.

(18:29):
And that part of it kind oftakes community.
That part kind of takes like mehaving conversations with you
about materials, me calling upTy and and asking him how he did
this thing, me calling callingGolden and saying, Hey, I'm
thinking about this this uh typeof paint, or I'm thinking about

(18:50):
the way to use this paint.
Can I do this to it, or is therea medium that I can do that to
it?
Um it's hanging out with somefriends and you know, maybe
they'll come to a studio and wesmoke a cigar and we'll be
looking at a painting that I'vedone and they'll go, hey, have
you thought about this?
But all the prep work is solo,all the painting part is solo.

(19:13):
I can't have people in thestudio while I'm making.
They just at this point theyjust get in the way.

SPEAKER_02 (19:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (19:19):
You know, people asking questions, why are you
using that blue rather than theother blue?
You know, like why don't youflip it over?
Doesn't this painting lookbetter on its side?
I don't need that conversationwith you.
Right now, like I was telling afriend, look, I'm just trying to
learn how to make the thing.
Let me learn how to make itfirst, and then we can start

(19:40):
critiquing it.
And I think that a lot of timespeople like even when I say
learning how to make it, um,most people would think like,
Well, you already know how topaint.
Yes, I know how to paint, butthere's a certain thing that
you're trying to get to in apainting and you want it to
resonate in a certain way.
Like uh there's a quote in here.

(20:02):
There's a quote, it's on page63.
He says, I had I got some prettygood paintings, but it did not
please my third eye.
Meaning that I can do somereally great paintings, but they
haven't really hit the mark thatI'm trying to get it to hit.

SPEAKER_02 (20:20):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (20:21):
Right.
You know?
So I can do 15 of those until Ifinally get to that one like,
okay, this is it.

SPEAKER_00 (20:32):
That's it.

SPEAKER_04 (20:32):
What did I do?
What did I do differently onthis one that I hadn't done in
the past?
15 paintings, right?

SPEAKER_03 (20:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (20:44):
And you start building these kind of recipes,
right?
These kind of recipes forpainting.
And then once you get thatrecipe down, then you're like,
okay, it's clicking.
And that 15th one really becomesyour first one.
And then you start making theother paintings.
And then you start going, okay,I got it now.

(21:06):
I got it.
And that's when you've learnedhow to make the painting.
And also when people come seeit, they're not questioning it
anymore.
They can go, Wow, that'ssomething.
And then at that point, you'vedone maybe after you hit that
15th one, then you do your next10 to solidify the fact that you

(21:27):
know that you know what you'redoing.
And then 10 is when you canreally start talking about what
it is you did, what questionsyou're asking, where are you
trying to place yourself, wheredo these paintings placed um in
history, where are you placingthe canon?
What are you trying to achieve?

(21:48):
And Jack Wooden's talking aboutthat throughout.
He's talking about like using adeveloper and how he did like
three or four paintings thatday, but they didn't quite hit
it.
Or he did like ten paintings,but he only liked two.
And that's why, like, you know,I look at your book and you've
read it completely, what, twicenow?

(22:09):
At least.
And I've gotten through half ofit because I'm really meditating
on things that he's saying, andI'm really in the place where he
was in my practice.
Where when he's sayingsomething, it just makes me go,

(22:30):
okay, I'm not alone, I'm notcrazy.
But I need to kind of likereally kind of feel this out in
my day-to-day, yeah.
And let me get back to thestudio and make some things.
So it almost like I feel likesometimes I'm in conversation
with Jack Witten as opposed tojust reading a book.

(22:51):
Sometimes I feel like when I'mreading it, it's like he's
talking to me.
And I'm like, yeah, exactly.
Makes perfect sense.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what do we do next?
You know?

SPEAKER_00 (23:09):
Well, it's the the book is it's so dense with the
deepest of of gems and andnuggets.
We talked about this uh theother day when we were um
talking about about uh planningfor the episode here, but you
know, we could literally closeour eyes and open up any page.

(23:30):
Right.
And I'm curious to ask you whatyour more you gave me like I
wrote like seven things downthat I want to ask follow-up
questions on from what you justshared.
But you know, when you talkabout research, a big part of
that for me is is journaling andwriting, listening to the work.
You know, one of the things thatI've done with this book is

(23:51):
taken things that I'vehighlighted and and you know,
this book is all marked up andI've got you know things that
I've written down.
I just opened up to a page.

unknown (24:00):
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (24:00):
Bunch of ideas, one of seven of which I've I've
executed.
That's actually a good idea.
I should try that.
Um but I I've used it as a um uhlike a almost like a prompt, you
know, for journaling.
I'll write what Jack wrote andI'll just reflect on it and try
to absorb it and receive youknow the data that's in.

unknown (24:22):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (24:23):
So sorry, yeah.
Uh I had a I I was gonna putthat in the form of question.
So is uh talk more about yourwhat what research means for you
and for your practice.
Is journaling a part of it?
Like what else?

SPEAKER_04 (24:34):
In a way, my undergrad is art history.
So research to me is real likein-depth research.
I believe that my making is acontinuation of my making.
So like if I I did Dutchwexpaintings dealing with petite,
then I started thinking, okay,well, I want to make my own

(24:59):
petes.
So then I learned how to handdye fabric and then do petiking.
And then I said, okay, well, Idid that.
Now I want to do like reallylarge-scale pieces, hand dye in
different colors, and then addin some fatiging and some
discoloration.
And then I was like, well, whatcould I can I dye these in

(25:20):
earth?
Can I can I use red clay becausered clay stains?
Can I dye these in red clay?
And I did that.
Can I paint on top of that?
What does that look like?
Okay, so now I've done that.
Let me learn how to do someother painting techniques.
What if I stain the surfacerather than just paint on it?

(25:40):
What if I stained it first?
Looking at Peter Bradley andHelen Frankenthaler, how does
that look in comparison to justpainting it?
Right?
What do I develop out of that?
And I'm note-taking thesethings.
I'm looking at these artists, ifI'm looking at staining, I look
at Peter Bradley.
Um, if I'm looking at like SamGillian, I'm Al Loving, I look

(26:02):
at William T.
Williams, um, because of the waythat he uses these directional
forms.
I look at uh JW and Turner alot, Robert Duncanson uh
landscape paintings.
So I'm thinking aboutlandscapes, thinking about how
we're into the land.
Over the past couple of years,I've been researching landscape

(26:23):
painting versus abstraction.
Thinking about historicalpaintings, thinking about Amazon
Kiefer, again Robert Duncanson,Edward Bannister, J.
David Turner, Wendzel Homer,like those guys right there are
kind of like in the backgroundof my thinking.
And then, but the methodologythat I'm thinking I'm using is

(26:46):
abstraction.
So then I start thinking aboutJoe Overstreet.
Joe Overstreet was reallyinteresting because of he did
something called vernaculararchitecture.
So he's reshaping the campus,having it hover in space.
He currently has a show inMississippi that I want to go
to.

(27:06):
It was in Houston, the VanilleCollection, and I missed it.
There's that, and then SemGilliam and Our Loving, they
kind of like teach me aboutcolor.
But when I'm looking at form,I'm thinking about like Sai
Twambly and gesture painting,Basquiat, the way that Basquiat
was able to level the surface,like he could put the figure

(27:30):
there and put the gesture there,the hand gesture there, and even
them out.
Like he's the first personthat's been able to like balance
the figure and the gesture thatabstraction at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 (27:45):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (27:46):
I guess I'm really kind of giving you a lot of my
secrets, but but not really.
The thing is, is like I'mstudying these painters, but
side but the side part of thatis I'm currently looking at the
American South within thecontext of landscape painting.
And then particularly Georgia,because I live in Georgia.

(28:11):
So I'm thinking about like whatis the land, how does the land
offer, like the land of Georgiain contrast to the Hudson River
School painters.
So that's kind of like whereI've been for the past two or
three years.
Um so when you look at apainting like uh Is it Siberian

(28:34):
Salt by Jack Witten, when you'relooking at those uh huge like
swipe paintings, the developerpaintings, thinking like even he
says, I'm not trying to create alandscape.
I'm trying to get away from thelandscape, right?
But I'm kind of interested inthe landscape because I'm kind
of like next door to where heused to live.

(28:54):
My parents are actually fromBirmingham, Alabama.
So understanding that landscapeand understanding artists like
Thornton Dyle and Lonnie Holly,I really see myself as like how
do I gather all these artiststhat I've mentioned, put them in
a box, or do like we used to doin when I used to work in

(29:15):
restaurants where you get aglaze, you have to boil
everything down to it's justlike a sauce, and then make that
sauce.
So I'm thinking about theresearch as opposed to how we
deal with the land.
What is the land?
Why is the land?
Why do we think about the landin this way?

(29:35):
So very theoretic idea of whatdoes land mean and our position
in the land and who are weamongst the land in the land.
I think about that.
But then I'm also thinking aboutthese painters and how they uh
work their practice, and thenhow do I then meld those two
things together?
When people ask you a lot.

SPEAKER_00 (29:56):
That's a lot.
I love it.
We're in it.
We're doing it.
We're in it.
Yeah, we're in it.
When people ask you, whilelooking at your work, how long
did this take you?
How do you answer that?

SPEAKER_02 (30:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (30:11):
Um I actually, when people ask me what I do, I
actually just tell them I'm acollege professor.
I stopped talking about being anartist to most people because of
that, that like 15 minutes ittook me to kind of explain to
you like how I'm getting to apainting.

SPEAKER_00 (30:30):
Sure.

SPEAKER_04 (30:30):
Right?

SPEAKER_00 (30:31):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (30:31):
The average person is not really interested in all
that material.

SPEAKER_00 (30:35):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (30:35):
They're just kind of asking me, like, okay, so how
long did it take for you to makethat?

SPEAKER_00 (30:40):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (30:40):
Yeah, but it's been taking me two or three years to
even figure out what it is Iwanted to make.
It's been taking me experimentafter experiment of learning how
to die, buying all the materialso I could die in my backyard.
You know, I spent a whole summeroutside nine o'clock in the
morning till nine o'clock atnight, hand dyeing fabric.

SPEAKER_02 (31:03):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (31:04):
You know, so like how long does it take for me to
make that?
Like, that's really it's reallykind of like this American
concept of trying to quantifytime and trying to put my
thought process in the contextof capitalism.

SPEAKER_00 (31:29):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (31:29):
Because they want me to be able to qualify and
quantify my time to justify thembuying, or I call it investing,
yeah, in an idea that will thenlead to another idea.

SPEAKER_02 (31:50):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (31:51):
As if every painting is a proposal, as opposed to
every painting being anopportunity for the viewer to
see something in life thatthey've never seen before.

SPEAKER_00 (32:04):
Yeah.
That it that is a veryindustrial, you know, linear
sort of thinking, right?
A leads to B, leads to C.
And it's it it is almost I I Iask that question obviously
tongue in cheek because it'sit's a question that we all get
all the all the time.
Right.
And it's like I I I say 50hours, somewhere between 50

(32:28):
hours and 46 years.

SPEAKER_04 (32:30):
You know, it's I say, you know, like when they
ask me about the Dutch waxpaintings that I do, I would
often tell them, you know, ifI'm really getting good on it,
it takes me about four days, buta lot of it is waiting for paint
to dry.
Right.
You know, I know how to makethem well enough now that I can
just I can get those done.

(32:51):
The um the other abstract workthat I do, it has to do with um
now once you learn how to makeit, I mean, it it gets faster.
But still there's there'swaiting on paint to dry.
And you know, I like I don'tlike to really involve myself
with the the forcing of apainting.

SPEAKER_02 (33:13):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (33:14):
I like to kind of allow the painting to tell me
what it wants to do, and then Iadjust to that.

SPEAKER_00 (33:23):
Yeah, yeah.
You said something before thatthat uh that caught my
attention.
You said, okay, I did that, nowI want to do this.

unknown (33:35):
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (33:36):
That's something that that reoccurs all
throughout, you know, Jack'swork, obviously, and his writing
about his work.
Okay, I did that, now on tothis, you know, sort of what if,
what's next?
You know, that you talk aboutthe time it took you to get it
takes us to get to that firstwork of a series of a of a of a

(33:57):
new vein that works, and thenthe time it takes to do the
subsequent ten, you know, it's avery different, very different
time domain.

SPEAKER_04 (34:05):
Yeah, and and the advantages is that we're
standing on on Jack Witten'sshoulders, right?
So we know how he made that.
Right.
Right?
We have an idea, we have a bookwhere he goes through like his
his ideology.
So we have a cheat code to somedegree.
We know how Joe Overstreet madehis work, we know how Al Lovey

(34:25):
made his work, Ed Clark,DeCooning, Rothko.
We have their recipes.

SPEAKER_00 (34:31):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (34:31):
So you could almost to some degree stop there if you
really wanted to and say thatthere's no reason, you know, to
paint anything else.
I mean, that's the reason whyDeschamp started like, you know,
hanging shovels in the in thegallery space, you know, because
he began realizing that there'severything beautiful has already

(34:52):
been made.
But I think that's where that'swhere we're just at the
beginning.

SPEAKER_02 (34:57):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (34:58):
And I think that's the reason why I'm like
rediscovering the Hudson RiverSchool.
Like often my practice, I go,like, why am I so rather than
trying to make something new,why am I going back to these
older concepts?
But I think that they're cyclic,you know, cyclic cyclical in the
sense that we're discovering newthings.
We're in a new age.

(35:18):
We're in a uh a new era oftechnology.
Like I don't re I don't reallybelieve that the world's gonna
end and then the whole world'sgonna be burnt up and then
people are gonna be gathered up.
I believe that people are beinggathered up um every day.
But I also believe thatsometimes the world ending is a

(35:40):
season, is a time of technology,right?
Where like Rome ended, Greeceended, Egypt ended, and right
now we're at a place wheretechnology is changing the
world.
So the era of learning how towrite cursive is over.
The era of doing math by hand isover, and even to some degree,

(36:04):
the era of thinking for yourselffor a lot of people is over.

SPEAKER_02 (36:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (36:10):
We now have AI, we now have all these other things
that are telling us what tosocial media, all these things
that are telling us what tothink, how to think, and why to
think that way.
And it's easier oftentimes tokind of submerge yourself and
just go along with it and justsubmit.

SPEAKER_00 (36:32):
Hold on, are are you suggesting that uh using prompts
is not thinking for yourself?

SPEAKER_04 (36:38):
No.
I'm saying when when the promptis yourself, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So what I'm saying is, so I kindof think of to this modern era
that we're in is a new new uhHudson River school.
It is a time to look at the landas as a wonder, yeah.

(37:06):
To explore something new, toexplore new ideas.
I don't plan on colonizingpainting, but I do think about
excavating painting.
I don't think about dehumanizingother cultures.
I my intent is to include othercultures and see where those

(37:30):
things meet.
Yeah.
And they meet in me.
And I think that that's whereJack Win, again, learning to
make a Jack Wynn painting,something that's not African
American, something that's notEurocentric, something that's
not American.
You know, um, one of thesethings he says, May the history

(37:53):
of Western painting die withinme.

unknown (37:55):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (37:55):
Page 95.
These kind of ideas that likelet's start anew, which I think
is kind of bold.
I think that's what makes uhpainters or artists kind of
really different than mostpeople.
This ambition to make somethingso new that's never been seen
before.

(38:17):
Um but there's a lot of pain inthat.
There's a lot of pain in makingsomething that no one's ever
seen before because no one'sever seen it before, so they
don't really know how to dealwith it.
You often are waiting for peopleto understand what you're making
and seeing how consistent youare about making it.

(38:38):
Right.
The pain of of doing that.
Even there's a section in here Ididn't put it in the notes where
he says that like I'm about tostart a new series.
I was gonna take these lastcouple of pieces from this last
series to a gallery, but no onewants the last pieces to a
series.

(38:58):
Right?
They don't want to see the end,you know, they only want the
new.
You know?

SPEAKER_00 (39:06):
You talk about the that that's such a sorry to cut
you off, but that's such a youknow, may the history of Western
painting die within me.
That that is incredibly bold.
That is incredibly about as boldand ambitious as it gets.
One of the things that's sofascinating about this book, so
he wrote that in 1975.
Right.

(39:26):
We read that today, right, withall everything that he did after
that in the rear view, right,for main text.
And it makes sense.
You're like, yeah, it makessense that Jack would have been
thinking that then.
But and these these are hisjournal entries, you know.
Right.
This is not something that hewas publishing at the time or

(39:46):
sharing with more anyone, letalone a select few, right?
So that's that's a reallyinteresting thing, is that
that's that's what's so great,and and we we've recommended
this book so many times.
Like if you only read one bookin 2020.
26, just read, read this book.
It's so so good.
But just that insight into histhought process and some of the

(40:09):
sort of just audacious,audacious big thinking, you
know, that one needs toentertain to even have a chance
at getting close.

SPEAKER_04 (40:21):
Yeah, and we can't skip also some of the racial
undertones that are happeningthere, too, right?
We can't miss we can't glossover the fact that not only is
he talking about Westernpainting, he's also talking
about Western ideas, right?
He's talking about the fact thathis body is the bot the black
body has been subjugated.

(40:41):
He can't, you know, the the factthat until he goes to the north,
does he have access toabstraction because of the
figure being so prominent in theSouth, and the figure meaning
the black body, meaning thelabor of the South, the the way
that we look at the South as faras um a place where slavery was.

(41:05):
And we forget that slavery wasactually in Washington, D.C.
It was in Virginia, it was in,you know, it was in many parts
of America, and he is kind oflike escaped some of it to some
degree, where he's goes toCooper Union and gets a degree
in art making and then becomesan artist in New York.

(41:29):
He's not uh tending to theSouth, but he is remembering the
South.
You know, I was watching thisthing where his wife was saying
he didn't tell everything thathappened to him in the in the
South, but you can see it,right?
Yeah, you know, like you canhear it, like some of those
first paintings that he didwhere it's talking about Martha

(41:49):
the King because he was marchingalong with Martha the King.
Yeah, so he was even though hiswork does not appear to be civil
rights driven by him making thiskind of work becomes activism.
Yeah.
Because he's showing that blackpeople can think too.

(42:13):
Because that's what abstractionreally is.
I mean, abstraction is aboutthinking, it's about like Jason
Pollack, we look at and we say,okay, he's he's going back to
the id, right?
He's going back to the superego, he's dealing with the
superego.
Abstraction is about problemsolving.
As we sit up here and talk abouthis practice of, okay, I made my

(42:38):
own paint.
I made this developer.
I I've had to construct, buildmy own studio.
I've had to construct theseplatforms and make sure they're
perfectly straight, so then whenI use the developer, it goes up
across the right way.
Like there's all these thingshe's doing.

(42:59):
He built a crowd.

unknown (43:02):
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (43:03):
I mean, yeah.
That's that's next level.
A crow's nest so that he couldsit.
I think he said at the time hehad 13-foot ceilings.
So just so that he could get theperspective that he wanted on
these the work that he wasdoing, that was obviously
amazing.

SPEAKER_04 (43:19):
Right.
So the thing is, is like so he'sdoing all these things.
So you can't say that he's notthinking.
He's around major thinkers ofabstraction.
And abstraction is not just youknow throwing paint on the
surface, it is discovering themateriality of paint, but it's

(43:41):
also the theory of painting thatcomes behind it.
It is uh dissecting Velasquezand Titian and Goya, is
dissecting uh the Dogon tribe,it's dissecting the metal
workers of Benin, it's it's it'suh the temples in Egypt, it's

(44:03):
all of those things compacted uhinto a person and then them uh
putting it in a blender, right,boiling it down into a glaze.
So this idea of the civilrights, this idea of like, you
know, he was going to Tuskegee.
So when we look at TuskegeeAirmen, the purpose of the

(44:25):
Tuskegee Airmen was first anexperiment by the American
government that said that blackpeople were not intelligent
enough to fly a plane, anddefinitely not in battle, and
yet they become one of the mostdecorated uh units in World War
II.
So like he's kind of like doingaway with these ideas by him

(44:45):
painting alone, it becomesactivism because he's showing
that he can do it.
Not only can he do it, he can doit well.
Not only can he do it well, hecan discover new things.
Not only can he discover newthings, we have other painters
that had gleaned from hisexpertise, like Gerhardt

(45:06):
Richter, who was making thesepaintings that were very similar
to his, but Gerhard Richter isthe one that we recognize.

SPEAKER_02 (45:14):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (45:14):
Meanwhile, Jack Witten had already passed that
era in his painting and is goingon to something else.

SPEAKER_02 (45:21):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (45:23):
So even when we look at abstract expression, we think
about jazz and how jazz isinfluencing abstract
expressionism, but no one'sreally talking about these jazz
musicians.
We're not talking about theLouis Armstrongs, we're not who
like is one of the inventors ofjazz, we're not talking about
Charlie Parker, who is one ofthe inventors along with uh

(45:46):
Dizzy Gillespie inventing Bebop.
You know, and then we go to DJCool Herc, who then invents uh
with Grand Wizard Theodore andAfrica Bambada, um, who are then
creating hip-hop.
Like these inventions that arehappening coincide with the
inventions, you know, becauselike Jack Witten and Joe

(46:09):
Overstreet used to hang out withsome raw.
So there's all these kind oftheories and new things that are
happening that by them showingup, simply showing up, without
even mentioning they're fightingfor their civil rights, as many
of them were, by showing up,they're being activists.

SPEAKER_00 (46:34):
He was involved in the civil rights movement before
he lived in New York.
And and it's interesting.
It goes back to he talks abouthis stepdad made his living as a
sign painter, and Whitten madesigns, you know.
And it's it's interesting youthink about you know, most of
the signs that are that areused, you know, in public

(46:55):
demonstrations and proteststoday are very sloppily
handwritten, you know.
But you think about the signsfrom from that that era, they
were they were proper signs, youknow.
You know, there's something elseabout Birmingham.
You know, he tells a story.
Um, it was sometime in the 90swhen the Birmingham Museum of

(47:19):
Art called to acquire one of hispaintings, and he recollected
about and just just wasreflecting on the fact that a
museum that wanted to acquireone of his works uh was one that
he was not able to visit as achild.

SPEAKER_04 (47:37):
Right.
Right.
Birmingham has a veryinteresting history, a very
interesting history with itsartists.
Like I think Michi Miko, um, wholives here in Atlanta, who's
from Alabama, I think he'sprobably one of the greatest
painters alive right now.
One of the greatest artistsalive right now.

(47:58):
And again, he's from Alabama,Jack Whiton, Birmingham, Thorn
Dahl, Birmingham, Bessema, uh,Lonnie Holly, Birmingham.
And I'm always interested, goingback to the idea about the land,
how do you how does the landbirth something so amazing in

(48:21):
the midst of Sunrise also fromAlabama?
How do you birth something soinnovative, so amazing in the
midst of just very overtapartheid type of racism?
Like, how does this rose growfrom this concrete?

(48:46):
You know, it's just it's justamazing.
Like I look at them and I go,like, how how were you able to
sustain such tragedies?
Because the main reason why JackWhitney left the South was
because one of his friends diedduring the protest.
So he was like, I can't I can'tdeal with this anymore.

(49:09):
I I need to go.
So like amidst great tragedy,you have these artists create
some of the most beautiful workthat is still shifting the way
we think about art.
You know, something that seemsso sidelin in a culture like

(49:31):
today, right now, right?
Yeah.
Like why are we thinking about Imean this is 2025 and all these
things are happening in Americaand we are talking about art?
I I find it really find itreally interesting.
We're in interesting times.

SPEAKER_00 (49:49):
You mentioned the recipes earlier, and that that's
such a that's such aninteresting reference to Jack's
background as a you know pre-medstudent, um a physicist, you
know.
They're really uh, you know, Iwould I would extend that to say
they're they're really formulas,you know, that he invited for

(50:10):
himself, you know.
And you you can just tell thatthroughout his writing and the
work obviously um you knowsupports that.

SPEAKER_04 (50:19):
Well, just you know, just I spent 25 years in
restaurants, I spent 13 years infine dining.
So recipe is you know mylanguage.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So him being a scientist formulawill would be more of his his
language.
Let's get into the book.

SPEAKER_00 (50:39):
Okay.
You've um you indulged me insharing the quotes that you
wanted to talk about today,okay.
Uh, which I appreciate, whichgave me some time to re revisit
them.
Okay.
So we're just gonna go in in uhsort of chronological order
here.
From page 48.
And by the way, I haven'treferenced this specifically.
Here's the book for those of youthat are watching on YouTube
Notes from the Woodship.

(51:00):
Yes.
So on page 48, art in itsadvanced stage is something more
than therapy.
The modern day realist gives usart as therapy.
Rothko gives us art asdedication to painting.

SPEAKER_04 (51:16):
I think it goes back to the idea of art being a solo
sport that is beyond therapy.
I think you have to do thetherapy before you get to the
studio.
Yeah.
And sometimes you have to dotherapy alongside your studio
practice.
For sure.

(51:39):
Um I have seasons where I haveto do therapy.
Um it's very easy to get caughtup in your own thoughts while
you're in the studio, andsometimes leave distractions um
while you're in the studio.
So it's a it's advanced totherapy because you have to deal

(52:00):
with those things because youare spending so much time alone.
But also the level of expressionand really being direct in what
it is you want to say, sometimesyou have to go through it over
and over and over again in orderto really kind of fine-tune it.

(52:26):
And that's where doing 10 helpsyou do that.
You know, we sometimes when wetalk about pain and people go,
Oh, it's like therapy.
You're in the room by yourselfand you're and you're moving
your hand, and yeah.
And sometimes it feels liketherapy, and sometimes it feels
like work.

SPEAKER_01 (52:47):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (52:48):
Like construction.
It feels especially for you.
I've done that kind of workbefore, and now I'm like, no,
I'm I'm not into that.
I'm more into this other thing.
Still labor.

unknown (53:04):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (53:04):
But in that labor, you're working something out.
You're not just working yourbody, you're working your mind.
You're asking yourselfquestions.
You are even when I was dyeingfabric, it was still, okay, if I
leave it in here for 30 minutes,what color will it be?
If I leave it here overnight,what will it be?
If I leave it here for uh uhthree hours, what would it be?

(53:26):
Or rinse it out, I don't rinseit out, what would happen?
Like there's all these thingsthat are happening.
So it's that rough coatdedication to painting.
Yeah.
But I don't, you know, like Idon't know.
You you tell me what do youthink?
Do you think that Winton was asdedicated to painting as he was

(53:46):
to making the thing?

SPEAKER_00 (53:48):
Not at all.
No.
And he he talked he talked aboutthat a lot, you know, when he
made the transition betweenthinking about you know,
changing the verb from paintingto making.
Jack was a maker.
I mean, and and you think aboutso talking about your background
in the restaurant industry, youknow, the fact that that Jack

(54:09):
was a very skilled carpenter,cabinetry maker.
I mean, that's a big, big thingthat he I mean in especially
early on in um in the book, thatI mean, that's what he had to do
to support himself.
I mean, we talked uh uh beforeoff camera the other day about
the the three years that he hadto take off to rebuild his
studio from from scratch, youknow, and that he had to support

(54:30):
the the financial you knowburden of rebuilding the studio
by doing a bunch of side jobs,you know.
It is interesting though, youknow, you think about all of the
things that influence and affectan artist's you know practice
and approach to making.
Um but uh you know his hisdesire to to study both the

(54:52):
scientist and the and thebuilder, you know.
Um there's there's both there'sboth precision, you know.
I mean when you're when you'rebuilding he he talks about you
know when he was building hisplatform, you know, um he
describes it, you know, two byfour studs, 16-inch centers, you
know, three-quarter constructiongrade, you know, I mean he gives
the form, he gives the recipe,he gives the plates, right?

(55:14):
Basically, it's beeninteresting, you know, I I I
have somewhat of a background inin construction, um moderately
skilled, you know, mostly I wasjust an unskilled laborer in
high school and in college, butjust being around it, um, you
know, that that stuck with me.
You know, being around my mygrandfather who was a who's a
woodworker and just watching andjust absorbing you know those

(55:37):
different things had a had ahuge, huge impact.
Um we're in the final stages ofuh building a sauna in our
backyard.
Um and uh thankfully I've got avery skilled builder friend
who's who's doing most of thethinking and planning.

SPEAKER_04 (55:53):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (55:53):
Because you know, it it it requires per se, I mean,
you know, the the week to makeas long as the frames are square
and I've gotten away from framesas well.
But you know, apart from that,it's yeah, it's it's you know,
uh all it's open, it's free,it's you know, it's not any, but
it just in observing Bob, myfriend, who's who's who's uh
who's helping me, you know,watching and observing how many

(56:17):
times he, you know, the old youknow, measure twice, you know,
cut once.
Yes, it's yes, it's and and howyou know, especially when you're
trying to make things are plumand square, you know, but just
all of the ways that that thatbackground clearly influenced
Witten's work um and hisability, you know, to make.

SPEAKER_04 (56:36):
Right.
Um what's funny to me is youlive in Minnesota and you're
getting a sauna where you couldjust come to Atlanta from July
to August and just standoutside.

SPEAKER_03 (56:55):
That's that's partially true.
Yeah.
And you won't have Asana.
We get we get triple.

SPEAKER_04 (57:03):
I love the fact that you're building Asana and from
like June to October, I live inAsada.

SPEAKER_00 (57:11):
Well, I mean, listen, when this thing gets
going, we're gonna have thatthing ripping at uh you know 190
to 210 degrees, you know.

SPEAKER_03 (57:18):
So that's a that's that's a it's a step above.
It's a step above.
That's what the cold is.
If you're down here in Atlanta,sometimes it feels like 190.

SPEAKER_04 (57:29):
I spent a lot of my time um when I was younger in
Birmingham, Alabama, my um,because I told you my parents
lived there, so uh grew upthere.
So uh my mother lived in Riglives in Riggins, and my um
father lived in Docina.
I was really interested.
They met in Columbus, Ohio.
They're 13 years apart, and umso we would go there and we

(57:53):
would they live 20 minutes apartfrom each other.
Um so we would go back everysummer, every spring.
Um, and when my grandmother wasuh going down to health, we
would go through the wintertimeas well.
But I would sit spend a lot oftime on that front porch at
dad's old house, and that'swhere I learned abstraction at a

(58:16):
very young age, and I didn'trealize it until I was in grad
school, kind of like going backover my life, you know, kind of
building my thesis.
But that front porch where I wasable to look out and see the
houses that were in front of therailroad track.
Um, and then the and then therewas woods behind that, so there

(58:38):
was like these evergreen treesbehind that, then there was the
the train going, and then therewas a house in front of it, and
then there was a street lamp,and then like I was told to go
count train cars as the sun'sgoing down.
So, you know, counting traincars is really an activity to

(59:00):
get the kids at the house.
Like, we want to toss some adultbusiness and we're gonna give
you an activity.
So, you know, I'm runningoutside, I go, okay, and I'm 99,
100, 102.
I just counted 106 cars.
Oh, great, there's another traincoming.
Just wait on it.
And then you count the next 150cars, right?

(59:21):
But seeing those trains go pastthose colorful houses, and in
between the colorful houses,because you see it in between,
then you see the trees behindthat, and then you see the sun
setting behind that, is where Ibegin to understand.
My mother was a photographer.
So at around five years old, shetaught us how she would just

(59:44):
hand you a camera and say, Okay,you go over there and take
pictures over there.
I'm gonna be taking picturesover there, like at a family
reunion or a family launching orsomething.
So you learn how to beginlooking at things through a
square.
So that's part of the reasonwhy.
My paintings are never reallysquare, is because I've been
looking through a square mywhole life.

(01:00:04):
But looking through that square,and then knowing how to look
through that square.
If you imagine, you know,shotgun houses in front of a
train going by, and that is thebackground is evergreen trees as
the sun goes down, you can seethen how color and light and

(01:00:29):
form but relieving the shade asShazan did, we're leaving that
and just leaving the form, howyou begin to conceive
abstraction at an early agewithout knowing it.
So I would get in trouble allthe time because I would take

(01:00:51):
pictures of the sunset, or I'dtake pictures of a bird flying.
And my mother would be like,Jamal, what is this?
What is this?
What are you taking pictures of?
You know, there's pictures takemoney, it's film.
I pay for this.
You can't just be taking putsomebody in the picture.
Don't just be taking randompictures of things.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:13):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:14):
But now right?
My vision that I was seeing at10 years old or 15 years old
when I was taking this randompicture of the sky, now that's
the quantification, right?
That's the qualification.
That's the I've been seeingthese things forever.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:35):
You know?
Well, it's not forever, but aslong as I've been here.
So these ideas about dedicationto painting.
Right?
When we come back to this ideaabout dedication to painting,
you talk about this idea ofbeing a carpenter, but learning
these different skills, learninghow to cook, learning the one

(01:01:55):
thing I learned fromrestaurants.
Um, I used to work at thisrestaurant here in Atlanta
called Blue Ridge Grill, andeverything had to be fresh.
You know, they actually pickedfood out of a garden or our
vegetables out of a garden, andthen it was farm the table
before I understood what farmthe table was.
Right?
So these ideas about freshness.

(01:02:16):
So it's hard for me to givesomebody paintings that I did
last year.
You know, because I want them tohave something fresh.
Yeah.
And so all of those things, thesame way that Jack Whitman was
thinking about this dedicationto painting, or this or this

(01:02:36):
advanced therapy.
Yeah.
Like it's all part of practice.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:42):
All right, page 52.
The ultimate meaning ofabstraction in painting is to be
found in the true nature of thepaint used.
Paint is the vehicle.
I am the medium.
I do not believe in preconceivedideas in painting.
The response to painting must beimmediate.
There must be no time to think.

SPEAKER_04 (01:03:04):
Do you think he's talking about the viewer's
perspective or his perspective?
I read that as his perspective.
Okay.
How do you read it?
Um, I would read it as hisperspective, but thinking about
the viewer because I often thinkabout the viewer only from the

(01:03:25):
perspective of history that thethe viewer doesn't see things as
immediate as we do.
Sure.
But I do see the gesture asimmediate, which I find
fascinating, how direct some ofhis work is.
When I think about the history,when I think about these ideas
of like primitivism, like HenriRousseau, um, or when you look

(01:03:50):
at a painting created byself-taught painters where
there's no linear perspectiveand everything's just very
direct, right?
And when I think about thislevel of immediacy that's
happening in in his work, it'sthat gesture.

(01:04:12):
Like when he leaves those littlelike pebbles inside of those um
those uh paintings where he'susing the developer.
By him scraping that rockthrough that, you know who else
does that is uh Mark Bradford.
He leaves these little thingsthen behind the painting where
you can pull it up, right?

(01:04:33):
That relief adding that uhright.
Um also adding that subtraction,what it is, is subtraction,
right?
I think he's also talking aboutwhen we go back to that a third
eye, like it's like immediate,like, oh yes, that's it.
That that's it right there.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:52):
There's um there's uh uh an excellent podcast um
that has a couple of interviewswith Jack that um is it?
I thought it was called JessicArt.
This is like a proper podcastwhere they have themselves.
Um it's uh it's the Modern NotesPodcast, uh episode 699.

(01:05:13):
I sent it to you.
But I would I would highlyrecommend if um if anybody
listening is um is a fan of ofWitten's, or hopefully we can
convert you if you if youweren't before.
But it's um it's excerpts fromtwo interviews you know with
with Jack.
But he talks about in in thatinterview, um, which I believe
will recorded in 20 2013, 2014,but he talks about the process

(01:05:36):
of construction, deconstruction,and reconstruction.
Thinking about that in those inthose three those three distinct
phases.
It's um I yeah, and just hearinghim hearing him speak as well is
is is fascinating.
Yes, yeah.
This this quote, so this was umhe wrote this in 1973.

(01:05:58):
So just to put things incontext, this is this is during
this is after he had made a veryintentional choice to remove all
gesture from his work.
You know, he realized how howheavily influenced he was by
DeCooning specifically, and nowhe wanted to, and he he speaks
about this in this in thisinterview, but he said, I I

(01:06:19):
realize, I'm paraphrasing here,but he said I realized that I
was making the same sort ofrepetitive marks that were all
within that ABEX, you know,school of thought, and he wanted
to remove that.
So, in this in the context ofthis particular excerpt, paint
is the vehicle, I am the medium,not the brush.
You know, I mean he pretty muchset the brush aside completely

(01:06:43):
going forward.
All right, so this ended upbeing a much longer conversation
than we had anticipated.
We probably should have expectedit, but they often have a way of
doing that.
So we decided to break this upinto two parts.
So join us next time on justmake art for part two on deck
wind with mail right.