♪ upbeat acoustic music ♪
-There’s this feeling of like, anything could happen.
And it's a beautiful
concept that with the materials
and with what you know and with the time that you have,
you can make something that comes out of the moment.
And that magic or that sense of possibility
is something that I've noticed
lately where I just go, “Wow, it's
it's just being in awe of the
that impulse.”
♪♪
This is a story I’ve told a million times
and I can't even tell it's accurate,
because if I really think about it,
there's probably something earlier.
But in Buffalo, we lived down the street from
the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and I remember going in
there as probably, I don't know, eight, nine year old.
I can't remember.
But there was a, they had a Andy Warhol soup can —
one of them.
I stood in front of it and I looked at it and I thought,
“Whoa, I love that.”
By the time I was in high school,
I was hanging out in the art room at Garfield
and I was burning and printing the screens for posters
and t-shirts
and all that for Garfield, the Bulldogs, this,
the spaghetti-chicken dinner, all this stuff.
And and I think that
I was starting to be identified as an artist
because I was in there, in the art room printing.
At some point I ended up at the “U” as a junior
and I had to declare my major, and I thought,
“Okay, I'm just going to go into painting.”
I hadn't ever made a painting.
And I was in Junior in college.
Someone like me, you go, you stumble into it,
and next thing you know, you're you're having shows,
making art on demand with deadlines,
and you're trying to come up with themes
and you're trying to work with your materials.
And there is an arc to
doing it out of impulse, a necessity.
And then there's this grace that happens
at someone my age where you can feel the excitement
of having a moment with my studio
and I'm in front of a paper and I’m working on canvas.
The idea is that you're going to go in to the studio and
break the bounds of those limits and and do something
that's spectacular that even you would be like, “Oh my God,
I didn't think I could do that.” That's the whole idea.
I can feel the challenge.
What kind of things do I have to do today
to outdo my own limited skills?
And it can be intimidating.
So that's when I started,
when I do the postcards in the morning,
I often go in and I take a glance
at the painting and I go over to my postcard
desk and make a few silly little things.
And then sometimes
I'll make one or two
and then one of them will turn out really cool
and I'll have a tiny little surprise like, “Wow.”
And then you take
that little bit of confidence, happiness, whatever,
and leverage it as you face the painting.
Now it's a postcard project, but initially
it was like my friend Steve and I,
I would send postcards whenever I was somewhere else.
It was so regular
that it became this thing where it became
part of the ritual of starting to make it work.
So I've been sending him postcards for 30 years now
and we're like over 600.
♪♪
When you can let
go of the fear of making a really large error,
that opens up all sorts of really good possibilities.
If I'm lost about like what the next move is, I will
at some point just make a move.
You're wrong,
like more than half the time.
Way more than half the time.
It's always a trial and error, mostly error.
And then the good things happen in recovery.
It's not
what I planned.
It's just better.
♪ From the Chesapeake to the streets of New Haven ♪
♪ I spent in times with what I’ve been saving ♪
♪ From Montauk to the Indian Mounds ♪
♪ I’ve lost ten times what I have found ♪
♪♪
♪ From the apples in the apron...♪♪
-When you're making something, in the quiet of it,
the possibilities are still
as open as they've ever been.
But now you you can sort of go, “Oh my God,
this could do...I could go anywhere with this.”
Part of my aim with art is really to connect with
reaching into the river where everything is...
everything has has passed and everything's going.
And I want to be part of that river.
And I'm also putting myself in it and I'm taking from it.
So when I see the picture, it's like, I'm on the thread
from the caveman to now.
It's all a big thread.
I'm hoping that the viewer sees something
that's authentic,
you know, whether or not they like it or not.
I'm not trying to blow anybody away
with like, skillful moves or anything like that.
If the stuff looks authentic
and they can they can see that it's authentic,
then that's all you can ask.
♪♪
-Whiting’s solo show “Refuge” runs now through
November 1st at Greg Kucera Gallery in Pioneer Square.
Hours and location are at GregKucera.com