This painting is part of a series of photographs, collages and paintings I started in 1994 when I returned to San Francisco, bringing Ruth with me after two years of living and working in her West Sonoma County studio. Back in San Francisco, I returned to my favorite job, Elite Cafe Sous Chef. To integrate my art with my life and to honor the millions of artists who work restaurant jobs I started "The Work Ethic Series". Using a point and shoot camera, I captured, on high speed 35mm black and white film, candid shots of my fellow workers while we worked. Before and after my job, I made the photos into studies from which I painted in oil on canvas.
I was still in the pre-computer era, so my work involved a lot of arcane processes. I used photo copy machines to make positive and negative prints on 8.5" x 11" paper, hand colored the prints with wax pencils, cut them with exacto knives and paper cutters, and assembled them into collages by sticking the pieces to a backing board with layout wax. The collages were then photo copied, sometimes additionally hand colored, then gridded into equal sized squares and used as studies for oil painting.
To be consistent with the theme, The Work Ethic Series wanted all processes, even the painting, to be divided into tasks which could be efficiently completed within my tight artist-with-a-day-job schedule.
I wrote a set of instructions for each painting, an algorithm, which was designed to give me confidence that the whole painting would be completed in a satisfactory manner. The painting algorithm addressed all technical requirements of a classic painting, ground, drawing, underpainting, layered image enrichment. To meet esthetic requirements I wrote instructions for painting in specific contrasting color combinations, in grayscale, in specific value combinations (such as the highlights and the deepest shadows or low mid-tones and high mid-tones) and specific contrasting painting styles (such as one I called "sacred lines" which used flat color contained in areas bounded by contour lines and another I called "Monet", painting all colors and tones as they were seen in the subject without contour lines). The algorithmic method of painting typically consisted of ten such instructions in an order of execution appropriate to the subject.
In reference to the day job, where time pressures and inadequate staffing usually collude to prevent the tasks from being completed in the fullest sense, the algorithm for The Work Ethic paintings prevented all processes from being executed on all parts of the painting. Difficult to explain, the instruction which accomplished this is my favorite part of the algorithm. It works like this: the grid divides the painting and its study into one hundred equal rectangular areas that I call "squares"; there are ten painting instructions in the algorithm; a rule states that the number of squares the instructions apply to is diminished by ten at each step in the execution, so that instruction one is executed on all one hundred squares, only ninety squares receive instruction two, eighty squares also get instruction three, continuing through with each instruction executed on ten less squares until there are only ten squares where the last instructions are executed.
This elaborate process is much more satisfying to execute than to explain. It produces three main benefits: one, there is a set limit to how much painting can be done to produce the finished work; two, by choosing ten squares each time which remain without further painting, it's possible to preserve deserving areas of the early states of the painting, allowing its developmental history to be visible; and three, with focused attention on the individual squares, esthetic control is exercised on the individual units, not on the overall painting. The appearance of the completed painting is, to some extent, unexpected.
One unusual and fun part of this process is the choosing of the ten squares which will be left without further painting after the execution of each instruction. This selection is accomplished by considering each square up close as a solo painting, picking the ten most interesting. I called that part, "going to the museum", it was done before starting each step of the algorithm. I acted as a judge, choosing "Best In Show" -- a very satisfying part of the process. The squares which will receive further painting are identified with a small piece of masking tape.
After all ten instructions are executed, the painting is complete. At this point, I get my first unobstructed view of the whole work. The last rule of the algorithmic method was to accept the painting. I was usually delighted to do so.
