Untitled 1980. 57" x 40" x 3",  threaded rod, wood, paint, string

7) How do you measure time? Are you a counter? Do you count up, do you count down, do you not count at all? And how much do you focus on the past, present, and future, respectively?

Hmm. I’m not sure how I measure time. I mean, there’s a visual image of a clock. Interestingly enough, there are a lot of circles in my paintings. At a certain point there were a lot of balls and globes in my sculptures. And you know, circles as a symbol refer to time or timelessness …

Somehow both.

Yes. But I don’t think I really visualize time. I more feel it. You know, as I told you, I can usually just feel what time it is, even if I haven’t looked at a clock in a couple hours. I don’t know why that is. Probably your Dad can too [laughs].

Yeah, maybe it’s a contractor thing.

It may be that it is an acquired characteristic, because of what we do. Construction is so sequence oriented.

4) How does your profession influence your measurement of time?

Well, not really on a daily basis, but in my contracting business, you have to think about how long things are going to take, or what sequence things are going to happen in. I have to be able to look at architectural plans and say it will take two guys seven days to do this. And of course, over the years, I have learned how to get a feel for that. I mean, you’re always wrong one way or the other, so it’s constant. And also, how long is a job going to take? Three months, four months?  It’s really a very seat of the pants process … you cant really calculate it very effectively, you just have to feel it.

5) Do you lose track of time? And if so, why?

Well, not very often. But, one of the few times, one of the only times I can really think of, is when I’m making artwork. I don’t really care about time then. I might drift into the studio for 10 minutes, and drift back out, drift in an hour later, and just stay. It’s not really a planned process. At least not the way I work now.

Untitled Diptych 2018. 48” x 96” plywood, stain, oil paint

Did you work differently at one point?

Yes, when I was working more, and showing and things like that, I would set aside days or weekends to work, There were times in my life when I had jobs that were just three or four full days a week, so I had long stretches of time to make artwork. But I think for the way I work, its more effective to have it a little less programmed, because the insights and the creative moments are a little unpredictable. So you have to be able to work this kind of flow. I walk into the studio and I don’t have any ideas, or I start to have ideas but I don’t like the, I just walk back out. That’s one thing. But if I go off on some kind of adventure of making art or doing something, I have to be open to that.

I remember at dinner you were talking about the marks you make, that you often take them off once you’ve made them. Is it a matter of locating this sort of intangible moment, when you know it’s the right mark?

Yeah, and sometimes I get the right mark and I erase it! Or I think I can improve it or make it different. But you know, there was a period when I was ripping up large pieces of paper into smaller ones and they would be all over the studio and I would be making marks on them and they started to assemble in groups. These kinds of very simple mark-making have always been something that I do.

It seems as if you are finding your own knowledge of when a mark is right and when it’s not. It’s almost as if you are making an alphabet or a language that you innately know but you must see it to say ‘yes, that’s it’ or ‘no, that’s not it’.

Yes, yes. But I don’t know if that has to do with time, except that they are about a moment.

Well, they are incredibly gestural. They seem like they only take a second, a moment… that’s rather time-related.

Yes, just a moment. It’s not about a laborious thing, it’s about doing it and having it be somehow alive, and having your hand and your touch and whatever materials you selected make a mark. It has a lot to do with calligraphy. When I started those [paintings] I was taking classes in Japanese calligraphy. So, I had all of these brushes. I was learning how to hold the brush, things like that. I’m not really doing that now – well, I guess I am doing that. A lot of these newer paintings have a lot of little delicate marks and gestures.

6) Have you ever experienced time as faster or slower than ‘normal’?

That’s really interesting. My theory is that as you get older, time goes faster.

You’re not the only one who thinks that, that’s been a consistent answer in my interviews. Tell me, what does that feel like?

I guess it has to do with, at 65, the beginnings of understanding my mortality. Of thinking ‘Gee, I’m more than halfway through.’ (laughs) And, time elapses so quickly. When you’re a child, the summer vacation is forever. Your whole life is ahead of you. Now, I can’t believe it’s already late July – it seems like we hardly finished the spring! I don’t know what that phenomenon is, but I think that as you get older your experience of days for some reason speeds up. Maybe that changes when you get to another stage. Maybe if you retire and you have a little more of a leisurely life, maybe that perception changes.

Red Segments 2022. 40.5” x 24.75”, monotype

Coming to Terms 1985. 60" x 36" x 14", Ladder, wooden ball, paint, glass.

8) What would you say is your general relationship with time, if we haven’t covered it already?

I guess I haven’t really thought about it much, but it is a big part of my life because of my work, and I never realized before that doing the artwork was an escape from that. I can really feel that now. And the work is interesting in it’s relationship to time, in that it is objects that have existed before me – it’s not like an artist who makes a sculpture or painting from scratch. I am sort of picking up something that has already existed, interacting with it, and sort of sending it on its way. And I think that’s kind of an approach to artwork that is somehow more integrated. A little more Zen-like than what most artists do, which is to make discreet objects out of new materials.

Even though you could arguably say that those materials are also passing through those artists in the same way.

Yes, yes, true.

But to agree with you, I do think that in your work the idea of material transience is manifested much more clearly.

I don’t do everything to them. They come to me whole and I comment back.