Artists talk in 'art speak.'

Damian Loeb

Categorized in : Talk Artists Art Speak

I read that prior to the advent of color TV, most people dreamed in black and white.

black-and-white color people

The advent of the digital age and the immediacy and convenience of digital video and photography allows people to become an integral part of the feedback loop which actively shapes the content we are fed.

photography age people

I always thought being an artist was a lazy job. I was wrong.

lazy artist jobs

I love seeing things that work in the micro and work in the macro.

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.

conform directors art

When we as a society lose the ability to comment on what we see and to have an opinion on what we are exposed to, then we have all lost what makes us unique on this planet.

opinion unique lost

I dont think I talk to anybody the same way I talk to Moby.

Photorealism was this fantastic movement in like the late '60s and '70s, because photography finally became something that everyone could produce. Photorealism was and should've been a very short element. But the thing is, photography is so satisfying. Certainly when it's well done.

fantastic photography done

Fondness for people can be terrifying, because it's intangible and it can disappear, or it can be taken away, or you can say the wrong thing. A million things, so it's so uncomfortable. So when you suddenly become aware of it because they don't call you or something for half an hour or whatever, you lose it.

hours taken people

Every art critic and every writer doesn't have a frame to start off from. If I made a statement saying, "This is Abstract Expressionism," they could go, "Well, he failed miserably," or, "Fantastic, this is a new genius!" But in art history, I don't see any of the artists I like spewing bullshit. I don't see anyone recording it or pronouncing what they were doing.

bullshit genius art

I try to write art theory down and understand it but I'm not a writer. I don't want to impress people with my writing. I'd rather impress people with my ability to see and feel it and then share that.

writing people art

I've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.

It's been so much a part of my life the thinking that I go through is crucial. I found that if I don't paint for around a week, I get practically suicidal. It took a long time to figure out why I had these mood swings, and I finally figured out it's because I haven't painted.

suicidal long thinking

We're making so many images today and it's unbelievable. I shoot stuff all the time. I try to figure a lot out before I paint. I do a tremendous amount of shooting.

paint trying today

All I want to do is realism and follow the tradition of realism. And explore what realism should be now be after the ubiquity of smartphones. I'm trying to answer the question. I don't think I'll ever have the words, but hopefully I'll have a few images.

tradition trying thinking

Photorealism says: to fool your eye. That isn't what I've been interested in doing.

I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort.

artist comfort sometimes

Star Wars came out when I was seven. It was so different from anything else, like peeking into the land of Oz. All you wanted to do was see it again and go back and see more of it. That feeling is not easy to reproduce. Eventually, you give up and try to recreate that feeling yourself.

giving-up feelings war

The landscape is one of the kinds that I think, at least this body of work is the least selfish of the stuff that I've done. It's all selfish. It is making images of things that I want to see, that turn me on, that make me happy, that satisfy me.

selfish done thinking

There's the people who have one of these cell phones in their pockets and don't have a clue how it's made. But I really want to understand.

clue cell-phone people