My art—and especially my paintings from the late 1980s and early 1990s—are Rorschach tests for high functioning autism. They display an obsessive-compulsive fascination with details, reflective surfaces, and bright, saturated colors. These attributes, in themselves, do not explain much. Autism neither makes me superior nor deficient in any way, only differently attuned.
Autistic creators often excel at associative intelligence, which is the ability to join incongruous ideas in original ways. Resultantly, autistics have little use for convention, apart from its machine parts that can be reassembled unconventionally. Again, this may sound like bragging, but I am simply describing my attraction to a sort of thinking. When I unearth biographical details about the creators who interest me, I find tells for an autistic life.
Childhood is generally a dress rehearsal for adulthood. My mother used to arrange play dates for me with other boys. Even though I enjoyed these play dates, I was uninterested in following up on them; this often offended the little boy. They were seeking society while I was seeking stimulation from their toys.
This anti-social tendency is in no sense unusual. Autistics are often happily friendless, which is not to say that they lack social need. I cultivated friends throughout the late 80s and early 90s, but these friendships grew out of college, and did not (with notable exceptions) long outlive it.
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I can never figure out if I am ahead of my time, but reliably I am a day early but a dollar short. A good reason lies behind my every failure. Politics and location are better predictors of success than talent. In my case, my secret power is also my kryptonite: autism.
I was not diagnosed with Aspergers until 2007, at the age of forty-nine. This retroactive understanding of my life has been empowering, but it has added nothing to my prosperity. I scored 50 out of a possible 100 on the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Axis at the time of my diagnosis. This number assesses an individual’s ability to function in the world without assistance. My score set me teetering on this boundary; and I have been on this boundary ever since. I provide this admission to show how I shrink in horror from unstructured environments, and seek the lowest point of friction to cope and survive in order to protect my interests.
The Chicago Shows 1988-1990: One advantage I had over other graduate students, which I did not much regard at the time, was that I had pursued both exhibitions possibilities and a gallery affiliation prior to attending graduate school. A fear of falling into pits of utter despair was my motivation in taking these first faltering steps. Unfortunately, these steps could not be envisioned as the methodical beginnings of a career: I may occasionally find bravery to be a sprinter, but not to be a marathon runner.
On graduation, I plucked up my courage and traveled to Chicago for a day to shop around my graduate portfolio. The bigger galleries that bothered to look at my work said no, but one of these gallery told me to come back in a year. A smaller gallery said yes, so I went with that gallery. I did not have enough courage (or money) to move to Chicago, however.
In retrospect, I was not ready for a Chicago gallery, but felt I needed to find a gallery since I had not landed a teaching job. The gallery was on East Superior near The Hancock Tower. This distinction between West and East Superior did not seem important at the time, although most of the ‘Gold Coast’ art district was on West Superior.
My new gallery put me into a summer group show in 1988, and then again in a one-man show two years later. One of my MFA paintings was featured in a Chicago Art newsweekly prior to the summer show; my gallery director was unhappy to discover that the painting featured, Pagan Women and Applied Science, had been sold to an IU professor earlier in the summer.
The gallery director was more animated than the gallery owner in keeping after me. He sent me to other Chicago galleries to view successful local artists, and even advised me to start signing my canvases on the back since my signature was unattractive. I did not fully appreciate his value because I saw him only on those occasions when I was in Chicago. He soon moved on to another gallery.
Long-Distance Relationship: Little did I understand that my career as an artist had been launched, albeit modestly. It had not taken the form of the academic-credentialed way of a lucky MFA graduate who gets a college teaching job right out of school; and whose résumé (forthwith) practically assembles itself with all the exhibition and grant possibilities that flow from their positions. No—I had entered the free market, and not without promise. A similar situation existed in Memphis following completion of my BFA degree, though—there again—I did not understand how to parlay these jimmied doors into career opportunities.
In the Chicago situation, it did not help that I had a fifteen year-old car that did not like the eight hundred mile round trip to The Windy City.
I drew very little throughout art school. The pencil drawings presented here are three of four created consecutively while hanging out at the coffeehouse, post-degree. The graphite medium softens these compositions and makes them flow more naturally and spaciously than paintings made at the same time. (I wish I had understood this effect better.)
Distraction plagued me during this time, partially by my compulsive need to hang out at coffeehouses and partially by my rekindled interest in making comics.
After 1990, acid was removed from most forms of paper. It contributed nothing to the archival longevity of what was on the paper, and it was cheaper to paper production if the acid was removed. I have doused these drawings with de-acidification spray, and only time will tell if the discoloration stops. (Discoloration is here removed.)
Negative space in this painting was an afterthought. A dark glaze flattens the foreground head while the horizon dissolves in light. I have posted this image and removed it several times from my site over the years, so I remain conflicted about it.
I was dating a student from the end of my time in the graduate dorm. She terminated our relationship in the Fall of 1988, and perhaps understood my dilemma in the world better than I did. Regardless, Her Knives and Flowers reflects my torment over the breakup. (My ex-girlfriend’s face is inverted in the center of this picture.) It is easy to forget how my handful of romantic relationships affected my powers of concentration during these early post-graduate years.
This woman’s lasting contribution to me came, not as a painter, but as a comicbook artist. She bought me three short books by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Comicomics, particularly, opened up my imagination as to how one could be an unconventional storyteller.
While my heartbreak was still fresh, a gang of us art guards from IUAM went to a local coffeehouse one rainy afternoon; I remember being absorbed into this establishment’s bohemian busyness. Around the same time, my best friend from the dorm returned to IU to finish his law degree. He liked hanging out in this same coffeehouse, so I kept him company. Gradually I started going there by myself and drawing in the evenings.
The drawings in this section date from this coffeehouse renaissance. The fifth page of my comic portfoilio provides background on my comicbook development during this period.
More Transitions in 1988-1990: With the exception of Apparatus of Weaning, all the paintings and drawings on this page went into my January 1990 Chicago show. A few pieces from my MFA show were also included; and one additional new piece that will be discussed separately on my last Portfolio page.
After leaving the dormitory, I moved into a short-term summer rental in 1988. I continued to paint in my Pine Hall studio throughout that summer until I needed to vacate the premises. I moved to a full-lease apartment in August, where most of the above work was completed. The following year saw another apartment move across the street. Gethsemane was completed in this new location, as were my other wood panel paintings since they required a degree of carpentry that could not be performed in my first apartment. (These works are grouped below.)
The Chicago paintings that did not sell stayed with the gallery in Chicago until I terminated that relationship around 1992.
Two things occupied my compositional thinking: One, to violate the rules of realism by fracturing objects and creating visceral surfaces; and two, to explore color and abstract shapes and groupings.
These small semi-abstract experimentations with still-life settings continued the approach started in graduate school. These works also provided the blueprint for my monster paintings to follow, which are featured on the last Portfolio page.
The Apologist: Apart from my cluttered sensibility, there is also my education to consider, and how ‘fine art culture’ was defined prior to Postmodernism and Lowbrow Art. Abstract Expressionism profoundly influenced my development as an artist, even though I largely pursued figurative work. The difference (which worked to Abstract Expressionism’s advantage and less to mine) was that the expressionist’s brush pushed and melted paints into one another in a way that created acceptable boundaries: By the brain’s prerogative, these soft boundaries are also found in the landscape template, and they pervade and reinforce our thinking about space.
My hard-edged, concentrated detail did not convey quite the same effect, and so this contributes to a sense of everything getting pushed to the front of the picture. We repel from these views, as too much closeness leaves us no room to run from predators.
Having made so much an apology of this, I find, with age and time, that many of these works hold together better than I remember.
Surviving The World: In light of my undiagnosed autism, I was, like a trapped animal, being forced into into smaller spaces by circumstance.
At the time I graduated from graduate school in 1988, Postmodernism was making inroads into academic. English programs and fine art were considered low hanging fruit, and so were the first infected: I was not told outright that I would never get a teaching position at a major university because I was a white male, but it was an emerging reality that, year by year, became reality. Autism may never be considered as deserving of special accommodation because autistics seldom complain, even high functioning autistics. Advocacy is not sought—and perhaps because the autistic does not know that he or she may benefit from it. True to form, I was too busy making stuff to cultivate wounds. Moreover, I believed, (naïvely) that my talent would see me through any impasse. Such is the hubris of twenty year-olds, although I was soon to turn thirty.
Of immediate concern to me was whether or not I could live independently. I could, just barely. So when the dust settled, and I faintly began to grasp the difficulty of prospering, a grudge was nurtured—more so against the mediocrity of academia than against other job applicants who advantageously exploited it. This resentment surfaces in my comics circa 1989, and it is reasonable to assume that I re-immersed myself in this art form to deal with issues impeding my progress in the world, since I drew few confederates into my orbit. By 1990, my comics had moved to other topics of interest.
Whatever barriers confronted me post-graduate school, I successfully evolved around them; and to my own personal enrichment. I became a comics artist because I could not find a college level teaching position. This creative turn may never have occurred had things turned out differently. The same can be said of me becoming a novelist, composer, computer artist, animator, and web designer. I got a job in graphic art in 1990; and this exposure to computers led, eventually, to this website.
Perhaps autism is the main reason why I have always regarded myself as an outsider. It is certainly true that I have never dealt with rejection well. Rejection, in some instances, came about due to the poor timing between my skill and my imagination, where the latter habitually preceded the former. Had criticism of skill been sharper in focus, I would have heeded it. Instead, I believed my work was rejected for its imagination, which was sometimes the case, but not always.
The Gilded Cage of Autism: During the decade that followed graduate school, two artist-in-residency offers were made to me, which I turned down due to fears that I could barely conceive. My paintings may be densely packed with sensory information, but I am easily overwhelmed by stimulation. And so, the world outside my “safe space” in Bloomington, Indiana is always a terrifying prospect.
The first residency offer would have taken me to Tokyo, Japan. The influence of a friend from graduate school was responsible for this opportunity. (He later bought three of the four wood panel paintings featured above.)
The second offer came a few years later from The University of Chicago, with which I had interviewed for a teaching position a month before. Had the Chicago offer been a teaching position, I would have swallowed my fear knowing that relocating there would have been worth the gamble. Artist-in-residency programs, however, are short-term arrangements, after which the artist is again looking for his next paycheck.
Autism aside, most people relocate to a new city with a job already lined up. They may have family, friends, and resources in place in that location. My apprehension about venturing into the unknown without funds was not baseless, especially given how I failed to develop opportunities through social connections in previous years.
Two examples: I received academic honors, including for my art, when I graduated from The University of Memphis with a BFA. Later I was told, privately by a professor, that I was to receive a similar honor from Indiana University. The latter honor did not materialize—and for what other reason than my unwillingness to interact positively with faculty and fellow grads.
Those with autism who succeed are unusually fortunate in being situated to seize an advantage. Prior to becoming the world’s most famous physicist, Albert Einstein worked as a humble patent clerk. The breakthrough publication of his papers on the nature of gravity could not be denied, and drew him out of obscurity. In that regard, objective science is different from the subjective arts. And yet, Joseph Cornell, who labored invisibly in his New York City apartment, became a famous artist precisely because of his New York City connection. No one would have ever heard of him, otherwise. We are led to believe that New York City produces the world’s best artists, when in fact it was only able to focus a spotlight on those few who fall under its beam.
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