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Before the Paint Dries
A regular column by Faith Flanagan featuring up-and-coming local artists
Painter Marc Roman lives and works in Washington, D.C. He's a hometown boy who's not afraid to say he loves his family. To him, as he says, "Painting is everything." He works with strength and motion to create a beautiful surface. While there are aspects of abstract expressionism and the West Coast school of painter Richard Diebenkorn in Roman's pieces, he's working and struggling toward something original, while not forgetting to pay tribute to past masters. |
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Artist with work in progress, 2002
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Marc talks about his art and influences, trying to make it in New York, and, ultimately, surviving as an artist.
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| Marc: |
At the age I'm at, 37, everything I've done, all the different jobs: designer; laborer; I worked on construction sites; I was a roofer for a while -- all these disparate experiences, trying to pull all this life experience together, coupling that with technique. Technique and building a beautiful surface on the canvas, to me, is the main thing. |
| Faith: |
I think it's also about different points in people's art... if you look at different artist's careers... |
| M: |
Right, like Urbana and Berkeley with [Richard] Diebenkorn. When he had his retrospective, everybody loved it. Critics loved it. But during his lifetime he was considered a "provincial painter." |
| F: |
How did you come to [this style of] painting? |
| M: |
It started way back ... age seven or eight when my parents gave me a book on German Expressionism. I think I may have asked for it. So I grew up around the DC area. I studied this book. I loved it. Throwing temper tantrums over it. Just awful. My mother [would say], "Marc take a break. Come eat dinner." All I did when I was a kid was play sports, draw, and read. That was my whole life. There wasn't a lot of elevated culture. Even in college. I dropped out of all the fine art classes and took design classes instead. |
| F: |
Why? |
| M: |
Fear of failing. Fear of color. Fear of instructors. I'd never been to a museum or gallery here. It's hard to believe but it's true. Stayed more focused on sports. So, I ended up leaving my job here [in DC] at about 26, 27. Got married, went to Europe. |
| F: |
Just traveling around? |
Large nocturne, 2001
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| M: |
Yeah. I went to New York. I think Bob [Melzmuf] invited me to my first opening. I said how much is it to get in? [laughs] He said nothing it's an opening. And I went there. Just, Ahhh. I'd seen my first Diebenkorn. I must have seen [Willem] de Kooning and things of that nature somewhere in art history. Nothing contemporary. |
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| F: |
Nothing that was current at the time. |
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| M: |
I remember when I was in college a friend of mine had a piece on his wall and he said it's a Jim Dine. I said, "What's a Jim Dine?" I thought, "What's that crap?" I finally started opening my eyes. I saw these things on the walls in the galleries in New York City, and I was just floored. I dedicated all of my time, almost unknowingly, to painting. |
| M: |
When I started out painting, I would go hide in the bushes out in the park by the lake and paint landscapes. |
| F: |
Crazy. |
| M: |
They were awful. So plastic. I don't understand standing by your work when there's no craft behind it. |
| F: |
It's hard isn't it? |
| M: |
Well, you can never be 100% sure that it [the work] passes the grade. Who was it? One of Diebenkorn's teachers, not Barnett Neuman... |
| F: |
Clyfford Still? |
| M: |
Clyfford Still once said that you should be held personally responsible for the work you put out. |
| F: |
So why abstract expressionism? |
| M: |
For me, it's motion. Even [Cy] Twombly, the way everything's filled across the canvas from top to bottom, from bottom to top, left to right in motion. Your whole being travels across the piece when you view them. It's nothing other than not being stagnant. |
| F: |
You're from a pretty big family. |
| M: |
Six children. Right in the middle. |
| F: |
I know your parents are supportive. |
| M: |
That means so much. When I was in New York, whenever I spoke to my father, he'd say, "we're behind you 100%." |
| F: |
How did you end up back here in DC? |
| M: |
Mainly because of my age -- 34, 35. I knew too many people working on the crews, in museums, struggling financially [in NYC]. Is it worth giving up my entire life and the experiences I could have because I spent $5-$10,000 on art supplies? I got divorced, moved into this room [in NYC], and lived without water for 14 months. |
| F: |
Without water? |
heightened state of alert, oct 2001
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M: |
Truly. At first, I was happy as a clam. I lived like that for three years ... working in museums; working every day like everybody else for no money. And art materials. No one knows how much art materials are until they go and buy them: "$4500 for a 6 x 7 foot canvas. That's outrageous!" Well, no, it's not.
I had thrown out so many canvases. Before when I lived in Chelsea, I was storing them out in the hallway. A neighbor came and removed them! So, I came home one day... all of my paintings were gone. I had been there [in New York] for six years, and practically everything had been destroyed. All I have left is some little pieces that I really cherish. The little drawings on paper.
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| F: |
What happened once you came home? |
| M: |
It gets even better. My friend Kevin Mosman gave me a job, but [laughs] my job was standing up at the photocopy machine at the patent office. It got me out of New York, close to my family.
So, I did this job for about a year. I thought, "Well, I'm going to put my design portfolio together," which I hadn't done in nine years, "and see if I can get an entry level position again." I was lucky. I put my book together, got three interviews, and three offers all in one week.
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| F: |
That's cool. |
| M: |
I started [working at the design firm] doing work for the Shakespeare Theatre, doing their posters ... doing all this fun stuff. Then 9/11, that day ... over the summer, we had lost two clients |
| F: |
Before everything happened [on 9/11]. |
| M: |
Nine in the morning. My boss told me they had to let me go. At first I was horrified. Then I thought, "I'm free." I didn't enjoy sitting in a chair all day. There was no motion involved. I don't like to sit still. |
| F: |
That keeps coming up. |
| M: |
I remember being in church, my father clamping on me to sit still. As a kid, I got into a lot of trouble for that.
I'd rather work construction in some ways. It's physical. I had a little bit of money put away. I got a little bit of severance. I've got three months to push this thing. I thought I would spring into my painting. It didn't happen that way. Painting comes in cycles. Some days I can sit for eight hours looking before I make a decision. Some days you work smart. Some days there's nothing but raw emotion.
Quite a day. It was awful.
I started painting full time. This is what I've always wanted. Right at that time, work started to sell. I sold a big abstract at the gallery [Gallery 325]. Things started rolling. I sold more work in two or three months than I've ever sold in my life. I also had a couple of commissions. Something's always come along.
I thought by now I'd be writing novels on canvas. I keep making the same mistakes on canvas over and over. Especially when you're pushing, especially when it's expressionistic work. So, every time I work on the canvas, I'm changing the entire canvas. Yesterday this whole painting [points] changed.
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air, 2001
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F: |
Okay, three words to describe your artwork. |
| M: |
Motion, emotion, and [pause] I would like to say, years later, quality ...craftsmanship. |
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| F: |
What piece of art or a style of art would you be happy never to encounter ever again? |
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| M: |
[pause] Cold Edge Pop Art. So much of it just bores me to death. That, and the "bad painting" genre. |
| F: |
So, is there music that inspires you? |
| M: |
American Blues -- huge, Classical, Jazz, Acid Jazz, and Trip Hop. |
| F: |
Have you ever created a piece because some bit of music inspired you? |
| M: |
One of the red ones came from Italian Trip Hop. It was originally titled "Chorus of Flames," from a group called The Dining Rooms. I owe a lot of this to my father. When I was a young boy, they listened to Boss Nova and Herb Alpert Big Brass type music. We used to take long trips. As we were driving, I would lie so I could see only the sunset sky from the back seat, could see all the shapes, everything floating. |
| F: |
Okay, porn star or mortician? |
| M: |
[laughs] That's disgusting. |
| F: |
If you had to choose between the two... |
| M: |
What an awful question. How about gardener?
[Changes the subject]
When I'm painting. I'm just winging it. And I love that about what I'm doing. It's wide open and it's active. It's dangerous.
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| F: |
I love that word. You've also used the word 'everything' a lot tonight ... Painting is everything... family is everything... another great word. |
| M: |
When is comes down to it. It's my family, health, and painting. That's all I need. |
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Faith Flanagan pays her monthly bills by working at The Phillips Collection as the director of graphic communication. She dreams of being independently wealthy with a last name like "Kennedy." Since that is highly unlikely, she's settled for being an aspiring art maven and for growing old gracefully without giving up live music. Her most recent project is MUSE, an art salon on the first Sunday of the month at DCAC. Faith is originally from outside the great city of Boston.
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