Using large backlit sheets of clear plastic stretched across wooden posts on a stage as his canvas, Santa Monica lifeguard and shark-wrestler, Norton Wisdom, performs live improvised painting onstage with musicians, interpreting the music being improvised during the performance in real time. His paint is dilluted to stay malleable, so his paintings remain in continual motion, through Wisdom's use of paintbrushes, windshield wipers, sponges, and his own hands.
Unlike most painting, his live work does not aim for a finished image, but celebrates the process of fluid metamorphosis: a cornucopia of images emerging unpredictably from one another: clouds become bodies, bodies become musical instruments, buildings become rockets, and dinner plates become crowns worn by monarchs, in a labrynth of unexpected paths. The live experience of his work continually challenges your perception of what you think you are seeing, and your ability to predict how forms and shapes relate to each other.
A local gem of Los Angeles, Wisdom has been invited to paint all over the world, including Bali, Turkey, and Morocco. The venues for his painting performances range from punk clubs, to prestigious concert halls, to the Berlin Wall upon which he made guerilla paintings prior to its demolition. Wisdom performs regularly with Stephen Perkins (Jane's Addiction), Mike Watt (Minutemen), and Nels Cline (Geraldine Fibbers/Wilco/etc.), under the moniker, Banyan; however, he has also performed with a wide range of artists as diverse as the National Bamboo Orchestra of Bali, Beck, and my own band, The Autumns.
I conducted this interview with Norton Wisdom at his home in 2003, and took the accompanying photographs of Wisdom in 2003 and 2004.
Unlike most painting, his live work does not aim for a finished image, but celebrates the process of fluid metamorphosis: a cornucopia of images emerging unpredictably from one another: clouds become bodies, bodies become musical instruments, buildings become rockets, and dinner plates become crowns worn by monarchs, in a labrynth of unexpected paths. The live experience of his work continually challenges your perception of what you think you are seeing, and your ability to predict how forms and shapes relate to each other.
A local gem of Los Angeles, Wisdom has been invited to paint all over the world, including Bali, Turkey, and Morocco. The venues for his painting performances range from punk clubs, to prestigious concert halls, to the Berlin Wall upon which he made guerilla paintings prior to its demolition. Wisdom performs regularly with Stephen Perkins (Jane's Addiction), Mike Watt (Minutemen), and Nels Cline (Geraldine Fibbers/Wilco/etc.), under the moniker, Banyan; however, he has also performed with a wide range of artists as diverse as the National Bamboo Orchestra of Bali, Beck, and my own band, The Autumns.
I conducted this interview with Norton Wisdom at his home in 2003, and took the accompanying photographs of Wisdom in 2003 and 2004.
ELKINS: Earlier, you talked about painting being essentially a musical activity. Do you think there is any relation between the idea of making a mistake in a painting, versus the idea of a mistake in music?
WISDOM: I don't see any difference. I mean, without a mistake, you can't go anywhere. It's where the most fertile ground is: in the anxiety of failure. It leads you to really go into some uncharted territory. The birth of the next move comes from putting pressure on that gaping wound, the laceration that's occurred on a canvas, or musically. Often that moment of panic is one of the most valuable events that can happen to an artist.
To speak in musical terms, that state of anxiety has helped me to understand that dischord is just misunderstood harmony. And I like working with musicians who can tap into that howling beast. Musicians who are not interested in doing the same thing twice, but prefer to stumble down unlit corridors and struggle with their own limitations. The musicians I tend to work with, whether it be Mike Watt, Stephen Perkins, or Nels Cline, if they see you doing something that doesn't have to do with the struggle that's taking place onstage, they'll just pour gasoline on you.
I think that art in general is fed by the subconscious awareness in each person that mankind keeps making the same mistakes. Improvising on stage is seeing the struggle of individuals to find new paths from that. The artists on stage have to find new paths to save the event, and sometimes just that act, or process, of saving the event is really what's valuable. Improvisation is about the struggles, not about a moment of transcendence, which an artist believes he has harnessed and polished. In improvisation, the transcendence is found in the struggle itself, not in safety, or a smooth finish. It explores the aspects of our lives that are rough around the edges.
WISDOM: I don't see any difference. I mean, without a mistake, you can't go anywhere. It's where the most fertile ground is: in the anxiety of failure. It leads you to really go into some uncharted territory. The birth of the next move comes from putting pressure on that gaping wound, the laceration that's occurred on a canvas, or musically. Often that moment of panic is one of the most valuable events that can happen to an artist.
To speak in musical terms, that state of anxiety has helped me to understand that dischord is just misunderstood harmony. And I like working with musicians who can tap into that howling beast. Musicians who are not interested in doing the same thing twice, but prefer to stumble down unlit corridors and struggle with their own limitations. The musicians I tend to work with, whether it be Mike Watt, Stephen Perkins, or Nels Cline, if they see you doing something that doesn't have to do with the struggle that's taking place onstage, they'll just pour gasoline on you.
I think that art in general is fed by the subconscious awareness in each person that mankind keeps making the same mistakes. Improvising on stage is seeing the struggle of individuals to find new paths from that. The artists on stage have to find new paths to save the event, and sometimes just that act, or process, of saving the event is really what's valuable. Improvisation is about the struggles, not about a moment of transcendence, which an artist believes he has harnessed and polished. In improvisation, the transcendence is found in the struggle itself, not in safety, or a smooth finish. It explores the aspects of our lives that are rough around the edges.
ELKINS: Earlier, you talked about painting being essentially a musical activity. Do you think there is any relation between the idea of making a mistake in a painting, versus the idea of a mistake in music?
WISDOM: I don't see any difference. I mean, without a mistake, you can't go anywhere. It's where the most fertile ground is: in the anxiety of failure. It leads you to really go into some uncharted territory. The birth of the next move comes from putting pressure on that gaping wound, the laceration that's occurred on a canvas, or musically. Often that moment of panic is one of the most valuable events that can happen to an artist.
To speak in musical terms, that state of anxiety has helped me to understand that dischord is just misunderstood harmony. And I like working with musicians who can tap into that howling beast. Musicians who are not interested in doing the same thing twice, but prefer to stumble down unlit corridors and struggle with their own limitations. The musicians I tend to work with, whether it be Mike Watt, Stephen Perkins, or Nels Cline, if they see you doing something that doesn't have to do with the struggle that's taking place onstage, they'll just pour gasoline on you.
I think that art in general is fed by the subconscious awareness in each person that mankind keeps making the same mistakes. Improvising on stage is seeing the struggle of individuals to find new paths from that. The artists on stage have to find new paths to save the event, and sometimes just that act, or process, of saving the event is really what's valuable. Improvisation is about the struggles, not about a moment of transcendence, which an artist believes he has harnessed and polished. In improvisation, the transcendence is found in the struggle itself, not in safety, or a smooth finish. It explores the aspects of our lives that are rough around the edges.
WISDOM: I don't see any difference. I mean, without a mistake, you can't go anywhere. It's where the most fertile ground is: in the anxiety of failure. It leads you to really go into some uncharted territory. The birth of the next move comes from putting pressure on that gaping wound, the laceration that's occurred on a canvas, or musically. Often that moment of panic is one of the most valuable events that can happen to an artist.
To speak in musical terms, that state of anxiety has helped me to understand that dischord is just misunderstood harmony. And I like working with musicians who can tap into that howling beast. Musicians who are not interested in doing the same thing twice, but prefer to stumble down unlit corridors and struggle with their own limitations. The musicians I tend to work with, whether it be Mike Watt, Stephen Perkins, or Nels Cline, if they see you doing something that doesn't have to do with the struggle that's taking place onstage, they'll just pour gasoline on you.
I think that art in general is fed by the subconscious awareness in each person that mankind keeps making the same mistakes. Improvising on stage is seeing the struggle of individuals to find new paths from that. The artists on stage have to find new paths to save the event, and sometimes just that act, or process, of saving the event is really what's valuable. Improvisation is about the struggles, not about a moment of transcendence, which an artist believes he has harnessed and polished. In improvisation, the transcendence is found in the struggle itself, not in safety, or a smooth finish. It explores the aspects of our lives that are rough around the edges.
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