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.
There have been well-known arguments that music began when primitive man was attempting to mimic the mating calls of birds. I can't say if that's true, but if you start from that aspect of life, and follow man as he progressed down this bloody trail that we've been on, you see these other symbols along the way: the crown, the mono-king, religion, militarism. These things have always been there, and art has always been critical of it, or subservient to it. Either way, the entire human experience is incorporated into the creative experience. There is no such thing as a contemporary creative event that isn't rooted in history. Interacting with musicians is like walking down a hallway into a room where all these elements of human experience are on display. That room becomes sound.
ELKINS: As we discussed in conversation earlier, I'm interested in how a life practice of free improvisation in art, affects your perception of life outside of art. Are there ways in which the act of improvising through painting has noticeably changed the way you think, make decisions, or the way you live?
WISDOM: I guess the penalty of committing yourself to improvisation, is that outside of it, you begin to see the world as dangerously repeating old patterns. You become pretty intolerant of the decorative arts, which use successful, commercial imagery that does not engage with the world we actually live in. I mean, it is definitely a part of the world we live in, but it's not a part of the world we feel. Its whole reason for existence is consumption, rather than for the growth and knowledge of who we are. Decorative art turns people into consumers, rather than feelers and thinkers. Improvisation is a tapestry of the now.
ELKINS: As we discussed in conversation earlier, I'm interested in how a life practice of free improvisation in art, affects your perception of life outside of art. Are there ways in which the act of improvising through painting has noticeably changed the way you think, make decisions, or the way you live?
WISDOM: I guess the penalty of committing yourself to improvisation, is that outside of it, you begin to see the world as dangerously repeating old patterns. You become pretty intolerant of the decorative arts, which use successful, commercial imagery that does not engage with the world we actually live in. I mean, it is definitely a part of the world we live in, but it's not a part of the world we feel. Its whole reason for existence is consumption, rather than for the growth and knowledge of who we are. Decorative art turns people into consumers, rather than feelers and thinkers. Improvisation is a tapestry of the now.
There have been well-known arguments that music began when primitive man was attempting to mimic the mating calls of birds. I can't say if that's true, but if you start from that aspect of life, and follow man as he progressed down this bloody trail that we've been on, you see these other symbols along the way: the crown, the mono-king, religion, militarism. These things have always been there, and art has always been critical of it, or subservient to it. Either way, the entire human experience is incorporated into the creative experience. There is no such thing as a contemporary creative event that isn't rooted in history. Interacting with musicians is like walking down a hallway into a room where all these elements of human experience are on display. That room becomes sound.
ELKINS: As we discussed in conversation earlier, I'm interested in how a life practice of free improvisation in art, affects your perception of life outside of art. Are there ways in which the act of improvising through painting has noticeably changed the way you think, make decisions, or the way you live?
WISDOM: I guess the penalty of committing yourself to improvisation, is that outside of it, you begin to see the world as dangerously repeating old patterns. You become pretty intolerant of the decorative arts, which use successful, commercial imagery that does not engage with the world we actually live in. I mean, it is definitely a part of the world we live in, but it's not a part of the world we feel. Its whole reason for existence is consumption, rather than for the growth and knowledge of who we are. Decorative art turns people into consumers, rather than feelers and thinkers. Improvisation is a tapestry of the now.
ELKINS: As we discussed in conversation earlier, I'm interested in how a life practice of free improvisation in art, affects your perception of life outside of art. Are there ways in which the act of improvising through painting has noticeably changed the way you think, make decisions, or the way you live?
WISDOM: I guess the penalty of committing yourself to improvisation, is that outside of it, you begin to see the world as dangerously repeating old patterns. You become pretty intolerant of the decorative arts, which use successful, commercial imagery that does not engage with the world we actually live in. I mean, it is definitely a part of the world we live in, but it's not a part of the world we feel. Its whole reason for existence is consumption, rather than for the growth and knowledge of who we are. Decorative art turns people into consumers, rather than feelers and thinkers. Improvisation is a tapestry of the now.
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