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.
Simply looking at a painting is a musical activity. Even if a painting is a static image, the eye travels around a painting. It's very difficult to focus on an entire painting at once. So by moving across a painting in time, the eye encounters colors, themes, and phrases in the rhythm set by the painting. When I'm working with musicians on stage, the music directs the painting, as much as the painting directs the music.
ELKINS: I've noticed that you have certain themes that continually appear in your paintings, such as crowns, rockets, genitalia, and medieval religious icons. Can you pinpoint where these themes come from, and why they keep recurring in your work?
WISDOM: I think that people carry within them the collective unconscious of the human race. That's why the presence of an artist is inseparable from any human society, because their role is to express, or give voice to, that collective unconscious. I think the imagery in my paintings comes from the historical growth of music and culture.
ELKINS: I've noticed that you have certain themes that continually appear in your paintings, such as crowns, rockets, genitalia, and medieval religious icons. Can you pinpoint where these themes come from, and why they keep recurring in your work?
WISDOM: I think that people carry within them the collective unconscious of the human race. That's why the presence of an artist is inseparable from any human society, because their role is to express, or give voice to, that collective unconscious. I think the imagery in my paintings comes from the historical growth of music and culture.
Simply looking at a painting is a musical activity. Even if a painting is a static image, the eye travels around a painting. It's very difficult to focus on an entire painting at once. So by moving across a painting in time, the eye encounters colors, themes, and phrases in the rhythm set by the painting. When I'm working with musicians on stage, the music directs the painting, as much as the painting directs the music.
ELKINS: I've noticed that you have certain themes that continually appear in your paintings, such as crowns, rockets, genitalia, and medieval religious icons. Can you pinpoint where these themes come from, and why they keep recurring in your work?
WISDOM: I think that people carry within them the collective unconscious of the human race. That's why the presence of an artist is inseparable from any human society, because their role is to express, or give voice to, that collective unconscious. I think the imagery in my paintings comes from the historical growth of music and culture.
ELKINS: I've noticed that you have certain themes that continually appear in your paintings, such as crowns, rockets, genitalia, and medieval religious icons. Can you pinpoint where these themes come from, and why they keep recurring in your work?
WISDOM: I think that people carry within them the collective unconscious of the human race. That's why the presence of an artist is inseparable from any human society, because their role is to express, or give voice to, that collective unconscious. I think the imagery in my paintings comes from the historical growth of music and culture.
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