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.
I'm not interested in making paintings without mistakes. That's why I typically don't perform with musicians who play songs. I'm not up there to be a chained monkey, like an actor following a script. I'm up there to paint what I hear, and go somewhere new. If the musicians don't share that interest in going somewhere new, then I'm not interested.
One of the important things about an audience when I paint live, is that we all go on the journey together. By that, I am not saying that the performers onstage just take the audience where they want to go. I've found that the musicians and I get a sense of the consciousness of the audience in the discovery that takes place on stage. So in a sense, the audience helps paint the paintings, and helps create the music. On the other hand, if I'm in my studio, and I think about an audience for the painting, the work crumbles. In that situation, an artist can't be looking over their shoulder, wondering what people are thinking.
ELKINS: To what extent do you think painting is a musical activity, if at all?
WISDOM: I think painting is a musical activity. When I'm on stage, what I'm doing is taking the themes, rhythms, colors, attitudes, and phrases that the musicians are playing, but I'm translating that linear progression of time into a two-dimensional image. I'm simply translating those ingredients of music, which depend on time, onto a physical surface, so that they can be experienced without the aspect of time. The musicians are reversing that simultaneously. They take the two dimensional image that is appearing on my canvas, and transform it back into something that unfolds in time.
One of the important things about an audience when I paint live, is that we all go on the journey together. By that, I am not saying that the performers onstage just take the audience where they want to go. I've found that the musicians and I get a sense of the consciousness of the audience in the discovery that takes place on stage. So in a sense, the audience helps paint the paintings, and helps create the music. On the other hand, if I'm in my studio, and I think about an audience for the painting, the work crumbles. In that situation, an artist can't be looking over their shoulder, wondering what people are thinking.
ELKINS: To what extent do you think painting is a musical activity, if at all?
WISDOM: I think painting is a musical activity. When I'm on stage, what I'm doing is taking the themes, rhythms, colors, attitudes, and phrases that the musicians are playing, but I'm translating that linear progression of time into a two-dimensional image. I'm simply translating those ingredients of music, which depend on time, onto a physical surface, so that they can be experienced without the aspect of time. The musicians are reversing that simultaneously. They take the two dimensional image that is appearing on my canvas, and transform it back into something that unfolds in time.
I'm not interested in making paintings without mistakes. That's why I typically don't perform with musicians who play songs. I'm not up there to be a chained monkey, like an actor following a script. I'm up there to paint what I hear, and go somewhere new. If the musicians don't share that interest in going somewhere new, then I'm not interested.
One of the important things about an audience when I paint live, is that we all go on the journey together. By that, I am not saying that the performers onstage just take the audience where they want to go. I've found that the musicians and I get a sense of the consciousness of the audience in the discovery that takes place on stage. So in a sense, the audience helps paint the paintings, and helps create the music. On the other hand, if I'm in my studio, and I think about an audience for the painting, the work crumbles. In that situation, an artist can't be looking over their shoulder, wondering what people are thinking.
ELKINS: To what extent do you think painting is a musical activity, if at all?
WISDOM: I think painting is a musical activity. When I'm on stage, what I'm doing is taking the themes, rhythms, colors, attitudes, and phrases that the musicians are playing, but I'm translating that linear progression of time into a two-dimensional image. I'm simply translating those ingredients of music, which depend on time, onto a physical surface, so that they can be experienced without the aspect of time. The musicians are reversing that simultaneously. They take the two dimensional image that is appearing on my canvas, and transform it back into something that unfolds in time.
One of the important things about an audience when I paint live, is that we all go on the journey together. By that, I am not saying that the performers onstage just take the audience where they want to go. I've found that the musicians and I get a sense of the consciousness of the audience in the discovery that takes place on stage. So in a sense, the audience helps paint the paintings, and helps create the music. On the other hand, if I'm in my studio, and I think about an audience for the painting, the work crumbles. In that situation, an artist can't be looking over their shoulder, wondering what people are thinking.
ELKINS: To what extent do you think painting is a musical activity, if at all?
WISDOM: I think painting is a musical activity. When I'm on stage, what I'm doing is taking the themes, rhythms, colors, attitudes, and phrases that the musicians are playing, but I'm translating that linear progression of time into a two-dimensional image. I'm simply translating those ingredients of music, which depend on time, onto a physical surface, so that they can be experienced without the aspect of time. The musicians are reversing that simultaneously. They take the two dimensional image that is appearing on my canvas, and transform it back into something that unfolds in time.
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