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: I've noticed that something really unusual happens when you paint in front of an audience. When all the music stops, and you put down your brush, you sometimes grab a camera from the side of the stage and take a photograph of how your painting ended. What's unusual is that every time I've seen you do this, the audience laughs.
What this says to me, is that in a single performance, you manage to subvert the entire audience's understanding of what the experience of a painting is generally understood to be: a finished image which is the product of unseen work. In other words, through the experience of watching you work, the audience ends up finding the idea of arriving at a finished image through painting to actually be funny, even though your paintings are not abstract...they are usually scenes of recognizable images.
WISDOM: Well, no work of art is ever finished. The idea that a painting represents a finite point in one's experience, is not necessarily true. The paintings I do at home, are painted on over and over again, over the course of ten to fifteen years, so they are the layering of my experiences through that period of time. You can see my struggles, and my mistakes, and my answers to those mistakes, in the final image which remains on the canvas. In the performance painting, you see that same struggle in motion, rather than in a finished image. You see me in continual movement and change, without aiming for a finish line. So in the studio painting, I have to learn how the motion of my life relates to a still image. In the performance painting, I have to learn how the "fixed point" of me relates to the motion I find myself in.
What this says to me, is that in a single performance, you manage to subvert the entire audience's understanding of what the experience of a painting is generally understood to be: a finished image which is the product of unseen work. In other words, through the experience of watching you work, the audience ends up finding the idea of arriving at a finished image through painting to actually be funny, even though your paintings are not abstract...they are usually scenes of recognizable images.
WISDOM: Well, no work of art is ever finished. The idea that a painting represents a finite point in one's experience, is not necessarily true. The paintings I do at home, are painted on over and over again, over the course of ten to fifteen years, so they are the layering of my experiences through that period of time. You can see my struggles, and my mistakes, and my answers to those mistakes, in the final image which remains on the canvas. In the performance painting, you see that same struggle in motion, rather than in a finished image. You see me in continual movement and change, without aiming for a finish line. So in the studio painting, I have to learn how the motion of my life relates to a still image. In the performance painting, I have to learn how the "fixed point" of me relates to the motion I find myself in.
ELKINS: I've noticed that something really unusual happens when you paint in front of an audience. When all the music stops, and you put down your brush, you sometimes grab a camera from the side of the stage and take a photograph of how your painting ended. What's unusual is that every time I've seen you do this, the audience laughs.
What this says to me, is that in a single performance, you manage to subvert the entire audience's understanding of what the experience of a painting is generally understood to be: a finished image which is the product of unseen work. In other words, through the experience of watching you work, the audience ends up finding the idea of arriving at a finished image through painting to actually be funny, even though your paintings are not abstract...they are usually scenes of recognizable images.
WISDOM: Well, no work of art is ever finished. The idea that a painting represents a finite point in one's experience, is not necessarily true. The paintings I do at home, are painted on over and over again, over the course of ten to fifteen years, so they are the layering of my experiences through that period of time. You can see my struggles, and my mistakes, and my answers to those mistakes, in the final image which remains on the canvas. In the performance painting, you see that same struggle in motion, rather than in a finished image. You see me in continual movement and change, without aiming for a finish line. So in the studio painting, I have to learn how the motion of my life relates to a still image. In the performance painting, I have to learn how the "fixed point" of me relates to the motion I find myself in.
What this says to me, is that in a single performance, you manage to subvert the entire audience's understanding of what the experience of a painting is generally understood to be: a finished image which is the product of unseen work. In other words, through the experience of watching you work, the audience ends up finding the idea of arriving at a finished image through painting to actually be funny, even though your paintings are not abstract...they are usually scenes of recognizable images.
WISDOM: Well, no work of art is ever finished. The idea that a painting represents a finite point in one's experience, is not necessarily true. The paintings I do at home, are painted on over and over again, over the course of ten to fifteen years, so they are the layering of my experiences through that period of time. You can see my struggles, and my mistakes, and my answers to those mistakes, in the final image which remains on the canvas. In the performance painting, you see that same struggle in motion, rather than in a finished image. You see me in continual movement and change, without aiming for a finish line. So in the studio painting, I have to learn how the motion of my life relates to a still image. In the performance painting, I have to learn how the "fixed point" of me relates to the motion I find myself in.
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