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.
Whatever the case, the only real mistake in painting, is painting something you've already painted before. Because that's not what art is about. Art is about new paths in the human event.
I think this is why, as a painter, I relate more to the music world than to the painting world, or the gallery world. Because for me it's all about that struggle unfolding in time, which you can hear tangibly in music, because music unfolds in time. Painting unfolds in time too, but only in the private experience of the painter, not necessarily in the way the viewer of the finished painting experiences the painting. By performing painting, the audience and I take part in that struggle together.
I've been really fortunate that there has never been a marketplace for my paintings, so I've never been able to produce art just as a commodity. Don't ever take up painting. You just don't want to have to store that much shit. One of the virtues of destroying the painting at the end of each gig is that you don't have evidence of the ass you made out of yourself that night.
ELKINS: Do you ever feel vulnerable on stage, since the audience sees your entire process of getting from point A to point B?
I think this is why, as a painter, I relate more to the music world than to the painting world, or the gallery world. Because for me it's all about that struggle unfolding in time, which you can hear tangibly in music, because music unfolds in time. Painting unfolds in time too, but only in the private experience of the painter, not necessarily in the way the viewer of the finished painting experiences the painting. By performing painting, the audience and I take part in that struggle together.
I've been really fortunate that there has never been a marketplace for my paintings, so I've never been able to produce art just as a commodity. Don't ever take up painting. You just don't want to have to store that much shit. One of the virtues of destroying the painting at the end of each gig is that you don't have evidence of the ass you made out of yourself that night.
ELKINS: Do you ever feel vulnerable on stage, since the audience sees your entire process of getting from point A to point B?
Whatever the case, the only real mistake in painting, is painting something you've already painted before. Because that's not what art is about. Art is about new paths in the human event.
I think this is why, as a painter, I relate more to the music world than to the painting world, or the gallery world. Because for me it's all about that struggle unfolding in time, which you can hear tangibly in music, because music unfolds in time. Painting unfolds in time too, but only in the private experience of the painter, not necessarily in the way the viewer of the finished painting experiences the painting. By performing painting, the audience and I take part in that struggle together.
I've been really fortunate that there has never been a marketplace for my paintings, so I've never been able to produce art just as a commodity. Don't ever take up painting. You just don't want to have to store that much shit. One of the virtues of destroying the painting at the end of each gig is that you don't have evidence of the ass you made out of yourself that night.
ELKINS: Do you ever feel vulnerable on stage, since the audience sees your entire process of getting from point A to point B?
I think this is why, as a painter, I relate more to the music world than to the painting world, or the gallery world. Because for me it's all about that struggle unfolding in time, which you can hear tangibly in music, because music unfolds in time. Painting unfolds in time too, but only in the private experience of the painter, not necessarily in the way the viewer of the finished painting experiences the painting. By performing painting, the audience and I take part in that struggle together.
I've been really fortunate that there has never been a marketplace for my paintings, so I've never been able to produce art just as a commodity. Don't ever take up painting. You just don't want to have to store that much shit. One of the virtues of destroying the painting at the end of each gig is that you don't have evidence of the ass you made out of yourself that night.
ELKINS: Do you ever feel vulnerable on stage, since the audience sees your entire process of getting from point A to point B?
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