The first thing that I ever wanted to do was write. It began with scary stories and diary entries scribed in cheugy journals with plastic locks. Songs came later, interrupted by a reality check and an inevitable diversion to short fiction. At the time Raymond Chandler was my literary northstar and, years later, made a pilgrimage to his grave site in Port Angeles. In the twelfth grade I defected to college early and began a foray into nonfiction and a subsequent, half-hearted crack at journalism. Along the way I came to find that the act of stringing words and thoughts together should be attached to some external impetus, one rooted largely in the visual-affective universe.
I moved to New York at nineteen, resulting in a minefield of events and chance encounters that contributed to my very own ongoing present. Through it all, my work has remained attached to those engaged in the creative act, and the spoils of their engagement. All of these memory flashes are not unrelated to the experience of seeing a David Salle painting. Under his directive, it is possible for apparently disparate elements to merge onto one picture plane, with open valves for a viewer to find and connect to. Events, like images, are allowed to lack significance. The injection of meaning is also possible, fate can be attached to happenings just as justifications and theoretical underpinnings can be articulated for art objects. And maybe I’ve found myself attached to writing about others in order to avoid interiority. False, actually, because everything is shaken loose in oneself when moved by a work of art. Salle weaponizes a certain will to notice, given as he is to drumming up amalgamated nodes, colors, and vibrations. When I miss an ex boyfriend I find Salle’s articulation of an alienated couple hanging below orange line-work, which shocks me back to the loneliness I felt at the end of my own relationship. He reminds me of this innate sense of isolation in his countless iterations of the solitary female figure. They are, however, empty signifiers wrought with potential energy. Salle is so good at this because he is unafraid to engage the combinatory plight of collage, collating disjunctive fields of images. Each composition becomes a machine for the generation of impressions and fodder for linguistic gymnastics.
-Reilly Davidson