Outside of the paint store
My mom and I don’t agree on art. She’s into french impressionism and The Frick. I prefer abstract expressionism and MoMA. But on a recent trip home, she’d saved me a 60 Minutes interview with an artist she was convinced I’d love.
I had never heard of Mark Bradford — had seen his work in permanent collections but had never put a face to the name on the art card.
And she was right.
From LA, he was a struggling artist with an arts degree, still doing hair to pay the bills. One night he discovered the transparencies of end papers — used for creating a permanent wave — would make the perfect texture for his work.
“I knew I was onto something. I knew this was — bridging, This material came from a sight outside of the paint store. I think early on, I was trying to weave these two sides of who I was together, the art world and the sights that I had come from, the life that I had led, I didn’t want to leave any of it be — I didn’t want to edit out anything.” — Mark Bradford
From there, he created wall-size collages and installations by layering papers and materials and then grinding them down with a hand sander. The layers and patterns are reflective of impromptu networks — underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation. And twenty years later, his work lives in Beyoncé’s house and the Hirshorn.
What struck me about Bradford was his open mind. How, in applying something otherwise unrelated to his art, he created something that had never been seen. He created a technique to express his creative vision in a way that had never been done before by thinking outside of the paint store.
His work brings “outside of the box” thinking to life, makes it tangible.
Advertising, marketing, the intersection of commercialism and creativity is often obsessed with its own box. Too often, inspiration comes from expected places: other ads, case studies, industry newsletters, award short lists. It’s something I’m for sure guilty of — but how do I find a way outside of my own paint store?
I don’t have an answer. But I think it starts by finding ways to bring your life outside of work into the work. From there, maybe it’s about having a healthy curiosity for the process, experience of others — in different fields, different areas of expertise, different backgrounds. But at the bare minimum, let’s sacrifice expected sources of inspiration and disallow examples of ads as fodder for our own creative thinking.
Watch the 60 Minutes interview here — there’s a boatload of inspiration crammed into 13 minutes. Learn a little bit more about Bradford here. And go see his 360 Pickett’s Charge at the Hirshorn.
