Awful Mountain
Jim Houser & Richard Colman
- When
- Event has passed (Sat Nov 1, 2008 - Sat Nov 29, 2008)
- Tags
- Galleries, Painting & Drawing, Mixed Media
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Description
Jim Houser interviewed by Fecal Face:FF: Your art is loaded with information, both personal and public. Is it a thrill to send out crazy personal information about your deepest thoughts? Do you think about how people will interpret your paintings when you are long gone? I mean, what if you become super famous some day and people study everything about your works, could they ever figure out the meanings without you telling them?
JH: I don't really think about that, other than the stuff that's about Becky. It's not like it's a thrill, but it's the feeling of pride of standing up and saying, "I think about you every day." I prefer not to explain the elements of my paintings anymore. I did for a while, and occasionally now I will, if the person asking strikes a certain chord in me. But the way I see it is like when I go see a band, and the singer rants on before the song starts about what the song is about, and I stand there like, "whoooo cares... Just play the song. " People will figure out on their own if they like a painting or not. Me telling them what something means isn't going to make them like it.
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Richard Colman was born in 1976 and grew up in leafy Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. His childhood home looks a little bit like the terracotta brick houses in his more elaborate paintings, but the similarity is just a structural one; presumably, there wasn’t nearly as much sodomy and decapitation in his real home. Bethesda was a well-heeled place full of powerful people, but Richard spent much of his teenage years venturing into D.C.—both the ritzy and gritty parts—exploring, painting walls, and going to hardcore shows. Richard loved the presentable part of the city: the free museums, the monuments, and the energy of the locus of political power. But just as much, he became fascinated with the other D.C., a place that had nothing to do with government and would never draw tourists. Just as his paintings of houses look a little like his own, there was plenty to D.C. that lay under the surface.
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