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Glance at Eric Fischl's work as he explains his views on the process of painting

Glance at Eric Fischl's work as he explains his views on the process of painting
Glance at Eric Fischl's work as he explains his views on the process of painting
Excerpt from the documentary Eric Fischl: The Process of Painting (2012).
Checkerboard Film Foundation (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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Transcript

ERIC FISCHL: OK. Now, having been educated by second generation Abstract Expressionists, who believed the first generation Abstract Expressionists' ethos, which was that discovery and execution should happen simultaneously on the canvas, that that's--that's real painting. I love that idea. I--I--it makes painting seem so important, you know, so existential. You go into the void, you know, with just your wits, and you just struggle through this thing, and boom, it happens, you know. You discover what it is you're looking for at the moment. You create what it is you're looking for. So I was very reluctant to go into the computer because that would separate discovery and execution. I could work out all of the things on the computer. And as I say I was afraid that--that it would kill the painting. Now that I know what it is I want to paint, the execution would just sort of kill the painting itself. But, of course, painting has its own problems. And it's always a struggle because I never start a painting the same way. For me it's always about trying to find my way into the painting and stuff. And what--what happened was I think the paintings became richer as paintings, having disconnected some aspect of the anxiety of search from it.