Why I Am Not A Painter Wil Murray
November 19th to December 16th
Patrick Mikhail Gallery
2401 Bank Street Ottawa, ON
Opening Reception November 21st, 5:30pm - 9:00pm
(click on image above to view e-invite)
After being named runner-up by the Governor General in the 2008 RBC Painting Competition. After having work in both the Magenta Foundation's Carte Blanche Vol.2: Painting book and exhibition. After curating Painting: Thick and Thin at the Glenbow and the Illingworth Kerr. After spending much of the year painting, I am presenting my solo exhibition of new work, "Why I Am Not A Painter", at the Patrick Mikhail Gallery.
I've named this solo exhibition after Frank O'Hara's poem(below). I've named many of the paintings after really vulgar little-boy grafitti, any Foghorn Leghorn cartoons that feature the weasel, and my family lineage. I've made a whole clan around "Sexe Maniac Maniac Maniac Maniac Maniac", complete with dripping excretions, paint stamens, testicles and falsies. I've delicately folded paint skins like fabric and forced acrylic paint to grow in glazes and brush strokes. This year I’ve thought "That’ll photograph well" while painting and then gone blind.
Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
(1971)
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
(1971)
