[continued…]
AW I just wake up with a paragraph in my head sometimes and I write it down.
AB And you write under a pen name?
AW Sometimes. Or initials, or just anonymously.
AB That doesn’t bother you?
AW …it helps me. I was sort of focused on what is being said; the thoughts themselves. Some people notice the difference. Friends ask me to write for them, or they borrow titles or sentences and I might publish something if I’m asked.
AB: Has that always been the case?
AW: When I was younger I did the name thing and I got awards and so on and then in about 2012 I started to notice a problem but I was pretty young and ambitious so I didn’t approach it carefully, I didn't even notice the scale until I was about five years into it. I've heard about creative block, but it wasn't like that at all, I was in way over my head. Anyway I could only resolve poems during that time.
AB And writing helped.
AW What I saw were visual problems. I just got up every morning and tried to solve them visually, with handmade images.
AB These are the Proof Paintings?
AW Some of them. There are thousands of drawings. I was looking for something in the material, something like content. After years of working like that, eventually the solitude brought me to scripture and the poets and Boethius and then I wasn’t in the same field anymore. I was focused on conditions. Then after about ten years I came across the book “Fact, Fiction and Forecast” and Goodman’s problem with induction was exactly the issue I saw in memory wire. His counter-factual conditionals; his “law-like statements;” I had been calling them “programs.” The next morning I went to the Staatsbibliothek and read through Frege, Kripke, Tarski, Carnap, Anselm, Quine, what they noticed in language I was seeing in images.
AB And it influenced the paintings?
AW Well no, not really but I realized that the problem wasn’t just in my head. By that point I’d resolved things in my own way. After twelve years I was relieved to have company.
AB I saw you talk last year and there was a question about conceptual art in Nova Scotia and you said something about information. Do you remember that?
AW: I'm not sure...
AB: ...that images qualify as information now, that they are like words and numbers.
AW: Oh right. Well, paintings aren't always images. It's just a very humble activity. The frescos are simple, they're like folk art or first principles. I get a lot of pleasure from them and they can last 40 000 years, so I want to get the values right.
AB: you have almost no presence online, painting privately, writing anonymously, how do you make a living.
AW: Well, I've worked with my hands when I was younger and through chance or through friends people have bought work or paid to publish the ideas and some of those people have stayed with me, people are very patient.