Here's two not-sures coming back at you: not sure I really want to know where you grew up & also not sure I know completely what Ratsalad Deluxe is yet.

On the first, I think what I mean is I'd like to know how you get to these paintings- what are their precedents/how do you arrive at the combinations of images you use/how long do you spend, physically, on each painting/is their scale to do as I think it is with this fathom-long body/with its mind (ie the canvases are roughly body-height by body-width?)

On the second, it'll be roughshod but honorable. I am remembering here stories about the revolution that was the Xerox machine in the 70's in NY, artists lining up round the block for kinko's jobs, artists making it big and starting little one-machine self-publishing shops.

Julie

1. Precedents: If you mean artists I'm influenced by, Larry Clark and Jim Rosenquist are huge for me. Tina Barney too. If you mean why the hell am I painting a bunch of college kids, well, I think the combination of youthful sexuality and confusion in which college kids wallow are ripe metaphors for human interaction. I love their awkwardness, their sexy imperfectness. The simple, suggestive way a sorority girl holds her margarita, or the way a not-quite-hairy chest of a young man glistens in a bathtub, these inconsequential snippets of people add up to intimate reflections of a social group, and, hopefully, reexamine the aesthetics of human interaction.

2. Combinations of Images: These are digital photographs that are assembled in Photoshop like puzzles. Sometimes the combinations are primarily conceptual, like the communion tray and the water faucet; sometimes they are simply for visual juxtaposition. It's a really intuitive process and I'm still figuring it out.

3. How long they take: Anywhere from four to six weeks... and that's at about forty hours per week.

4. The scale: The size of the paintings is important in many ways. It's easier for me to paint large; I think every painter's hand gets used to working in a certain size. I have a very difficult time painting anything small, which is kind of a curse because the big things never sell. But the size is also important to viewing the work. When the colors and forms take up an entire field of view, the paintings assert themselves on the viewer. I want, like Rosenquist, for my paintings to come off the canvas; I don't want an illusionistic window. I want supremely artificial realism, over-realism. I'm not after trompe l’oeuil; tactile yes, illusionistic no. Larger-than-life, colorful, plastic people. I want noisy art, size is one form of visual volume.

Paul

Oh and by the way, I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas.