"There's this idea that, as an artist, your job is to put your ego into your painting and push it at everybody else, that a good painting is 'full of you' somehow.But the art I like is made when the artist actually has gotten out of the way. At some point doing a painting, it literally feels like I'm the one stopping it with my decisions, and my aesthetic--and all that stuff about, 'I'm the artist and I'm in control.' At some point, in a given painting, I can arrive at a place where I realize that in order to go on, I have to give up something I started with. It could be an idea, it could just be a feeling of something and, if I can let that happen, the painting has a chance to find something unexpected." Read more about painter and UC Berkeley art professor Craig Nagasawa's dramatic journey in this remarkable interview.
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