Spencer drawing, 1999
DS: That's the nice thing about art inspired by other people. People who've left your life stay with you.
EP: And people change every second. It's not even about leaving you or dying or anything like that - people just change.
DS: Do you think that that's a good reason to make paintings from photographs?
EP: It's a good reason to paint. Period. Photographs, yeah, but you get that in drawing. The thing with the camera is that sometimes you get stuff that you don't see, and you don't want to reproduce that stuff exactly - like those weird facial movements. But between all three of them - memory, photos, and drawing from people - it's a pretty great way to get a moment.
DS: So, you might work with all three for a single painting?
EP: Yeah. Inevitably when I'm painting, I'll come back to something that I've been drawing. I really like to draw people from life - even if the drawings aren't that good. I usually get really overwhelmed by drawing - just like "Oh my God - You're so beautiful!" (laughs) You learn a different way of rendering them when they're there.
DS: Did you study drawing and painting
in school?
EP: Yeah.
DS: A lot of technical training?
EP: No. It's really a problem - but maybe it's also a good thing. I always drew when I was little. Then I went to SVA, which is very second-generation Abstract Expressionist, sort of like, "you don't need technical training" and "be in the moment and feel it." We could opt to take some technical courses, but there weren't a lot. There some good drawing classes and I took them. Still, I feel like with painting and drawing, I've been really handicapped by not knowing how to paint - but it's also good, because it leaves me very fresh - every day, having to sort of make it up. Intuitively, of course, I do know it, but not off the top of my head - so, I when I stop for a couple of months, it's always like, "How do I do this? How do I want to see things? How do I want to make it?"