June 2002
Artist Profile: Karey
Maurice
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Karey
Maurice
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By
Shamus Burke
What
do you think about the state of art in Trenton?
I think they have a long way to go. I also think there are a lot
of great things going on; however, the [different art groups]
have fragmented the whole community. They're divided instead of
being one . . . thing. Whether they be TAWA, this one, that one,
Artworks, whatever, really should be a larger community than what
it is and should be outspoken . . . so more people can access
it.
What
do you want people to know about your art?
Although it looks like destruction going on, it's also about construction.
I don't want people to get confused by the fact that I'm removing
things . . . I'm actually building at the same time. They're very
positive pieces and I want people to understand how positive they
really are.
I
see you are scraping paint away. When most people think about
art they think of putting paint on. Is this part of your normal
process?
Yeah, this is something I've been doing for ten years. I really
don't have much control over how it's going to look and when it's
finished I'm just as surprised as everybody else.
What
is the process?
It's paint under painting. It could be anything. Then I use paraffin
to cover or make the illusion of spatter, spill or drip. And then
I prime it again and paint it all white and start all over again
and paint something else. Do the process all over again and that
creates my layers. It creates dimension, real dimension, real
3-D dimension. If you walk up to it, you can sense the dimension.
How
many layers do you generally put on before you start scraping
away?
Ah, it depends. I could go on forever if I want to, but most of
the time I run out of paint or energy. After a while I just have
to call it quits.
Tell
me about what you are working on right now.
This piece is the last of a series of ten that I'm working on
with local aerosol artist, Leon Rainbow. It developed out of me
finding him in the café one night. We discovered that we
had some kind of thing going on and I invited him to my studio
to work on this series of ten paintings I had in mind called "Flying
Colors." It's about community, it's about culture, atmosphere,
space done in a happy way. There's too many bad things to worry
about.
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