Artist's statement

"To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees."

— Paul Valéry

“...for me Jimmy [Schuyler] is the Vuillard of us, he withholds his secret, the secret thing until the moment appears to reveal it. We wait and wait for the name of a flower while we praise the careful cultivation. We wait for someone to speak, And it is Jimmy in an aside."
— Barbara Guest, refers to James Schuyler as an "intimist" in writing an appreciation about the poet James Schuyler, Denver Quarterly, spring 1990

Drawing and painting

The guiding intention is closeness. Closeness in looking and closeness as empathy. Often it will be a feeling of affinity that initiates a drawing or painting and propels the work forward. I want to find my way deeper into the nature of someone, something, or a feeling. Drawing and painting are my ways to burrow in. Other times, by a leap of faith accompanied by effort, closeness arrives through the process. Through the action of seeing and responding with mark-making, I uncover an intimacy — one that had not previously existed — with a person, a detail from life, an object, or an experience in nature. When fully absorbed in close looking and image making, I sense form and formlessness, like joy and despair, are not opposites but partners in a conversation that is private and vulnerable. Loss and discovery engage an empty space and become personally intense. In the end, I hope that this reach for affinity, and the path to find intimacy, comes through in the pictures.

Notes about scale. Overlooked details. Identify with those not heard or seen. Take the incidental and make it extraordinary.

Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight)
"...so that that they too can tell their stories as daringly and intimately as possible...."
"[Barry] continued to see himself in those moments, those intimate moments, and everybody can relate to that because we all know that moment where we felt awkward...'
(follow up Oscar award program follow-up Q&A)

— Timothy Blackburn