Before PT

The evolution of the Paul Tillotson painting.

"I thought about making the whole show Abstract. There is so much information today to pull from. Painting has become more difficult to break out of old molds. I get so attracted to the littlest marks made on an unfinished canvas. Each of the paintings could have made for very ambitious abstract paintings. Layered with lots of emotion and referential elements making up color fields that appear figurative, something that I find fascinating and fulfilling. Kind of like Guston's early paintings from the 50s. So many works I see today are not that interesting. The level of mediocrity being mistaken for brilliance is overwhelming. Even art dealers talk in broken links with little eagerness for anything but the "market". Im happy to be away from it all. Today someone will ask, 'What auctions have you been in?' I respond, 'Very few, my collectors actually like my work. And don't want to sell it because everyone feels there's no established market and I'm NOT QUITE THERE yet commercially. Quite a few of my friends who own lots of works say all the time they would not sell the paintings they own for less than half a million. Several times I heard by pretty successful people who are my collectors that paintings will be worth a million dollars, and I haven't even done a museum show. Shaquille Oneal even quoted a million. So I guess that means something. I'm just trying to make the next piece good and hoping they are appreciated as time moves on."