“You mean, I left the canvas showing all around? Well, I seem to have done that over the past four or five years. It seemed to happen first, just in a practical way, since I don't stretch the canvas, but it's on--I just put a big canvas on the wall, keep working and try to locate these one or two images. And then I stretch it up and there's always like an inch or two left. I mean when it first happened, I liked it. I liked the feeling that there was bare canvas around.

“And why I like it? First of all, it seemed part of the total. It seemed part of the composition. And the other reason I liked it was that it didn't pretend to be real. That is, it’s like an art of illusion, as if it said painting is really an art of illusion. I want to show the canvas. It's really just paint on canvas. It seemed to be part of the complication that I liked. Like If you're making a drawing, you like to show some paper uncovered or if you're working with clay, if you're modeling--you know how wonderful it's to see in a Rodin, the head’s worked out and then a bunch of clay. You know. It's made of clay. I wanted to show that it’s really just paint. Even though I'm trying to eliminate the paint, it's still paint. I just enjoyed that feeling.”

Showing The Canvas

Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts, 1966

Talk with Audio by Philip Guston