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While Tony Ward and Daniel
Louis Rivas were waiting for their independent film,
One Lucky S.O.B., to get green lit, they started
investigating other creative avenues. Daniel, a
painter for many years, knew Tony had been keenly
involved in art and photography, so he arranged for
them to have a show.
“We just decided that we have a good time hanging
and laughing and contriving the next fiasco,” says
Tony. “It only seemed right that we stop wasting
precious seconds of our lives and make some
paintings, make some money, make some new friends,
and live fucking life like true artists … loudly!”
Herewith is an artistic conversation of loud
proportions:
How has the
experience of painting helped you make any sense of
life?
DANIEL: I try
and stay in the moment. It’s the connection in all
things living & non-living that makes up the vaults
in our mind. You don’t want to hold on to the
perfect moment forever. It’s letting it go that
gives this its real value. We are just documenting
the experience of existence. We were here, trust me.
TONY: Doing
these paintings is like a swift kick in the balls
that sucks your breath away. I am a mad person when
I paint, when I create. I want to shove my cock into
LIFE and fuck the daylights out of it and serve it
up on a tray for the world to gaze upon!
Uhh, okay. What
were the challenges of collaborating on this project
and sharing a single canvas?
DANIEL: No
unique minds are similar. The more we disagree and
see each other’s point of view, the longer we can
maintain our creativity together. The harder it, is
the longer we can sustain the freshness of the
always-changing world.
TONY: Danny is
faster than me at doing his thing. I am much slower
and have to meditate and find the images in my mind,
and then I am so damn anal about my technical and
how I will achieve a specific image in my mind onto
the canvas. I was never schooled for painting so
every time I step to the canvas I am giving myself a
great challenge, like realistic cadaver parts,
reptiles, or, of late, a giant Dodo bird.
DANIEL: Painting
on a canvas is a moment and passing feeling that you
have to act on, or it forever vanishes. I am an
action painter.
TONY: We are two
totally different humans. He uses mainly one brush,
his favourite, I need many, and have lots, and I am
always complaining I need more. He jerks off fast, I
jerk it slowly, methodically. He attacks the canvas,
I stare at it, stare it down hard!
You got to paint
over one another’s work. How did you handle the
emotions?
DANIEL: That’s
when the ego has to take a backseat to creation and
revelation. At first, it was frustrating, but I’ve
learned to accept and trust this experiment of ours
will reveal more truth in the end. I pace a lot when
it’s Tony’s turn at the canvas, or I take a nap, and
hold my breath and pray for the best.
TONY: I got over
it, especially because it’s mostly me doing the
over-painting and him pacing around behind me. Now,
I just don’t give a shit. I think it shifted to
“what-the-fuck-ever!” when Danny varnished over one
of the paintings I particularly loved with a dirty
brush and fucked the motherfucking painting up. That
has become a part of the art now.
DANIEL:
Sometimes it’s like birth or rebirth, and sometimes
it’s like going to the dentist. But having the
dentist be a really rad, hot chick with double D’s
and thick extraterrestrial lips.
You definitely
have some distinct approaches to the canvas.
DANIEL: I am
trying to shed the lizard skin and become the man I
was meant to be, putting the pain back in painting.
TONY: Everything
kind of disappears when I paint—just a brush, colour,
and sweat dripping down my forehead into my eyes. I
want to believe I can do anything; as a matter of
fact, I know there is nothing creative that I cannot
do. I just have to wrap my mind around it and step
to it!
Is the
collaboration why your paintings often explore the
notion of identity?
TONY: Identity
is liquid, gaseous, vapour trails, it’s perfect like
that. Like a smelly wet fart! If I am trying to say
anything in my art, it’s STOP with the identity
thing, it’s killing you! I don’t self ID, I think it
is crippling and self hatred. I LOVE MY QUANTUM
REALITY!
Are the masks in your paintings another form of
identity?
DANIEL: The
masks represent our transitions from what the world
labels us to what we really are at the core. What
you think of me is not really what I am. Are
feelings facts or fleeting ego? I’ve always been
obsessed with masks from every region & time period.
Aztec masks, African masks. The everyday masks we
wear to get through this experience. The world is
trying to kill us. The cigarette companies, the
alcohol companies, the fast food companies. Where do
we draw the line and just be us in a world of
ignorance? Is the mask permanently glued on our
faces? That’s why we titled a painting, and called
our last New York show, “Is That Your Real Meat
Face?”
TONY: Everybody
mentions masks. They are not masks! I reveal what is
under masks!!!
How has this
project unmasked the relationship between the two of
you?
DANIEL: It has
made us more in tune with what the other is going
through at the present moment. Being an artist,
actor, model, hooker, waitress, it’s all time. Tony
and I are hustling and trying to have fun, feed our
families, staying one step ahead of the landlord and
the law and surviving the best we can.
Moonlighting is a part of the hustling game, do you
consider yourselves more artists now than actors or
models?
DANIEL: I think
any good, interesting actor is an artist and writer
regardless. When you hire me for your movie or your
TV show, you get a perspective, a point of view. I
live my life with a box of colours that I drag from
mystery to mystery. I’ve never been straight off the
bus from the mid-west. I am not an L.A. fuck doll.
TONY: Fuck all
that model and actor bullshit!!! It’s a monkey’s
job, and it’s getting to be just as glamorous as
working at Der Wienerschnitzel.
I was born an artist, I just had to give myself
permission to go for it. I have lots to do while I’m
still sucking air, and I’d like to leave some hot
form of legacy for my children. I look at living
life as an art form— it’s not just the obvious, “Hey
this is my art thingy!” I am an artist in every
minute of my existence. I could be painting, making
clothes, gardening, cooking, acting, sexing, taking
a crap, whatever. I am an artist.
A crap, huh? Well, speaking more figuratively, what
does the creative process drives out of you?
DANIEL: The
hilarity of heartbreak. Travelling around the world
making movies. In love, in hate, awake or asleep.
With money and without money. How come I’ve always
been so fucking weird? Figuring out what I am going
to do with the rest of my life. The demons! The hope
and the regret.
TONY: Vomitous
layers of gut, bile and plaque! I believe in the
exorcism of the creative process, especially while
painting. I’ve gotten so worked up I have cried
while painting, jerked off—not on my painting—sang,
laughed … Really, the best is the shit it drives out
of my head!!!
Once it’s all driven out and it’s there on the
canvas, what do you see as being beautiful in both
your art and art in genreral?
DANIEL: I think
beauty is a feeling. I find beauty in the action of
the moments, movements, and the attack on the
canvas. Have you ever been punched really hard in
the face? The first thing you see is what’s most
absurdly beautiful.
TONY: Beauty is
when someone is screaming their feelings out in the
art. I just know beauty when I feel it!
Last question, what do you hope your audience takes
away from viewing your collection?
TONY: I hope it
inspires you all to speak, loudly, your mind.
Whenever, wherever, and to stir up the muck!!!
PEACE, YOU HOT FUCKERS!!! |
