Frank Ettenberg
Starters, 2000
72 x 66 inches
Acrylic on canvas

My painting brings me to themes and all manner of visual sources. I loved the language of A-E when I had my first serious art lessons when I was 13. My teenage spirit said a total yes to the work of deKooning & Gorky, just a little less to Pollock's. Same thing applied to NYC jazz: esp. Monk and Coltrane, & here I was age 14.

I just couldnt/wouldn't stay in NYC got seduced by the great sun of NM when I got out here in 1966. After a while I could even align with the quiet/calm that was so much part of being here. So the NY roots & nerve-ending marks and impulses plus a spaciousness introduced by my sojourn w/ Eastern meditation & my embrace of the wide open spaces of the SW mix it up in my work. I love to travel the world & my art's mind consumes images and qualities that I've gathered in my travels and spits them back out.

Starters, a painting that always seems like it's only just begun. I studied it hard to make sure that that sense of Beginning would be preserved & projected. I use it as a bench-mark, to remind me not to edit or control my work overmuch. This painting reminds me that "marks" basically come out of nowhere & don't need a goal to look like they always belonged somewhere.....

— Frank Ettenberg