an interview with pete rolands a manifesto for self-saboteurs a photo essay on play
DEC 13
VOL IX ISSUE 3
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the otography of pete rolands
contents
q&a with color conqueror pete rolands the self-crowned king of “color divorce” sits down
with us for a candid interview and tells us what it all means, what is coming next, and what you can do to divorce yourself from color norms
so you think you’re dying ever think about career suicide? don’t take our
advice, listen to this eccentric tell you the benefits of killing your career early so you can bask in warm glow of no regrets living and create something beautiful
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this month’s eature: the art of play this month’s collected works harken back to the
days of finger painting, scribbling on the pictures in the newspaper, and letting your imagination loose. we examine high art through the eyes of a child and pose the question, “when was the last time you played?”
waterford paints
this month we sit down with a true eccentric. pete rolands has built a reputation around his use of color--the terrible, miasmic palette of a world normally untouched by man. his concept of color divorce is generally hated by the staff here. can he win us over?
Pete, you have become known for this crazy thing called color divorce. What the hell is it? Color divorce is this really dark theory for many reasons. Color harmonies exist and get used because they work. I mean, you can communicate so much just by the use of a couple of colors. What makes color divorce so, how should I say this politely, disliked, is that it completely throws the established harmonies out the window and focuses on a palette largely ignored. We’re talking about the puke greens, urine yellows, and really nasty browns. It’s like somebody took the 1970s, buried it an unmarked grave, and then threw the half rotted colors on a canvas. It’s horrible to look at, but I think that is what makes it really powerful work. All the communication comes from content, line, value, and complex associations. People have this idea that color divorce is some exotic theory that has no basis in reality except that a human brain spit it out once. I really want people to stop and think about black and white photography. Look at the really exceptional body of work that is out there, and you will notice one thing that carries through out all of the work--there’s no color. Color divorce is exactly like black and white photography except that nobody under the age of 30 would even look at it without some kind of abhorrent pinks and neons and fecal earth tones. We’re in a really sad time for art right now. The really beautiful things that my contemporaries are doing go largely unnoticed because it’s not some Photoshop masterpiece. Nobody cares if you can’t a photorealistic portrait other than somebody who’s looking to hire a person with
that skill set. It’s a far cry from communicative art, and outside of the traditional art world, people really don’t care anymore. I think I’m quite hated by a lot of fine artists, but that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’m a terrible artist. I’m trying to draw people in with a stupid gimmick. All the beautiful art in the world is useless unless people care and see it and love it and preserve it. Someday I’m afraid that the human race’s artistic legacy will be viewed on RGB screens exclusively, and the museums and great art houses will close their doors, scan their paintings, upload them to Facebook and call it a day. There’s so much that we’ll lose in the translation, and it stops being art at that point. You might as well burn all your brushes and drink all your paint.
Wow. So color divorce is just a gimmick? There’s no other justification for it? Not at all. Even I don’t like looking at some of these colors, but if some local newscaster does a story about a gallery showing for some guy who paints incredibly awful things and it makes a few people go out and get interested, then it works. I don’t think it’s very common knowledge, but I did go to school the first time for a degree in Parks and Recreation. I was really focused on getting people outside to our natural temples, because if people don’t see them for themselves it makes it that much easier to defund and eventually close all the parks. That’s the basic thing I’m trying to accomplish in the art world--rope them in with a gimmick and really wow them with the good stuff. ‘Oh that’s terrible, but THIS is really great.’
What if some people said that you’re doing more harm than good? I’d say they might be right. Prove it to me, with data, numbers, non-artsy maths and graphs, and I’ll be more than happy to walk away. If you don’t need me or want me, I don’t have to be here. That’s the great thing about being known for color divorce--I can
& stop doing that at any time. It’s the other stuff, the art I really care about that I can’t stop doing. Nobody will ever see it though, and that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Any last thoughts you’d like to share? Yeah. Go to an art museum. Take your kids, get informed and make them love it. Go to an art store. Buy the cheapest supplies they have and go home and make something beautiful with your kids. Get them involved and maybe the next generation will care a little bit more about paint on a canvas than they do about pixels on a screen. Who knows, your kid might just be the most amazing painter you’ve ever seen. There’s only one way to know.
if you’re interested in learning more, visit the resources links on pete’s website divorcingcolor.com. if you want to get in touch with pete, send him a letter in the mail. he tries to reply to as many people as he can.
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here is a kind of person that I hold close to my heart--these are the self-destructives, the ones whose perfect, organized lives are a trap from which they must escape at any cost. The confines of ordinary life with all its trappings of 9-5, what to cook for dinner, self-seal envelopes, silent marriage, and a balanced checkbook are walls that suffocate slowly. To some extent all people are quietly constructing their escape plans, but it is for the resolute few that find themselves thrashing helplessly against the order that this message is intended. Destruct. Implode. Let the life you have led fall apart around you and do not lift a finger to stop it. Embrace the calamity and terror of the unknown. Where you are employed, get fired. When you don’t know what to cook, don’t eat. Fall behind in your bills, leave your partner, and tear the suffocating walls down around you. Take everything that you love and bury it deep in the fetid earth. In this there is neither joy nor calm. You are taking an oath of disquiet and enormous pain. The mania of a life without security will torture you, and there is no where to escape to. A great apathy towards your own collapse is the only tool you will need in your arsenal. Be aware of nothing around you except the filth and vileness that you are creating.
drive. When nothing else that exists can move you, reach into the ether with open hands to take of the darkness that lingers there. This fountain knows no limit. The collective pain of the human race fills the well from which it draws. You must only have the capacity to plumb the depths without losing yourself in them completely. There is a beauty in the drowning, but only if you can yet draw breath long enough to enjoy the view. Only the best art can be created with a palette of diverse misfortunes. Happiness does not let the idea gestate in the nurturing environment that only torment and destitution can provide. There is no sunshine in the womb. Your masterpiece grows quietly in the dark of the uterus, waiting for you to rip it out into the light of day covered in its own stinking, foul afterbirth. Deliver your art with the same fervor with which you entered your own destruction. Watch it age and mature with the same ambivalence with which you saw your world crumble.
SO YOU YOU’RE
Succumbing to the darkness in order to embrace the furthest reaches of your inspiration is a feat not easily accomplished, but we, the self-saboteurs, the As your temporal world incendiary few, are capable of crumbles you will slowly enter a Certainly there can be no pleasure thrusting our hands deep into the metaphysical state of observation. in the creative process entered well and pulling forth bleeding, Enter the vortex willingly--there is into from the metaphysical land of writhing things. They mewl no alternative path. Boldly walk the void, but there is joy to be had shrilly into the air, the sudden into the starless void, embracing in exploring the deepest reaches light blinding them, and it is their the darkness that clings to your of your destruction. Abandoned misery that we encapsulate, limbs, tearing at your clothes, settlements are home to a their tears our media of choice. pulling you further in. different sort of aesthetic, and Paint with their blood, scrape abandoned lives are all the richer. the paper and canvas with their This is the essence of the creative burnt bones, arrange their torn
call you unstable, irresponsible, childish. Perhaps you are, but it is in the intent behind the fall that makes the descent so sweet. Many are they who destroy their lives without knowing why or how. Examine the forces of change in your life and determine the purpose behind your sabotage. You cannot wage war against yourself if you don’t know what you hope to gain in the conquering. In the waging, well reasoned collateral damage is the goal.
is a dedication to the collapse that you will never understand. Only when you can surrender completely to destruction, all temptation to look back or to hold on to some little piece of before dead and gone, can you see what lies in the darkness of the void. If you walk into the chaos unprepared you will find nothing and all will be for naught.
Go forth, saboteurs! Enter the void and pull forth the greatest art this generation has ever seen. Eschew the trappings of modernity and progress. Sign a holy covenant with the darkness and suffering to fuel your purpose for tomorrow and forever. Dedicate yourself completely to the task of your choosing, and never waiver. Love is a sweet calling, but the nectar is a poison. Drink it readily and Never allow yourself cast it aside when the time has to suffer the insults come. Work is a noble endeavor, of others, or if you but the sweat is an acid. Bathe in do suffer them as it unquestioningly and cleanse perfectly as you yourself when your arms become would the loss weary. Go forth, saboteurs and of your ordinary create for yourselves a new world world. This is the of color and light, value and beauty of collapsing values, paint layered on canvases intimately inwardlarger than the sun! Suffer not -those that would the worrisome voices of Doubt, discourage you are Impotence, and Procrastination. encouragement Stand and shout from your core embodied. that you will be steadfast in purpose, powerful in the hour of “When do I get to put my life making, and timely in the delivery back together?” Do you ever want of perfection. to? At what point are you finished making, creating, sculpting, Be brave and cast yourself into painting, building, living? You the unfathomable depths. Drink can put your life back together from the well of despair and learn when all creativity has left your something of the world. Hidden body, the blood in your veins knowledge surrounds you, and seizes and dries, and the light in it is up to you to attune yourself your eyes fades to dull gray. You the glyphs and strange markings can rebuild your life when there tucked away in the framework is nothing else to be done. If you that underlies the banality of life. think you can reach that point, if Question all of it, even this, and you needed to ask that question, perhaps find answers. then you are no sabotuer. There
U THINK E DYING out hairs into the letters of a manifesto. “I am unafraid of the darkness inside. I will not yield to the comforts of normality and banality. I will dig and strive and create. There is beauty in a life undone, and I have given this gift to you. I am a maniac and I am unafraid.” Let this message be ever present in your mind, the driving force behind your hands as they create life from the void. Always are there people who will doubt your methods, who will mock your destruction and
pete rolands
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do you pick one and eat it?
tell me where to go, and i’ll follow you anywhere.
does the mind perceive the same message when other interpretations are encouraged?