James Little, Joyful Austerity

Narrator: Artist James Little.

James Little: I don’t find self-expression, and freedom of expression, self-determination in any other form other than abstraction. You want to know why I did this, how did I do it, and what does it take to arrive at a point like this and, it takes a lot of pain . . . takes a lot of discrimination it’s a big struggle, it takes a lot of hope and determination, and those are the things that I try to bring to my painting.

Modernism to me is like democracy. You know it’s these fragile experiments, these fragile structures that have held up and they have to keep being supported one way or another aesthetically or politically. But they are structures and so that’s one of the things that I try to pursue in my art. I always go for structure.

It has to have a feeling. But the thing that makes it work in the end, is whether or not it has synthesis.

An artist, to me, is just a conduit. I mean information is here . . . it travels through him so that we can get this art.