A fragment of
John Seed’s interview with Wolf Kahn. 2014.…"The artist has but one idea," noted Henri Matisse. "He is born with it and spends a lifetime developing it and making it breathe." …
John Seed:
… What is happening in your painting right now? Wolf Kahn: People say I am doing my best work right now: it isn’t as precise as it used to be. One of the things I like to do these days is to be less descriptive. Doesn’t mean being more abstract: it just means being less precise.
JS: So if you are worrying less about making things less identifiable, how does that affect you?WK: It makes me free up my arm. You don’t have the feeling that when you are painting a branch you don’t have to describe the branch. If you are a figurative painter and you want to put in a third leg you’d have to be Michelangelo to get away with it.
So, being less precise allows me to be compositionally and formally more inventive.