ARTIST STEVEN WRIGHT’S paintings range from bold geometric patterns to mysterious figures centered in snowy-edged auras and thorned, gestural works. Despite the different approachs and styles, they all seem to draw their inspiration from nature and the world around us. No small wonder then that Wright makes his home some 30 minutes outside of Boston, “kind of in the country, in the woods, kind of.” When he’s not busy on his next canvas, he can be found composing music.
Oh, and he tells jokes, too.
I read somewhere that you’re afraid of various forms of transportation, like planes, cars, elevators.
I have a mild aversion. I don’t like getting on really crowded elevators in case the things get stuck, that’s the thing in the back of my mind. I’m not like some insane freak guy. I do wander the earth. I drive around. When you read something like that, you just imagine I’m just standing there shaking on the corner.
You once worked as a valet here?
In Reno. I was out there in the spring of ’79, when I originally went to Colorado with these guys I knew, and then we made our way to Reno, and I parked cars at Harrah’s. For a couple of weeks, I had two—I needed to get some money so I could come back to Massachusetts to go to my brother’s wedding, and I had two full-time jobs at once. I parked cars at Harrah’s and then Sahara. I’d sleep like three hours in between. Just for like two weeks.
I was checking out your paintings on your site, www.stevenwright.com. I really like those.
Thank you.
It was interesting. There was one that stood out.
Which one?
The one with the abstract stripes. It’s blue on top.
Oh yeah.
It seemed like such a break from the other works, where the other works have an ethereal kind of quality. I was wondering what inspired that one.
I was on the beach in Santa Monica. I was laying down and I was looking toward the ocean, and it was just three stripes I saw: the sand, and then the ocean, and then the sky. And I thought that would be a great painting.
Do you have anything in mind when you start a new canvas? Obviously, that one was inspired by your surroundings. Is that sort of typical?
No, that’s kind of rare, actually. There’s another blue one on there. The blue ones, they’re all blue, white and a dark blue, they were all like that. Do you paint?
I was always really bad at painting. I was always better at drawing. Anything with colors, I always had problems with.
Yeah, painting is much harder, I think, than drawing. I agree. I draw a lot better than I paint. But generally, if I’m going to do something, I feel like I need to do a painting. That’s how it is with 90 percent of them. I don’t know what it is, or what it’s going to be. It’s just a gut feeling. It’s the first thing I’ve ever done, drawing and painting, creatively. I’ve been doing it since I was in elementary school, before I ever wrote any jokes or anything. And I used to draw realistically, and then I got into abstract, surrealistic things. And it’s a great outlet for me because I love to create in that way, and it’s like the opposite of jokes. Jokes demand—I’m not complaining, I’m just describing—jokes demand logic. They demand complete logic, no matter how silly or weird the joke is, it has to make sense, but the painting demands nothing, so it’s cool going back and forth. I only do it once in a while.
Have you thought about having a small exhibit someplace?
Nooo.
Or do you try to keep it more of a private thing?
It’s more of a private thing. The reason I even put them on there, when I was making the website, I thought, the one thing I’m not going to do is just list my jokes. I have no interest in that. So then I thought, well, what am I going to do? And I look at the website as a clubhouse, like a little kid had a treehouse, and you go up and he has all his stuff that he’s into up there, his little pocketknife, his diary, or something he’s doing with a birdcage. So that’s how I saw the website. So I thought, well, I’ll put some of my songs on there and I’ll put some of my paintings on there. But I have no interest in having an art exhibit.
You once suggested “equator” as a casino theme (Las Vegas Sun, February 28, 1997)?
Equator?
Yeah, unless the reporter was just making that up.
What does that mean? Do you know?
I don’t know. He said it would be the whole theme. You know how casinos have themes, like there’s Treasure Island, the Venetian.
Yeah. I don’t remember ever saying that. I remember saying that I went to a Halloween party dressed as the equator. Then as people walked toward me, they got warmer.