These are my chocolate boxes. There are more than fifty of them and I add a few more every couple of weeks. Each one came with a Baker's chocolate 56% cacao chocolate bar, wrapped in foil. I break the boxes open, unfold them and put them in the stack.
You see, when you mix acrylic paint, it's impossible not to mix more than you need. But there's seldom enough left over to save in some airtight container where it won't dry up. I don't know what other people do with their extra mixed paint, but this stuff is not cheap. Never has been, even when money was worth something.
Having extra paint, and not wanting to waste it, has been a driving factor in most of my work. On the one hand, I have the nice thing that I'm trying to make. The preconceived idea, planned, drawn and painted in. And then, on the other hand, while I'm filling preconceived areas with preconceived paint, I have the extra and what do I do with it.
Smear it on this. Wipe it on that. Let them dry. Now do it with the next color. This time, hey, instead of lol random, why not try thinking about it a little bit. Or put it on this scrap of drawing, or that watercolor thing that didn't work out. Let it dry, then add it to the stack. The pages add up, accumulate. This side-stream of semi-intentional abstract stuff grows quickly. I shove it into boxes. I shove the boxes into closets.
One day I'll die and someone will have to figure out what to do with it all. Odds are they'll send it to the landfill. But for now, while I've got anything to say about it, it's art. Or it could be.
My stash of incomplete and highly-experimental work is huge. Most of it I'll never touch again. I certainly don't need to add to it. And so it's irrational that I'd add these chocolate boxes to it.
And that's too perfect to pass up. Irrationality is a pathway to possibility. As much as people complain about "modern art" and its toilets and scribbles and lack of discernible meaning, they scorn the gifts that have been laid at their feet. From Dadaism and Surrealism to the abstractionists and beyond, there is an impulse that links it all and forms a seldom-recognized tradition. That tradition is to go where others have not gone, or will not go, to do things that haven't been done before. And it's not for the sake of doing something new, to be "original," that Duchamp and Breton and Tzara and Ernst and Dubuffet and so many others wandered down their weird inexplicable roads. Rather, these people were explorers. They were trying to find things. And many of them did find things, often times wonderful, priceless things. They risked so much, starvation, obscurity, social marginalization. All so that they could go and see firsthand the furthest reaches of human imagination, to leave footprints in these exotic lands, to scoop up what they could carry and bring it back for our delight.
And now we sit like kings of Spain, amidst a flux of fresh wealth so massive that it ruins the economy. In 2026 we sneer at "modern art" because we are spoiled by it.
But none of this was on my mind when I started collecting these chocolate boxes. I had seen a piece on the internet (probably Pinterest, and probably Sarah Bagshaw @sarahbagshawartist) that used deconstructed boxes as a support surface. The shape was interesting to look at. Tabs made the edges irregular. The basic dimensions were very much not a golden rectangle. The use of what could have been thrown away, of course, always appeals to me. I decided to start experimenting with whatever cheap boxes I might have at hand. And it was these chocolate boxes. I never realized how many of these chocolate bars I eat. (Yes, I eat them like chocolate bars, even if they may be marketed as an ingredient.)
And this is the way to steal an idea, I think. You take one thing--using disposable boxes as a surface--and combine it with something else--using my extra paint to make unplanned abstracts.
And the boxes stack up. I paint on them, let them dry and put them back in the stack. It is "automatic," unconsciously done, but over long stretches of time. Chance is involved. Chance is always a welcome collaborator. I have extra paint. I draw randomly from the stack of flattened boxes. I look at what's already on the cardboard for only a moment, I don't think about it too much. I add a bit of the paint to what's already there and set the thing aside to dry. I grab another box from the stack, and so on, until the paint is all used up.
I can't remember when I started this. Almost a year ago, I think. One or two of the pieces has told me that they are done. The rest still develop, in the stack, and in the depths of my mind, gradually becoming whatever they are destined to be.
