Incubus’ Choice: Close-up on Marty McCorkle

What message(s) do you want to express through your work?

It seems like the human body has become just another promotional tool in ads for underwear, gyms and sports drinks. In the US, we have seemingly gone from a barbarous modesty to the purest decadence without any celebration of the human form in between.
I combine computer and canvas, those icons of modern and antique media, to deliver a sort of Trojan horse to the unsuspecting viewer. You see, my master plan is to make people really stop and look at the beauty and drama of the human form.

Which artists inspire you? Who are your masters?

Well, the artists that inspire me are Chuck Close, known for his seven foot tall portraits made up of squares and circles of color that can only be understood as faces if the viewer is a bit away from them. Although Chuck does not use a computer as I do, his work inspired me to explore the computer as a source for depicting the body differently.
Occasionally I am pegging me as a Francis Bacon fan… Old “Aunt Francis” taught me that one does nothave to “paint inside the lines” and not to be afraid of rough strokes, but just as powerful an influence is Caravaggio, the seventeenth century master, who taught me about light and proportion. Without Caravaggio’s influence, my work would look like billowy, flesh toned stripes of toilet paper.
But I am also influenced by the Chinese ink painters of the Tang and Yuan dynasties. They worked on silk and paper and would get one chance for the perfect brush stroke, and it amazes me that they could construct a figure or a landscape with just a few deliberate strokes of ink. Now that is masterly! They keep teaching me that less is more and that there is no shortcut to developing skill.

What have you gained by being on the internet?

I have received emails from individuals who have somehow found me on the internet from as far away as Greece and Taipei, and recently the conductor of the Bangkok Opera, who saw my work on my website, asked me about creating the stage design for an upcoming production there in Thailand after I had left a brief comment on a youtube video of one of his performances.
And, yes, we all know internet allows an artist to share work with a far wider audience than before, but it has also changed the way some of my art is sold. My spouse, Esteban Sabar, who runs a gallery in Oakland, California, just closed a deal for one of my paintings with a London collector who saw my website and then googled up further info about me. Within hours of receiving a high resolution jpeg of the painting, this collector purchased it! It’s a different world from a few years ago.

Did the internet enable you to meet new models, to find new exhibit places?

I have exhausted my pool of friends, as well as friends of friends, to model for me, so craigslist is a handy way to discover «fresh meat». As for finding gallery representation, there is nothing as effective as showing up in person and not being discouraged by closed doors.

Has your work ever been censored? If so, how did you deal with it?

About a year ago we were negotiating with a gallery that was run by a health institute in Boston that wanted to show only those paintings that had no nipples or buttocks. I was not upset about this, but I realized that I would have to paint a quite few swimsuits or fig leaves in order for that show to happen. It never did.

What projects mean a lot to you at the moment?

Much of my work is inspired by the models that I work with, by their appearance, body language and sometimes by their back stories. I have recently taken photos of a young man whose face is right out of a renaissance painting, so I’m working on a series of paintings with this model inspired by Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring… lots of flowers, leaves, dark forest settings as backdrops to pale flesh tones.

Could you tell us a few words about the place you live/work in?

Ah! You mean my hot box! I always think of Picasso when I work in our little Berkeley garage off of the house. It’s a low ceiling affair that I have outfitted with a skylight and exhaust fan and gets hot even with the doors and window open, so I am often painting barefoot in shorts and no shirt like Pablo apparently did.
But it’s a great space to paint in—I never have to worry about the messes I make.

Close-up on…