JM:  Can you speak to the topic of titling your work "Untitled"?  I feel like you have a reason for this that is not typical.

OS:  The “Untitled” title is a complicated thing, I realize.   I see it as a convention, like say, Ryman naming his after UPC codes from household paint he uses.  It’s not a very satisfying solution but it is as neutral, or language neutral, as I can get.  It is a classic artist’s problem of interpretation: “look at this, what do you see, what does it mean??”  I want to avoid that kind of extra information and, as cliché as it sounds, let the images speak for themselves.  I’m also very much interested in poetry but do not feel like the title of a painting is an interesting space to investigate poetry and lyric.  I’m also very interested in the importance of semiology to artists, especially painters and feel like there are avenues to explore in image as language and the reading of a painting.  The untitled strategy also calls attention to the materials that I use.  The marble dust ground is a base coat that I make myself by heating rabbit skin glue and mixing it with marble dust to produce a dry, plaster like surface on which I paint.  It can be burnished and buffed to an almost shine, like a piano key.  The date, the size, the specificity of materials, all become the title of a work when thought about this way.  

JM:  Can you elaborate on your decision to paint on surfaces other than canvas?  

OS:  As I mentioned above, the surface is really important.  I use two different types of surfaces: linen stretched over stretcher bars and sized with glue and wood, coated in the gesso I describe above.  The linen itself is a color that gets worked into the final composition. It is absorptive and and I work with staining as an automatic mark making strategy.  The rigid panels are essential in supporting the marble dust ground since it is very fragile and can crack on a pliable surface.  In it’s blank state it is like a slab of marble or plaster and has a very different relationship with painting’s history (the fresco).  Historically, the marble dust ground was developed as a suitable surface for silver point drawing, a very precise drawing done with a fine piece of silver that, after tarnishing, becomes a beautiful silver, grey brown.   So, all of this gets wrapped up in the decision to use the ground.  Functionally, I use this kind of surface because it allows me to work in specific ways.  For instance, I am able to scrape through individual layers of paint (as a kind of reverse collage). Additionally, I can sand, burnish, chisel and saw panels in half.  Each panel takes many many hours to make and so there there is always an interesting calculation of risk when staring on a new painting.  There is something in that moment that makes the whole process work (or not).  It goes back to labor and investment and the intensity of the blank painting support.  Creating these laborious and unique surfaces adds a conceptual element to the process of working and to the materials; like setting up a highly specific condition that will ultimately effect the outcome of the work.