One of the hardest things for a painter is to know when to stop working on a piece. Paul Valerie one said a painting is never finished, it is merely abandoned. When I feel that a piece is done, I immediately put it aside, pick up another canvas and continue to work. Sometimes I spend months looking at a certain piece in order to make sure that I am absolutely satisfied with it. Other times, all it takes is one stroke, a small finishing touch, a highlight, and the work is complete. The most important thing is to be able to “listen” to the painting and you can do that by living with your work.

At times, I stop working on a painting even though I am sure that it is not finished. Having no idea what to do with it, I leave it alone. I walk away from it and come back to it the same night or the day after. In some cases I visit the painting over and over again for months, until my hand musters enough courage to work on it. Most of the time I realize that all it needed was a small finishing touch, which could be erasing something from it rather than adding anything to it. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” The painting always has a way of telling me if it’s happy. There are times, when I start reworking on a piece by making very minor alterations, but soon the piece changes identity and by the time I am done, it becomes a completely different piece.

In some cases a painting comes too easy and I find myself with too much energy left in me to stop. I feel that I have not purged enough, or the catharsis is not over, so I turn a deaf ear to the painting and continue working on it until I kill the piece by overworking. This is what Gorky meant when he said “When something is finished, that means it’s dead.” And this is exactly why the best paintings, writings or films are the ones that have an unfinished quality about them. They are the ones that are not completely dead, the ones that are still breathing and that is why there is something disturbing about them – an aura of captured experience that makes you stop, ponder, feel and live with. The more finished a piece of art is the more uninteresting it becomes, because there is no room for interpretation, no room for freshness.
“Antilias” 60 x 72 Acrylic on Canvas 2008. Collection of John Densmore (Drummer of the Doors).
Photo: Mher Vahakn

Art is more about decomposition rather than composition. Its about deconstruction rather than construction. It is about erasing rather than drawing. When you are working on a painting and you realize that there is something about it that does not please you, or you are not completely satisfied with it, simply erase it, or cover it. Do not be afraid of the consequences. Just take your brush, paint stick or pencil and go over it. Do it without hiding the fact that you are erasing it, because the traces left from whatever you are erasing are exactly what will give a sense of history to your work. The layers will create the history. The more you change a work the more history it will have and the richer it will become.
Art is a series of mistakes. This realization has a tremendous effect on the way you work. It eliminates fear from your system. The conviction that there is no finality in whatever you are doing, and that you can alter it any time, gives a raw energy, a unique kind of strength to your work and makes it easier for you to simply work with no hesitation.
The best way to understand this process is by imagining a blackboard. You can erase a blackboard a million times and almost always the traces of what you have done previously will remain on the board.
“Hubris” 48×72, Acrylic on Canvas, 2011. Collection of Aida and Michel Babajanian.
Photo: Mher Vahakn

An artist should never be afraid of being influenced. Just like every writer should constantly read in order to enrich his insight, every painter should always scavenge the art world to find new sources of inspiration and new doors that lead into unfamiliar worlds. For an artist, to be influenced by another artist’s work, means to appreciate it, to feel a certain kinship, and to experience some kind of an emotional bond with it. In my case, because of my cultural background, I have been profoundly influenced by the old Armenian manuscripts. This does not mean that I copy them or try to recreate them. It simply means that I consume the influence, process it and make it my own. Once I have digested it, the influence is unrecognizable and almost impossible to trace, because now I have internalized it and it is coming from the deepest layers of my unconscious.

It was Picasso who said “Good artists copy, great artists steal. Meaning, I take what I like and make it my own. I personalize it and use it to create my own art. Throughout history artists have always been influenced by others, and relationships have become symbiotic by artists feeding off of each other. For an artist, it is important to go to shows and to see what’s out there. I have met many artists who refuse to be exposed to what is going on because they want to keep themselves as “pure” as possible, or as far away from influences as they can. This could be a legitimate concern and living off on one’s own fat might be a good idea, however, after a while, there is always the possibility of getting stuck in your own sphere, becoming claustrophobic or simply dying of malnourishment, and worst of all, experiencing the delusion that what you’re doing is really original.
The painting above: Heads of State 71 x 65 acrylic on canvas. Collection of Sigrid Insull.

The art of painting is a physical experience as much as an emotional one. I remember when I first began to paint, I would work only with my fingers. Then I began to use my wrist, then my elbow, eventually I started using my shoulder and after many years I realized that I was using my entire body to paint. Now, painting has become a kind of a dance, where my body and soul harmonize and move together, and this is why music has become an integral part of the process of painting. Music gives rhythm to my emotions and makes me dance for the canvas.
Physicality is crucial to the process of creation; otherwise the act of painting can hardly serve as an outlet. Even when I am writing, I try to make the process as physical as I can. I always start by writing in my notebook and only after I have the rough draft in longhand I put it in the computer, which basically becomes a rewrite and turns the piece into a first draft.
Remember, art is a messy business, you can’t create and stay clean at the same time.
The painting above is one of my latest works. Photo: Melissa Mazman
Here’s a little clip of me painting. Video: Avo Kambourian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0IJY1fuyb8

I have always perceived cities as females. For me every city is a different woman, probably because what I look for in cities are exactly the same assets I look for in women. Can I live with them, or is it going to be a short fling? Will I find intelligence, levity, warmth and sense of humor in them? Are they lively and desirable? And ultimately, will I fall in love with them? This is probably why the word “city” is feminine in all of Latin based languages.

After my recent tour I tried to perceive four cities as four different women:

Nicosia, Cyprus is 46 years old. She owns a lovely little café in Eleftherias Square. It has a lot of character, and she takes pride in keeping the place clean and lively. She is charming and voluptuous, with a healthy blush on her cheeks, good-natured, smiles a lot and yet there is a hint of sadness in her eyes. She entertains you, drinks with you, and sometimes the espresso is on the house.

Paris, France is 34 and manages a high-end gallery in Le Marais. She lives in a small, charming apartment and consumes a lot of wine. She is beautiful, loves mirrors and never misses a chance to admire herself. She is always pensive, loves to read and constantly falls in love with a new artist. She would love to be like Nicosia, but she’s too sophisticated and too self-conscious for that.

Geneva, Switzerland, 65, is a watch broker and loves her job. She is married, has two kids, hardly spends any time with them, and yet she is a good mother. She is stunningly beautiful, but cold and almost unreachable. Once, many years ago, she got drunk and danced on a table in Paris, but she never talks about it.

Los Angeles, USA is 15 and still in high school. She is striking for her age and very sweet. The two pimples on her face give away her age. She lost her virginity at 14. She wears colorful clothes and has glitter on her nails. She can only talk about shopping and boys. You feel awful, because as she talks you realize that 20 years from now she will still be talking about shopping and boys.

In the state of mind I am in, I’d love to spend more time with Nicosia. What kind of woman is your city?

Photo: Melissa Mazman

A few days ago I was checking out some books on Amazon when I found a book on Antoni Tapies, one of my favorite painters. It was a used book, supposedly in excellent condition, listed for $47.00. Illustrated books on painters and paintings are never cheap, so the asking price was more than reasonable, but after giving it some thought I decided not to order it. That same night, I went out to have some sushi with a group of friends and after feasting on rolls and rolls of sushi and consuming some sake and beer, I didn’t even flinch when I had to pay $52.00 for my share of the bill.

When did this shift of priorities take place? Where does this newly found esteem for food come from? Every waking hour we are bombarded by photos of food, gourmet dishes, exotic cuisine, and fancy drinks. The glamorization of food has reached religious proportions. We are in awe of anything that looks or sounds like gourmet food. We spend hours discussing food and restaurants. We have armies of food connoisseurs who think they are God-given gifts to humanity. They smugly smile when they talk about a $32.00 dessert they recently had at some posh restaurant, as though they have been to heaven and back. Appreciating food has suddenly become the hip, cool thing to do. Now everybody is a food critic. We have all become foodies, food junkies, food bloggers, food buffs and food truck enthusiasts. We have food aesthetes, who live and breathe for food. We have food aficionados and food experts who are not chefs, have not cooked one single meal in their lives, and yet their raison d’etre is food. We have epicureans who are obsessed with discovering the latest restaurant that serves the best chimichanga, or food savants, who have nothing to say about anything but food. We have Yelpers who take their jobs more seriously then some oncologists I know. What we eat we have to share it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and the amount of likes we can generate by doing so is simply mind-boggling.

Granted, food has always been a big part of human gratification and appreciating gourmandise has always had its appeal. Good chefs have been admired – rightfully so – and good cooks have always been esteemed, but never to the extent where the glamorization of food (and not food itself) has become a cultural phenomena. We think twice before spending money on a new shirt, a vitamin, a donation to a charity, a small piece of art or a book, and yet we don’t care if we spend money on overpriced sushi, gourmet burgers, shepherd’s pie or a $6.00 latte.