S͟t͟o͟p͟ ͟T͟r͟y͟i͟n͟g͟ ͟S͟o͟ ͟H͟a͟r͟d͟
S͟t͟o͟p͟ ͟T͟r͟y͟i͟n͟g͟ ͟S͟o͟ ͟H͟a͟r͟d͟
Creative indolence feat. Richie Culver
I’ve just always been trying so hard at everything really… and I decided to stop trying so hard and just do what comes absolutely naturally. – Richie Culver.
Richie Culver paints from the heart.
That can feel a little naive, to some. It feels like… the work should be a little more complicated. The art should be a little more artful.
So people put him down as a prankster, a Banksy. A chancer in a world where it feels like makers and institutions need to unpack a multi-layered box of identity and trauma in every exhibition.
Social is a sketchbook, the experiments that show you Culver’s direction of travel.
The Instagram smash was Did you cum yet, which got him attention and derision. It all got so much, Culver deleted it. In an interview, he described this piece — not as a puerile, gawking insinuation — but an intimate, quiet question between lovers.
Is that true?
It’s heart on sleeve again.
Culver’s work wrestles with his inquiries on masculinity, fame and fatherhood. He’s lived with junkies in New York, stolen handbags in Berlin; his biography is a life of rough poetry. And he is, after all, a painter who writes. The words, the titles, matter. The canvas is just the form. So it makes sense it’s thrown together. So’s he.
His album Scream If You Don’t Exist is another chapter in the grimdark story of finding truth and optimism in resolve against the bleak.
It’s the vulnerability that connects, not the craft. There’s no pretence.
Just the rawness that comes from not trying too hard.
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