TRUE BROMANCE

Tokion July 2009
Article + Full unedited interview with Mr. Tony Ward and Daniel Louis Rivas
by Takeaki Yamazaki

Permission: To give ones self the consent and allowance to freely explore the infinite array of experience that life offers. Artists Tony Ward and Daniel Louis Rivas aim to scream this message directly at the audience with their new collection of paintings. Embarking on a  collaborative journey of creativity together, they’re making it a  point to explore the relationship of two artists, one medium, the  process of creation through autodidactic means, and inspiring everyone  they come across along the way, somehow, in some form.
Having found success in the worlds of modeling and acting, both Tony and Daniel are discovering how their past experiences have shaped the creative minds they are today. Exploring the notions permission, identity, relationships, and the magical act of transforming energy from our emotional spectrum into creativity, they evoke a unique world that surfaces from each canvas. This most recent endeavor of theirs, collaborative painting, sends them preparing for an upcoming European tour.

Take
This sort of collaborative painting is relatively unheard of in the art world. The process in each individual, which meets on a canvas together, creates an interesting situation.
Tony Ward
I love our art, I love what we do, I love the energy we have.  It’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable; we’re painting over each other’s shit [work], mostly me. And not everyone is going love what we do, there are always going to be people who hate you, without reason, without even knowing you, they’ll hate what you represent, hate what you do and what you stand for. And then there are people who will love you and love what you do. And to me, they’re all the same. I don’t care, It doesn’t matter what anyone has to say about what we do. Bottom line, I’m vomiting on a canvas, I’m getting rid of my garbage, and I’m processing. That is the process! There’s my process, maybe it sucks for you, but there it is.
Daniel Louis Rivas
And we have fun. We have a good time doing it; we have a good time collaborating. This is just another, very important, avenue that we decided to journey and travel down together. We’ve developed a
friendship and it feels really natural. A lot of things in this world feel unnatural, and you know it, you know it in your heart. You know when something is off.
Take
How did it feel when you two first got together? How did you first get together and decide to collaboratively paint?
Tony Ward
I got a part in this movie and we hadn’t seen each other in about 5 years and I asked him if he knew an acting coach to help me to prepare for this film. His acting coach lives downstairs, so we hung out more often and one day he called me about this show for Ghetto
Gloss [a gallery in LA].
Daniel Louis Rivas
It all started in here [in this room]. Just brainstorming for hours. I’d always been painting, I just called Tony and said lets have a show. It was getting close to Xmas, why not? I knew Tony had done some photography so I thought I’d show my paintings and he’d just show his photography. But then from that, it became this…
Tony Ward
It was his suggestion. He said, “let’s do some paintings!” I had my hesitations about it…
Daniel Louis Rivas
It all just led to this, it evolved quickly too. From the early paintings to what’s happening right now. And it’s amazing. It’s magic because it really hasn’t been that long.
Take
You both start on this entirely different path and suddenly end up here.
Tony Ward
I think its genius. It’s a ploy of sorts and it’s quite weird. I don’t really like Andy Warhol, I mean I respect the entity and the energy of that period in time, to launch pop art, it’s impressive, its pretty amazing. I’m not saying that we’re doing that, but this is pure energy. His energy and my energy, combined together. Saying we’re artists and we’re working on the same canvas. Here we are.
Take
That says a lot about your process, which is not just a solitary venture in each of you separately, but rather the meeting of both, the collaboration, which results in some interesting art. Can you elaborate on this unique process?
Daniel Louis Rivas
It’s inspired thought. Often we second-guess ourselves. When it comes to acting and painting I try to be there, in that moment, and  not think too much. In the rest of my life, I’ll see a pretty girl and hesitate and Tony will tell me to be more like I am when I’m creating art with life. It’s what I’m trying to figure out…
Tony Ward
Yeah, and the whole thing is that there’s no figuring it out. You  just have to do it. I view it in a more primitive way. I’ll look at it [a painting] and read it, tune into the feeling of whatever is going on and then I see it. Sometimes I’ll start painting around it and it’s so awkward. Like a sculpture, you just keep chipping away because you know the masterpiece is somewhere inside of it, so you keep chipping away. I’ll look at something, and every time I feel like I can’t touch it. I question, where do I go? What do I do? And then this guy, he just attacks it, he’ll put a face right in the middle of the canvas, BAM!
Take
There are bound to be people who will have a certain perspective of you two for not having certain credentials or training from institutions. On your website, you speak of the autodidactic ability and process you both explore. Knowing that your art comes from a autodidactic process that you’re capable of discovering, does this empower you and your art?
Tony Ward
It’s a bit crazy, I know it’s powerful because I believe in what’s going on inside of me. I believe we all have it, we’re all artists in some way. Whatever we’re working on, I believe that that is our art. We’re like little bombs, compressed. And if you allow yourself to open up and to be open to a number of things, then you don’t confine yourself to one specific thing, one specific way of thinking. I think...I think I think a lot. [laughs]
Take
Knowing you have this autodidactic capability gives you the ability to approach creativity from a different vector than someone who is simply classically trained. Creativity has always come from the process of problem solving. You’d never confront these problems and
experiences without having chosen these particular paths.
Daniel Louis Rivas
All that’s happened in our lives has brought us here, to this moment. The art world politics don’t really bother me. Those people who may question our process, about it not being classically trained. Well, were the cavemen? Artists I love like Francis Bacon and Basquiat and the idea of Schnabel and Diego Rivera. I just have a healthy belief in what we’re doing, in our art, in what we’re creating. The politics don’t really bother me.
Tony Ward
I look at his [Danny’s] stuff and might see and say that it may be a bit like Basquiat, but the more I get to know him, the more I see that its so purely him, it’s ridiculous. I love Picasso, I’d read about people like Tulus Lautrec, Egon Schiele, and Bacon, I was really moved by these kinds of artists. They were insane. They lived this crazy tortured life where they just had to do it [create art]! Now I don’t like looking at inspiration at all, I don’t like looking at other artist’s works. I want it to come from visions from inside my own mind. But whatever moves you. Whatever you gotta do, you gotta do it. What strikes you. I’ll never look at one thing and say this is me, this is what I do, this is how I do it. My interests fall so vastly wide that that exploration feels more free to me. That’s the way I want to go about and do it. I’m also such an anal perfectionist that that can also get in the way of me, if I start thinking too much. And it’s like what you said about the autodidacticism, that process of how to do things, it can be such an agonizing process, [at one point] it was hurting my stomach trying figuring things out. Like how to paint this fur for this painting [a painting of a Civet with a mask titled, “Civet doesn’t know the masquerade is over].
Take
Is there any real identity connected to the paintings?
Daniel Louis Rivas
There is, it’s that imprint from our parents, from our DNA. My dad is a singer and an artist, I just started forming a relationship with him, I hadn’t seen him in about 20 years but there’s something I’m channeling that I don’t even know that I know. And why I’m attracted to crosses, and this Aztec imagery. I grew up Jewish, I had a bar mitzvah. Some of my earliest memories are of being in churches and being fascinated by Jesus and often we don’t even know. It’s backwards its forwards.
Take
I read that you spent some time as an ‘artist in residence’ at Herman Brood’s atelier. What did you bring back from that experience?
Daniel Louis Rivas
I brought back a lot. It was a privilege to be the only American artist to be allowed to paint in his studio after he died. I didn’t know much about him, then I spent more time in Holland. I had a lot of encounters with his ghost. It changed my art, just from research and being in that space and talking to people who knew him.
Take
Did it change your technique or your vision? Or have an entirely different affect on you?
Daniel Louis Rivas
Not really the technique, more so it changed my vision. A lot of what we’re talking about is how he actually lived. He was this freaky guy, he was a drug addict and a rock n roll guy, and he was out there, walking around with a parrot on his shoulder, he lived it. I’m still processing that whole experience, there’s something I find very kinetic, there’s a deep connection between me and Herman somehow. Even though it’s such a different culture and such a different life, being there, painting at his studio with his paintings and his bed and his porno collection. It was wild.
Tony Ward
I don’t know much about Herman’s art work but I like what I’ve seen. But talking about vision, Danny showed me this article about Dash Snow and it talked about his creative process, about his alternative lifestyle. It’s an odd dichotomy because we don’t use drugs as part of our process. And I look at artists and would think you have to suffer or you gotta be crazy. I went through a lot of my life thinking I was crazy. My dad, my brother, both a little off, so I thought I was crazy. I was reading this book by Osho, ‘Joy,’ and it basically says that there are certain things that we do, certain affirmations that we have to STOP. NOW. These such expressions of
ourselves, we manifest. So I stopped calling myself crazy, and stopped caring what other people thought about me, just stopped. And I knew other crazy people, really crazy people. How this relates to the art, Van Gogh cut his own ear off; I’m not going to think such things are going to affect my art. In my head I think I have to be this weird eccentric artist and wear my pants backwards, wear only red hats everyday, or have a fake puppet on my shoulder. Do I have to be that dude to be taken seriously as an artist.
Take
Both of you being actors, I’m sure you’re aware of the mask play that is a very significant exercise to explore identity in  theater. Having masks in nearly every painting, what do these masks have to say for you and about you as artists?
Daniel Louis Rivas
I wear so many different masks and even I still have the question, who the fuck are we? I love masks. Aztec masks, Mayan masks, African masks; and we’re always wearing masks, all of us.
Tony Ward
[we wear] Masks on masks, layers of masks. We wear different faces all the time. It’s the facade we’re giving to the world. Different parts of our personality come out over that initial facade. Layers of crud over other layers begin to build up. In the work, it comes out. Underneath all this, this is who we are, and it’s really not cute.
Daniel Louis Rivas
I’ve learned a lot from Tony. No matter what situation he’s in, he’s himself. It’s tough to be like that in this world. We’re always here and there. We constantly change but stay the same. He’s his own greatest work of art. We both hang out and act like little kids, we have fun. Sometimes you hang out with friends and have to put on this mask for this person or that person. It’s always fun to rediscover the joy and freedom in creativity.
Tony Ward
I’ve been stone cold sober for going on 5 years now. More than ever I want to be a freak. I want to be freer than I’ve ever felt before. And I feel it now. It’s about fighting against the ideology of who and what I am. This came from my mother. You have to not hate and just be free. Just express yourself the way you have to express yourself without worry of others opinions. We’re so caught up with eating right, looking right, smelling right, it’s crippling. Everything is very PC now. We have facades when it’s actually really grim today. I don’t want to ignore that, not with myself, not with my art. I have loved ones I care about, I want to inspire and go out and be inspired. I’m a cheerleader for insanity. And I’m fascinated by kids, they need guidance.
Daniel Louis Rivas
and kids need real hope.
Take
Where would you say this art comes from to display such an open nakedness? Are you taking off your masks?
Daniel Louis Rivas
It’s straight from the heart, for sure. It comes from places we’ve all been some only some of us have been. I’ve been through addiction, heartbreak, love, a family dinner. Acting is someone else’s work, it’s going to change in the editing room. this is ours. They’re moments, they’re experience, they’re priceless. There’s this magical thing that’s happening right now with our art and our paintings. It’s a mirror to nature.
Take
It’s sensation. It’s death, its happiness, its love, its disparity, all at the exact same moment.
Tony Ward
You hear artists talk about this. We do a painting. All the joy, the bliss and fucking frustration, all that effort, is done once you put the brush down. Then it’s freedom, it’s there. I did it. Maybe it’ll burn but the joy of it is that it’s there. As an artist, I hope that this piece of art moves someone so much that they want it on their wall.
Daniel Louis Rivas
I believe in magic
Take
What would you say magic is to you?
Daniel Louis Rivas
Magic is a chain of accidents and coincidences that become something tangible. We get together and create magic.
Tony Ward
That book, ‘Many lives, many masters,’ says something like, ‘everything is a message.’ Birds in the sky, bombs falling, people dying. Everything is a message, a mirror, to show us ourselves. When I was painting this baby it got real heavy, I started to cry. I started thinking of the real child in this picture I was looking at, the guts hanging out of its side, the skull flayed open. When I hear about people murder and unconsciously harming others, it’s a mirror. I know the pain. I relate to the anger, I get them, I relate to them. I can be judgmental at times, it’s an ugly trait I’ve been fucked by society and people. But there’s also this immense magical universe that conspires to make things happen. I believe in energy, I believe in the universe. It’s a candy store and I get to choose what I want to dip into. I am free to do what I want to do. And there’s a direct response from the universe. I was in Japan; I was walking with my pregnant wife. There’s this little old lady coming towards us down this narrow street and I’m in a rush, I’m frustrated and I step out into the street. I’m hit by a bus, knocked out of my wife’s hand, and sent flying 15 feet. I get up and start yelling. But then I took a second and realized what was really going on, that it wasn’t the lady or the bus, but rather it was me. I learned to take that second to look, to learn to really slow down and pay attention. We all have to take a step back and look at life, see it.
Take
Putting yourselves through such a process riddled with sensations both good and uncomfortable while pushing the edges, the limits; how do these movements affect somebody? How do you intend for them to affect us?
Tony Ward
I want it to give us all permission. If anything, I want it to show people that if these knuckleheads [us] could do it, so can you. Good luck too. If anything, be a doer, have a goal everyday and work towards those goals.
Daniel Louis Rivas
…And being unique. A lot of people don’t have their own voice, and we’re these two guys with our own voice, collaborating and making
this unique voice.
Tony Ward
Especially kids these days. We have our family, our town, our society, and kids are being pounded with information these days. Their brains are like little networks, I can’t imagine how they think. And this permission is educating. We’re all here to learn, forever. And I can split off and take whatever idea I have and create. It’s a big lesson and a good lesson, to share yourself 100%, let that inspire other people, be excited that its inspiring other people and don’t be afraid that people aren’t going to like you.
Take
To simply let go.
Tony Ward
Yes. The key is permission. I’m a free human being, and if I’m not free, I’m living like this. Its so simple, but we don’t know that, we don’t know that it’s that easy to simply let go of ourselves. I did the Belvedere vodka photo shoot with Terry [Richardson] and he’s like, get naked. I’m in a restaurant and next thing I’m naked in this restaurant pouring vodka on me. And my mind is saying yeah its fun, but is my dick small? We’re born naked, its how we are. It’s unnatural to be worrying about my length. But when you just do it, it’s in front of everyone. It’s right there, it’s permission. Next thing you know there’s 10 people naked too. 23 years down the line of time, the unborn audience: What understanding would you hope for them to gain from your creations?
Daniel Louis Rivas
That love slays the darkness.
Tony Ward
I like that. It’s true. The essence, when it’s boiled down, life is about teaching and learning. When someone looks at this in 23 years, someone might look at these and wonder if there’s anything
political or social going on. But it’s in the permission you give yourself to be free, to create. You look at the artwork and say, I can do this. I think about this entire conversation, you get permission, you get permission to have a goal, and then to work towards it with a focus, you can go off but you can get back on, that’s part of the permission to be free. But to be on that journey and keep going.
Take
Your art tells a story, the story of that journey, of your lives, here, today. There’s been a few paradigms in art that are only part
of the story, part of the evolution of what you’re telling, what you’re creating. What would you say that story is?
Daniel Louis Rivas
My first thought is that, I want to walk in the light. I’ve walked in darkness for so long, a junkie, a liar, a thief. And now its important for me that I walk in the light, fuck the darkness, I’ve been there, its in my closet, I don’t want to live there.
Tony Ward
I’ve talked about it concerning art. It’s an extension of the idea of not needing other artists to be inspired. The fact other artists are doing, if I like the outcome or not doesn’t matter, the fact they did it is what matters. I believe, what I want to believe, is that I’m a recorder in my time, today. If someone asked what my art was about, I want it to say, ‘this is my experience, here, today, in 2009.’ I’m not reaching back, other artists had their time. Artists like Da Vinci, they were recording what was going on in their lives, then. It’s transformation. I’m going to listen to metal and skate and paint until I’m 90. I want to do until I drop dead. My last expression, hopefully, will be me taking a picture of myself on my deathbed, the ultimate self-portrait.
Take
At this point in time everything is possible. Everything is potential. How do you go about capturing a moment? Transforming the potential into the actual?
Daniel Louis Rivas
There are times where I won’t paint for months and times when I’ll finish 5 [paintings] in a week. Now it’s more disciplined working together. Capturing is about not thinking about it, being in it, in the present moment and not so much in your head.
Tony Ward
That’s when it can get to be annoying. In the action of doing this, people react quickly. We did this bunny painting and people suggested we do a series of them. Suddenly we’re influenced and I’m trying to tell him how to make these bunny paintings. But what I try to do is close my eyes and see something. Confront what’s in front of me and not let my thoughts get in the way. And I have fuck-all technique, the process of the autodidacticism is rough, he’s seen me get frustrated.
Daniel Louis Rivas
But he can paint shit that I can’t even imagine. It’s awesome!
Take
Through your collaboration and the shared relationship, creativity has taken everything to a place where ego has all but vanished. How would you like to take things to another level?
Tony Ward
To really start to deface one another’s work. Because honestly, it’d really hurt. I’m really detailed and anal and to think about working on something for a while and then just watching Danny splatter over it would hurt for a second, but then it’d settle in and we’d feel it and it’d be okay. I think that would be an interesting process to explore. I appreciate what a lot of artists are doing, I like it, but I’ve never really seen anything like what we’re doing. It doesn’t make it better or worse than anyone else’s [art] but I’m grateful. It makes me feel easier to know that we’re doing something, to know we’re doing this.
Daniel Louis Rivas
We like what each other is doing, we’re pretty good at that, at liking each other’s stuff. It’s magic.