Interview 2010 – “I never thought of myself as a geometric painter, but I have always thought of myself as an improviser . The geometry in my work has increased over the years and I’m not completely sure why this is so. It isn’t by conscious intent I can assure you, Improvisation however is essential to my work. I want my ideas to be located at the tip of my brush. I want my materials to talk back to me. I want to be surprised.”

This means he had to avoid two things: pure geometric forms which are fixed and unalterable; and pictorial invention, or painting which he saw in his minds eye, which focussed on the goal and ignored the process. In other words he had to find a way to begin a dialogue.

Nozkowski underscores the idea that the measure of a work’s success resides in the way the artist transforms the subject into a painting. This requires elevation of content into a visual domain in which the particular event (or experience) that inspired the painting is seamlessly meshed with the formal, a process which requires a distinct point of view as well as a grasp of the relationship between form and it’s context. In this particular area, Nozkowski’s study of film plays a crucial role in defining the his understanding of what is possible in a painting.