Friday, August 31, 2012

PETER GEERTS

 
 
Mononolgue Interieur II (from the series Monologues interieurs)
oil on canvas, 167 x 167 cm
 
 
 
 
 
 
What are you working on in your studio right now?
 
 
At the moment I’m working on a series of paintings which are composed paintings from different parts. Some of them are assembled to a single work -which I did before- others are arrangements. It is a new development in my search for a clear formulation of what I call ‘Synthetic concretism’: a synthesis between constructive and expressionist elements in painting.
 
 
 

Can you describe your working routine?
 
 
I paint as much as possible, I wake up and go to my studio till late in the evening. I teach art for three days a week.
 
 
 








Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?


For six years now I have a large studio (90 m2) in an old school-building on the ground floor. The large and high walls in this grand studio give me the opportunity to work at different pieces at the same time.  I can view several paintings hanging aside each other. This gives me the opportunity to ‘arrange’ and study the whole in a quiet surrounding.

Nevertheless I think the picture you want to make is ‘in ones mind’: in the former, much smaller studio for example I made a painting which was arranged of five panels of 1.50 x 1.50 cm each! (Life, Primal Urge, Love, Art, Death) I couldn’t place them next to each other in that small studio, only when it was put on view in the Stedelijk Museum Zwolle I myself saw them for the first time as I had them in mind. Later I made even larger paintings here (4.00 x 1.20 cm.) which could not fully stand up because the ceiling was to low so I painted them on the floor. When they were exhibited I saw the monumental power of it as I meant it to be working.

Since my work developed in a more monumental way -as well in size as image- there was a need for a larger studio, especially high ceilings and long walls. The first grand project in this studio was ‘Lost Innocence’, it is dedicated to the victims of the Srebrenica Massacre: a painting of 130x130; a painting ‘White Flames of Sorrow’ 300 x 280 cm.; a triptych 180x450 cm.; a triptych 170x310 cm.; and a triptych 200x420 cm. In this project the subject was a great European tragedy on witch I felt an inner need to express myself about it through my work. I worked for two years on it. For the first time I had the space I need for my work. Nevertheless I think concentration and self-criticism are the most important and decisive aspects that counts in an artists work.






 
 
 
 
 
Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.
 
 
The elements of which I want to a painting to be built of, I always have in mind when I start, but I also allow myself the attitude to arrange and play with them in the process of the work. Often comes the idea of a second or third painting/as part of the result. The concept is clear; the formulation of it in real colour, shape, composition is a process.
 
I usually start with a thin, transparent layer and than look at it with a critical eye: the adventure begins…! I intervene and look again: paint-look-paint again, and look again, at a certain point the elements are on its right place or are near a point of the tension I had in mind for the painting. From that moment on it is the painting itself that tells me how to complete the finishing touch. It’s like the birth of an image: I’m always a bit surprised myself, because although you have an idea in mind, you can not be in control of all the effects from what you do. It shows it to you during the process. Balance of colour, shape and size you can never foresee in mind.
 
 
 
What are you having the most trouble resolving?
 
 
The most trouble I have, I think is to maintain the distance to my personal affections and dislikes. In a way I consider painting as a schizophrenic action. To create a really true painting you have to be with yourself, at the same moment it has to speak a universal transcendental language. It takes a long self-critical attitude towards your interventions before you can consider the painting is finished.



 
 

"Composed painting" in the studio, untitled,
oil on canvas, 200 x 290 cm
 
 
 
Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?
 
 
In the past I worked with different materials, in fact I made assemblages. But for me, as a painter, the restriction of the paint itself is the best way to create a clear image.
 
 
 

What does the future hold for this work?
 
 
I guess the work will evolve in an even more clear formulation but in what direction it grows you never know. I’m working on a painterly solution of the synthesis between constructionist and gestured/expressionist aspects, an integration of these two opposite approaches to a whole. Also I hope that the recognition will bring the work to good exhibitions, after all a painting is a visual thing and it is meant to be shown and seen.
 
 
 

Is there anything else you would like to add?
 
 
Well Valerie, thanks for the opportunity to express myself on your blog, I think it is a nice initiative that reaches people around the world. Art feeds people and is a great need!: it makes ones mind open and breaks barriers and prejudices and can touch people in a way nothing else can.
 
 
 
 

 

From the project "Lost Innocence",
oil on canvas, 180 x 450cm
 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

RALPH HUNTER-MENZIES

"abstract composition" 2012,
oil stick and oil paint on board, 21 x 30 cm
 
 
 
 
What are you working on in your studio right now?


I am working on a series of small works, all 21 x 30 cm and three works that are 60 x 42 cm. I find it is simultaneously productive and undermining to work on a series; each work informs the next and they create a conversation between themselves, but at the same time you have to be constantly trying new colour combinations and marks out, making sure they have their own voice. This is partly why I work on larger works at the same time; it makes me look and paint on a different scale, which makes it harder to just become comfortable with one size and therefore disrupts the likelihood of copying what you may have done in previous works.




Can you describe your working routine?


I find it beneficial to go to the studio two or three times a day, in bursts of about three hours. I also tend to go in some days and just sit there and look at the works, sometimes not making a mark for a few hours. I have spells where I will make works and move works on very quickly and then other times it might take a lot longer.






 
 
 
 
 
 
Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?


I am on the fourth floor of an old cricket bat factory looking North over London. The way the building is used and managed all seems a bit anarchic and I would say this has definitely affected the direction of my works in the sense that my painting process has become far looser. The energy in the building is incredible as it is filled with a few dozen churches, artists, a nightclub and a theatre group.
 
 
 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.
 
 
I start working very quickly, putting down marks in acrylic paint. I then use oil sticks or oil paint and work around or on top of the lines that I initially made. This process goes on for months and the palette in the paintings changes numerous times. I find the whole process of making these works extremely optimistic as any mark can be changed and it allows me to be spontaneous with my painting.
 
 
 
What are you having the most trouble resolving?
 
 
I think the majority of the paintings I am working on fluctuate between being sublime or grotesque. This is a point in my works I long to be at because it lends itself to so many possible outcomes. I love being challenged by the painting, so all works are always a trouble to resolve.
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?
 
 
I go through periods where I will paint with just acrylic or just oil paints. I think not knowing or perhaps forgetting how a certain medium handles or dries is key to creating a painting that looks different. Essentially, it increases the likelihood for mistakes or unusual things to occur.
 
 
 

What does the future hold for this work?
 
 
I expect the unresolved ones to slowly, in a way, complete themselves. I need to spend a lot of time with them, looking and letting my eyes figure them out and bringing different marks in where needs be.

 
 
 
Is there anything else you would like to add?
 
 
Thank you Valerie, It has been a pleasure.
 
 
 

"abstract composition" 2012,
oil stick and oil paint on board, 21 x 30 cm
 
 
 
 
 

Thursday, August 2, 2012

WARD SCHUMAKER

Blue Dot, collage, 10 x 6 ", 2012




What are you working on in your studio right now?


I’ve been working on a series of small painted sculptures I call Dumb Boxes. Back in 1965 I got my first apartment, in San Francisco, a block from Haight Street. I’d moved there from the Midwest after getting in trouble with authorities who’d threatened to jail me for creating pornography. Because of that, I stopped showing people my personal work for the next 35 years or so, and destroyed or lost most of it as the years rolled by. At any rate, the very first thing I did in the sixties was create a group of minimalist sculptures out of cardboard adding words and photos cut from magazines. Jump ahead to January of  2012: we got a chance for an apartment in Manhattan for the year and to celebrate, I decided to reproduce those cardboard boxes in wood. I dropped the photos, and instead I painted them with gesso and acrylic.  It’s been very satisfying to finish up a project started some 45 years earlier.




 
Can you describe your working routine?


Paint. Paint out. Paint. Paint out. Despair. Get back to work. Paint, paint out, paint—wait! I think that works. Stop.
As many hours a day as possible.  I try to take off Sundays.





"Dirty projects room" San Francisco studio





Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

The studio in San Francisco consists of three small rooms: one for drawing, one for computer, and one for painting (we call it the last our dirty projects room, and it is very dirty). In New York, my wife Vivienne Flesher and I do our illustration in the dining room of our apartment and we have a painting studio in the garment district: 300 square feet with one window, no running water, no computer, no connection to the web. So in San Francisco we’ve got everything we’d want, including food, garden, place to nap, each other.  In New York it’s minimal, nose-to-the-grindstone, all attention on the work.  We’ve got no history here, no old paintings or sketches lying around, no friends asking to see the work. And that means focus is always on exactly what being done now. That can be both helpful and not.
   




New York studio




Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I like to work on a very defined, consistent group (ex: the Dumb Boxes, a hand-painted book, large canvasses), then follow that with a group of things that veer wildly in different directions (ex: my collages). The first group is often defined by subject (names, a text, an image) or by the way I apply the paint. I work on as many pieces as I have space to lay out for drying. Most important and most uncomfortable is that once a direction is decided upon, I have to be willing to drop it when that Other Thing takes over––intuition, divine guidance, whatever you call it—that thing that almost everyone I respect seeks: the moment when one feels he/she is not in control, that something separate or higher or deeper or more knowledged has taken over.



What are you having the most trouble resolving?

As usual: finding out what I really want to see that perhaps I alone can/will make.
 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

When I paint I especially like to use paste for a medium, I learned to use it at a book-making class and I love the syrupy fluidity of it, the way it changes as it dries: that change prevents me from every having complete control of it and that is something I appreciate. Lately I’ve really liked working with gesso on wood, there is something so quiet and absorbing about gesso and sandpaper







Group of dumb boxes in NY studio

Archipelago, 14 x 6 x 6", 2012




What does the future hold for this work?

George Lawson Gallery in Los Angeles has scheduled a show of these sculptures in November 2012 and I look forward to that, in part because I have such respect for the other artists that George exhibits.  But as for the work itself: I really don’t know.
 


Is there anything else you would like to add?

As an illustrator I always had an audience, it comes with the job; but as a painter who started showing at the age of 60, I feel a great appreciation for those who will take the time to look at my work.  So thank you for the interest.





Disappear, acrylic on paper, 48 x 34", 2012