I lucked out with Elaine Reichek.  She was in town for the unveiling of her facade project for the Gardner Museum.  It’s taken from the correspondence between Mrs. G. and Henry James.  David and his crew had just finished installing the piece when I met up with Elaine for a talk in the Living Room.  Elaine was the first artist to have a residency at the Gardner Museum and she produced the award winning MADAM I’M ADAM CD rom project there.  I still use the piece with my students. It gives another kind of vision to Mrs. G’s house and sort of foretells the augmented reality phase that is happening now.

Elaine is one of my favorite artists.  I first heard of her when one of my professors showed her work in class.  It was White Brushstroke 1 from the exhibition AT HOME AND IN THE WORLD.  In my education, it may have been the first time that I saw a white artist directly and confidently address their position of whiteness.  I was kind of stunned by the way she just turned all these things that were in the air at that time (appropriation, feminism, craft, text, history, erasure, race, and whiteness) on their heads with a cross stitch.  I remember going to the MFA Bookstore and looking for all the texts I could find about her.

In 2004, I was working as Dean at Skowhegan and Elaine was one of the resident faculty.  We became very close that summer and we talked a great deal not just about art, but about life, loss and the importance of community.

It was rainy when we started talking, but it cleared up.  Elaine and I talk about a lot.  We discuss her move to Harlem, gentrification, whiteness, maintaining a career, loss, love, food, galleries, and a bunch of other stuff, if you can believe it.  We went way over time, but it was worth it.  I love Elaine a great deal.  At this time in my own studio practice when things are so unstable and fraught, it was good to sit down with a friend who knows how to keep the work moving forward.

Steve Locke:  It’s weird because I knew you before I knew your work.  I think it was the Yvonne Rainer/Rob Storr talk at BU.  Afterwards, we had a bit of a chat and you told me about PAPER MONUMENT and were sweet enough to send me a few copies.  Because of that, I thought of you as a critical theory/curatorial sort of voice and this got reinforced when we (with Colleen Asper, Anoka Faruqee, and William Villalongo) worked together to create a response to the writings of Ken Johnson in the NYTimes.  I didn’t really know you as a painter until your project at the deCordova Biennial with Roger White.  It was the first time I had seen one of the Plaid Paintings, and I really responded to the way it troubled some of the ideas I had been fed about abstract painting.  I spent a lot of time looking at them and I could not figure out why they were so potent and so humble at the same time.  They so clearly have these references to domestic things like tablecloths (that I think you enhance by not stretching them).  They made me think of Mary Heilman where she presents something that looks mundane and upon closer inspection reveals a complex series of decisions that belie the simplicity of the image.  Like her paintings, the Plaids are really matter-of-fact and directly painted.  They don’t have pretensions of heroism and they completely deflate the notion of the “gestalt” that is promised by Modernist Painting and in this way, they start to tackle some of the same territory as Daniel Buren and some of the other artists in the Supports-Surfaces movement in France.  But beyond that moment, your paintings seem to be engaged in something much deeper that the limits of what painting can (and should) do.   I see tensions through out the work (between public/private; modest/heroic; institutional/domestic).  Which leads me to my question:

How does conflict play a role in what appears to be a deeply structured practice in the Plaid Paintings and how does it inform decisions about the separate but conjoined acts of painting and presentation?

—

Dear Steve,

Plaid , 2013, acrylic on acrylic, 18×42″

I’m so glad you asked me about conflict in the plaids! At first I thought that was too strong a word, but you’re right—the various conflicts are always there.

Of course, on a material level, plaid emphasizes the interweaving of warp and weft, so in this sense it renders the conflict/confluence of fabric visible. This is what I like when I’m looking at plaid. Each area of color emerges from the two sets of threads, so any adjacent hues are of necessity half the same, half different. For me these ramifications are interesting precisely because the rule is always explicit, inherent in how the thing is made. The pattern is surprising because it’s programmatic. I read every plaid I see like a vernacular Sol Lewitt.

And then with plaid there are also the interwoven, so to speak, questions of location and origin, issues that occur in a different register of intersections and coordinates but are nevertheless part of the pattern. Many fabrics reference or evoke a place, but plaid is a special case because it is both so ubiquitous and so commonly associated with “clans”—Scottish and otherwise. Actually, the earliest known examples of plaid are from 3500 BC China, but most people think plaid comes from Scotland, so that is itself notable. And the Scottish part of the story is complex because the famous tartans came to prominence as part of a (ongoing) conflict with England. At the same time, plaid became such a dispersed pattern because the Scots helped colonize India, where cotton “madras” plaids were produced for distribution throughout the British Empire. And of course now we live in a global age where plaids are made all over the world and depending on the context and their particular qualities can reference a range of places from honky-tonks, country clubs, grunge shows, the board room—all the while signaling membership in various groups. So the conflicts present at that level interest me, too.

I came to Ohio from Ecuador at the age of six, so for me the encounter with plaids is bound up with realizing that it was a prep-school pattern. My mom taught second grade at a private school, and I got a lot of my clothes from the thrift store there, and I think it was a way for me to fit in with kids that had a lot more money than we did. Wearing the right plaids was a way to disguise both my foreignness and my relative poverty, so I experience plaid as a kind of camouflage as well, a way of fitting in. So the pattern carries all those conflicts for me—of class, of origin, of group membership and assimilation—in a personal way. Over the years, I amassed a large collection of plaid shirts, not all of them preppy, and came to wear the pattern almost exclusively, but for decades I was merely a collector, a self-taught connoisseur.

Plaid, 2015, acrylic on acrylic, 18×24″

So I had developed a certain expertise, but deciding to paint plaids didn’t come from that so much as from sensing that there was a kind of joke in it, something funny about a painting that was plainly abstract but also utterly recognizable. I enjoy the category conflict. Somehow if you go from monochrome to stripe to plaid, even though the progression makes perfect sense, plaid ends up being the punch line. If you picture it with Buren, and he is repeatedly calling “scene!” with the stripes, I just keep going, adding stripes in the other direction.

And I like how the representation doesn’t function in a straightforward way either: Is this plaid a painting of something? An artist I admire—someone who doesn’t associate his name with his work—was making copies of Mondrian paintings, after Mondrian had died, arguing that paintings of abstractions could not be abstractions themselves. As I did with Buren’s stripes, I wanted to take that question to a different place, to where it involved patterns from everyday life.

In terms of re-presentation, which was how my teacher Robert Reed insisted on pronouncing it, the painted plaid is a peculiar thing. You can’t actually interweave the paint, so the illusion of plaid involves layering, transparency, and a lot of guile in the way you choose and organize the colors. Eliminating the canvas was essential to this, as it allowed the paint itself to serve as its own ground. All my plaids are acrylic on acrylic, and I paint them front to back, so the first things I put down are the first things you see, and the gesso goes on last, to seal the back. (The reverse of conventional painting, where you cover things up as you go and the last thing you put down sits on top.) There is a tricky illusionistic system at play, but it’s also just overlapping paint presented directly, where everything I do is evident in the final result. So here too, in the process, I think the conflict between illusion and material reality is the generative force.

Works in the studio of Dushko Petrovich

Born in Quito, Ecuador, Dushko Petrovich is a New York-based artist, writer, editor, and teacher. He received his B.A. from Yale University and his M.F.A. from Boston University before going on to serve as the Starr Scholar (Artist-in-Residence) at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He has exhibited his work at venues including the deCordova Museum, in Boston; Rachel Uffner Gallery, in New York; the Suburban, in Chicago; and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen.

His writing has appeared in periodicals such as Bookforum, Slate, Modern Painters, and the Boston Globe, among others. Petrovich is a co-founder of Paper Monument, where he has co-edited many publications, including I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette and Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment. He also chaired the n+1 Foundation’s board of directors from 2013 to 2015. Petrovich currently teaches at Boston University, RISD, NYU, and Yale. His newest project, Adjunct Commuter Weekly, made its debut at ICA Boston in July.

I am not a big Rolling Stones fan, but one song, Shattered, came up when I was listening to iTunes.  That ending part where Jagger sings, “Pile it up/Pile it high on the platter!” stuck in my head.  It was like some sort of vile command at an obscene banquet.

banquet, first version

This painting was on my studio wall for years.  I thought it was finished.  It was weird because it didn’t feel like my work, even though I had painted it.  I had a connection to it since I had made it, but I had a tremendous amount of distance from it.  I couldn’t figure out what it did for me or why I couldn’t claim it as my own.  But it stayed on the wall.  For years.

banquet, second version

Every now and again, I would paint on this picture.  I’d change some things, try some things.  At these times, the painting wasn’t really a painting at all.  It was more of a site.   I mean that in real terms. It was an actual location I could go to where I could try things out and let things happen.  I would repaint the entire picture sometimes and then wipe all of the paint off to return it to the way it was.   At these times I felt like I was rehearsing something.  Like I was trying out new material before I had to present it or something.  Those changes built up over the years.

I was in my studio about a week ago and I looked at the picture.  The head on the far left started to look familiar to me.  I know that sounds stupid since, after all, I had painted it, but it seemed like I had seen the painting somewhere else.  The more I looked at it, the stronger this feeling became. I realized that I had painted another version of that head for a painting called the notice. It wasn’t an intentional action, but I saw that I was able to make one painting because I had made the other.  I had been painting on the notice for years.  I was able to resolve it, finally, once I painted the head in the other painting.  Like I said, it wasn’t an intentional thing.  It was only after looking at the picture for a long time that I could see what it had been giving me.

the notice (2001-12) oil on panel, 12×12 inches

Almost every head in this picture lives in another painting at this point.  It’s been a series of migrations.  They came in one picture and moved into another one.  It makes sense to me that I couldn’t finish banquet because it was never meant to be a painting – it was meant to be a site of possibility that led to other paintings.

I repainted the picture last week.  Everyone who had to leave, who could  leave, has gone.  There is only one that remains in light, balanced aggressively in the in-between space.  It’s trapped in a moment where it is a portrait and an object.

after a banquet (2011-2015), oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches

i wash my feet for you, gouache and gum arabic on panel, 15×15″

Steve Locke:  When we were in grad school together you turned me on to the writings of Mira Schor.  In those writings,  I discovered a way of working that allowed me to investigate figuration at a time when that was actively discouraged. Also, because our interests in gender, depiction, and subjectivity have dovetailed over the years, it’s always exciting for me to see the ways you address these in your work.

I’ve always had a sense of seeing something from the inside out when I look at your work.  It’s not just the way things are, it’s more like a combination of all different streams of time that come together for a moment to make an image.  

What has been evident to me in your work is a tremendous amount of power and weight in objects and images.  Things float and fall, or they balance with formal elegance and a sense of danger.  Sometimes, like in Back in the Saddle they actually seem to destroy the subject with the elements of modernist design. There is a sense of tremendous violence in your work.  Not just in the imagery, but in the methods and materials.  Toxic pigments, handmade inks, sewing (or suturing), cutting, and reforming the work and the body (sometimes your own, as in Most Improved) in the work are the hallmarks of your practice.  At first I thought it was at odds with the sort of gendered traditions of home and then I realized how sexist my thinking was.  I also think, in this time of tremendous backlash against women, that the urgency of these actions are clearer to me.

How do you understand the use of power in your work, and how do you use materials and methods to convey its presence or absence?

Disquietude

my dear, gouache, oak gall ink and gold leaf on deer parchment, 18″x24″

The idea of power can have several meanings. It means there is an ability to do or act and that there is the capability of doing. It is also possible to understand the implication that one may have power over another’s ability to do or act. I have thought about these conditions for a very long time- much longer before realizing that I was someone who would make images and that an image could have consequence.

As a young girl I realized that power came with the ability to be heard.  And not only to be heard, but to be listened to and to be allowed to speak.  Within my family, I found it difficult to find space to have my voice heard; often being spoken over, ignored, or simply not finding a gap to enter into conversations.  It was clear to me that male words were valued more for some reason and it was maddening.  Rather than staying angry and fighting out loud, I retreated and realized there was a quiet power in being invisible.  There was something to being able to slip in and out of a situation and this realization has directly influenced how my images coalesce. Navigating a conversation has always been pivotal for me.  How much to add, how much to divulge, is it worth the energy, and more importantly when is the right time to interject are questions that still run tandem with my daily interactions.

The internal and external coexist through the tension of juxtaposed images in the same way a cool smile can belie the heat of anger in one’s gut. I don’t think I would have used the word ‘violent’ to describe my work but can see it now as you have described it. I think honesty can be violent and there is truth in humor.  This is where the poetry is found and a cliché can be revived through a visual image.

In depicting something specific, I have often wanted there to be an effortlessness in the final representation; a gloss of the process. I understand that the delicacy of watercolor washes and the exactness of details with gouache give credence to an image that may seem confrontational or aid its “tongue-in-cheekness.”

This quiet command of materials is akin to a woman’s wile- her smile and nod, a silent acquiescence. Painting on old stained vintage linens that were once napkins or placemats provides a context to confront my fears of motherhood, my doubts of wifehood, my femaleness.

More recently, my investigation and research into the origin of materials has allowed me to make work in which the ingredients have a direct bearing on the inherent meaning. Rather than only being a picture of something, these explorations hover between image and object. Now, when I choose a material, I think about its greater significance. This has given me the freedom to unapologetically embrace a variety of subjects. When I use oak gall ink that I have made, I know that it is permanent; but caustic, and will eventually ‘bite’ through the surface I’ve used it on. There are other inks that I use that I know will fade and disappear.

How language, words, and images are interwoven have always been important.  I love old paintings that have banners swirling through the composition declaring what is true or have a small note lovingly painted with the artist’s name. So beyond titles, I am using text in a much more direct way.  Right now I am working on a fresco panel with historic blue colors and the sole words, Forever is a long time, painted as the subject.

So, for me, power comes down to the idea of voice, of being heard, and choosing whether to scream or whisper.

Candice Smith Corby received her BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art and her MFA in painting from MassArt.  She is the gallery director at Stonehill College where she also teaches in the Visual and Performing Art Department.  She also combines her studio research with traditional material workshops offered, through the arts collective The Bottega (www.thebottega.it).  She is represented by the Miller Yezerski Gallery where she will have a solo exhibition in November 2015.  Her work is included in the collections of Fidelity Bank, Framingham State University, Wellington Investments, and Cosmit.  She has been the recipient of the MCC Fellowship in painting in 2008 and 2014, and an Awesome Grant in 2013.  She is included in 34 an exhibition on the Boston Harbor Islands as part of the Isles Arts Initiative.  The exhibition opens 26 July and Smith Corby’s work can be seen on Great Brewster Island. 

what wasn’t thought possible, 2015, gouache and egg tempera on panel, 8 x 10 inches

Painting is a way to see if something is possible.

In a real way, exploring a motif is an investigation to see if it is possible to be painted.  I wonder sometimes if something cannot be painted.  Wondering is pointless, however, because the only way to know is something is paintable is to try to realize it as a painting.  This is the difference between a theory and an action.  All my understanding about painting comes from figuring these things out in material. I can’t make a theoretical decision about art before I make something.  This kind of analysis can only take place in the presence of something.  Otherwise I would talk myself out of doing anything because there is always a reason NOT to do something.  But in the right hands, a still life painting can be a radical assertion. (I’m thinking of the brilliant Janet Fish in particular.)

The challenge is to make something even though there is nothing left to make. The challenge is to question the notion of the unpaintable, the unsayable, the unseeable.

Sometimes I make a successful picture that contradicts what I think a picture can do, or should do. Sometimes I make something that I do not recognize as my own work.

These are paintings that teach me about the paintings I need to make.  They also point to the work that I am still in the process of learning how to make.

Core to my art making process is to make art out of horror.  The current moment presents us with no shortage of that.

My challenge is to make work that speaks to the time without trivializing.  My challenge is to compete with spectacle.

Nat Meade, Study (Plaid Pantry)

Steve Locke: I have been following your work since we met at Skowhegan 2009 (and I’m lucky enough to have one of your works on paper). I have always felt an affinity for your work not just because of the subject, but because of the qualities of the paintings themselves. You have a way of making images that appear to be simple but upon deeper investigation reveal themselves to be complex and layered in their realization and, by extension, their possible meanings. In an era when so much of painting is directly informed by the digital and the photographic, your paintings don’t just require a slow looking, they demand it. Because of this, your work rewards the viewer not just with an image but with a sensation. I mean this in the way that someone like Bridget Riley is interested in the effect of the painting on your eyes and your body. I get a sense of air, light, energy, heat, and physicality of space from these pictures. That does not happen a lot in contemporary painting the fact that it does in your work is a testament to your practice. In the current moment, you are making paintings that reveal and foreground their process without losing their integrity or importance as pictures. Pictures that illuminate the body as a site of contemplation, disappointment, extremity, or disbelief. Which lead me to my question:

In your painting practice, how do time and light (in both a real way and in a poetic way) influence the choices you make in depicting the body, its movements, and its locations?

Nat Meade: Light is another player or character in my work. I want it to be as tangible and, in a way, as physical as the figures and forms.

Around the time that we met I set out to change my approach to painting. I no longer wanted to make paintings that were referential and dependent on an external source. Instead I wanted to invent a painted moment- performative in its small and inward way. It was important that the images were discovered through their execution. The transition was difficult and for a long time I struggled to make anything satisfying. I needed parameters to make what I was doing challenging and tangible. I came up with a set of self-imposed rules and light became the constant player, a means of focus that also allows for playful discovery. Along these lines forms and figures have been reduced to simplified shapes in a shallow space. I can (hopefully) (more or less) predict how light might rake across the things I paint. I treat everything- light, color and form as a thing-just a stupid thing.

(Photos from Nat Meade’s studio by Jean Paul Gomez)

James Ensor has been described as employing an allegorical use of light. I only know what this means intuitively. It has to do with light asserting itself as a persistent actor. I see it in his work and want it in my own. There is directional lighting in all of my paintings-overly defined beams cutting through the composition, splitting figures, casting shadows, indifferently raking over faces. Color and light are closely linked. I like to assign the light areas a color and dark areas another: make the light areas yellowish and the dark areas green. My friend and artist Michael Brennan has said that “…[t]ime and light are made manifest in [my] work as color. Color as crumpled light.” I think I understand this intuitively as well. I like to build up opaque areas of light and emphasize the literal ridges of light and shadow. It is like repeatedly saying, “Here is the light AND here is the dark.”

Light can add drama and brevity. It can also conceal and ridicule. There is something inane about the cast shadow from a nose or a pair of eyeglasses. I like to zoom in on these moments. My subjects are meant be contradictory: elevated or beatific and buffoonish or absurd. I have been painting these bearded figures at three quarters view, a wedge for a nose, sometimes with gaping mouths like a hollowed out tree. They are these male stand-ins. I have recently realized that this goes back to an Antonio Frasconi print that was in my childhood home, a minimal woodcut of a bearded Walt Whitman with a triangle nose and series of dashes for a beard. It looked just like my dad. In my head the image was both God and Father, which were probably the same thing. On some level my work deals with this kind of elevated personage and its frailty.

I feel like this doesn’t exactly answer your question. Light is the constant character. Time and setting are frozen. And the body is reduced to its dumb, tangible parts so I can play with it like a Mr. Potato Head toy.

Thanks again for asking,
Nat

Find more of Nat Meade’s work at www.natmeade.com.

The edge of Gardner Lake in Connecticut.

I have been making watercolors for almost a year now.

I started by accident really.  It was around my birthday and my friends Susanna and her sister Jane invited me to come to their place in Connecticut for a few days to hang out.  My friend Linda came too.  Jane even made me an incredible strawberry shortcake with whipped cream for my birthday cake.  I finally began to relax after the grueling school year I had just had.  It was a wonderful time.

Linda and Jane were cooking and Susanna and I sat in the back yard under a huge tree.  There were stone steps down into the lake.  We brought watercolors and spread them out on the ground.  Susanna had a huge book of watercolors that she had been working on.  They were marvelous to see.  Very directly painted with some dry brush textures over luminous washes of color.  They captured the motif of the lake but also carried the weight of the air.  You could clearly see that the difference between the water and the air was just a question of a soft shift of color.

Susanna went for a swim and I started to make some paintings of my own.  I have to say that I never liked watercolor and even when I had to do it in school, I was not very good at it.  I had a very patient teacher, Donna Rae, who kept telling me that the medium was trying to teach me patience.  I didn’t know what she meant.

I soaked a bunch of paper in the lake.  I could see Susanna swimming back and forth and was taken with the way she belonged to two places at the same time.  The binaries kept flashing in my head: wet/dry, over/under, inside/outside and so on.  I also thought a lot about the way the water was all around her and separate from the same time.  I sat on the edge of the stone steps and put my legs in the water, watching the way the transparency of the water changed the color of my legs.  I pulled some paper out of the water and started to paint on the wet paper.

Susanna came out of the lake and sat with me.  We painted.  We talked.  Susanna has been a mentor to me since graduate school.  I have learned more from her than I could ever say.  That day, we talked about color and light.  We talked about loss and losing.  We talked about work and how to preserve your self and give to your students at the same time.  We worked.  She painted the motif in front her in luminous greys and humid yellows.  I thought about the movement of a body in the water and how to shift the sense of weight in transparent waves.  I remembered what Donna Rae was trying to teach me.  I didn’t realize I had learned.

I’ve made over 100 watercolors since that last time Susanna and I touched the water.  I was able to show about half of them at the Hudson Opera House earlier this year.   Because of its historic character, I wanted to have the pictures presented in a manner consistent with the venue.  I went on a scavenger/treasure hunt for a variety vintage frames.  I used some without glass so the viewer could experience the texture of the paper.  I also included 4 free standing paintings in the show.  One of them, you don’t deserve me was from my Samsøn show years ago, but the other three were new.  Their execution revealed some of the things that I had learned in the making of the water colors.

monument #10, egg tempera, oil, and collage on wood with acrylic

I have a lot of things to remember.  That is why I started making these monuments.

I didn’t know that they were monuments when I was started, but, like most artists, I don’t immediately know what the subject of the work is when I am making it.  As I continued to make them, it was clear that they are markers, like a sign on the road.  They are indicators, placeholders, something that I recalled and needed to make manifest in a form that would serve as a container for that recollection.

Spaces have a residue.  I work to give that residue a form.  And an expression.

This rendering of form is not the same as recreating a room or building an environment.  It is more about sensation than anything else.  Sensation is a something that painting is dynamically suited to convey.  (Bridget Riley talks about this here.)  I am using touch, timing, color interval, placement and composition to create the sensation of the place, but not the place itself.  I am creating an interior sense of a body in a space without a theatrical recreation of an environment.  In this way, the work contests the sense of spectacle in art and instead posits recollection as the portal into the work.

My work has a direct relationship to lost spaces and lost people.  Rooms are filled with images of people who used to inhabit them. They are sites of memory. My impulse is to make an image for a specific space I wanted to remember, or a place that reoccured to me visually as well as emotionally.  These spaces need a memorial.

I don’t mean solely domestic space and I don’t mean the interior as in psychological, although I think both of those spaces figure into the work. (I came of age as a painter when Gaston Bachelard‘s ideas where going though school like a virus.)

I cut a section of a memory into a shape and mark it with an avatar, a witness.  I want to bring that space into your space, and mark it with light, because it is NOT your space.  I paint them on the back because I want to frame it in the light of memory, the halo of experience, the way you recall something while you are looking at something else.  It glows with recollection.  The corner, the edge, the meeting point, these can be the indicator of an entire environment.  The shift of surface is sometimes a subtle transition and sometimes blunt flex of thought.  It can be a marker of how a room changes, or how the body moves from one space to another.

To work in egg tempera is to embrace a different idea of time.  In a fundamental way, painting contains time.  The surface of a painting records everything.  And for the painter, you know what was there and you know what had to be destroyed in order to make the painting look the way it does.  For the painter, all of those paintings inform the last painting.

Sassetta,
Virgin of Humility
1440s
Panel, 79 x 46 cm
Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice

The material also contains a sense of devotion.  Applied in strokes, each one drying immediately, and layering color in the most direct way, egg tempera allows me to caress the faces of the witnesses in the paintings over and over again. As Sassetta painted the Virgin, he touched her face over and over again. The act of rendering is an act of devotion.

I started this painting 8 years ago

I finished a painting today.

I had been painting on it for a while. At least 8 years, I think.  I don’t mean I was painting on it every day for 8 years.  I mean from time to time, over that stretch of time, I would take up the picture and try to get it done.  It feels done now, meaning that it succeeds as a picture and it has a life of its own independent of me.  It does something that I did not anticipate and it continues to disarm me as a maker, and to empower me as a viewer.  In a nutshell, that’s how I know it’s done.

I think about what I was doing over the various times I took up the picture.  I was in love when I started it and I thought I finished it then.  In fact, I thought I finished it a number of times.  I’ve had a variety of jobs, lovers, friends, losses, success, and failures over that time.  I think the picture bears the traces of all of it.  Some days I picked up the brush with confidence only to be embarrassed at how badly the picture was coming along.  I would turn it to the wall on these days.  Even looking at the back of the panel, I could see the failed image.

I never really had an idea of what this picture was supposed to be.  It has been a variety of heads over time. It’s been too many colors; the flesh tones have gotten progressively bloodless over the time I painted it.  It’s been sanded a couple of times, by hand and with a power sander.  I had way too much paint on it for a while and the ridges and history of the dried paint sometimes got in the way of the track of the brush.  The dried paint forced me to make the same decisions over and over.  When I sanded some of the paint off, I made an effort to keep the image.  Sometimes I could and sometimes I would just paint over everything and cry.

Perfect nose

Years ago, I cant’t remember how long ago, I saw a man at the Purple Cactus who had a beautiful nose.  When I got back to my car, I drew his face and I had the drawing in my wallet for a while.  I pulled it out the other day and thought about the painting.  I wondered if this was the nose that was supposed to be in the painting.  I tried to put it in and it made me change the entire picture.  It was a worse failure than before.  I wondered if I should just paint the nose and leave the rest of the painting.  Maybe it could just be a painting of a nose?

I was at MacDowell and there was snow.  The greens and the greys mixed in a way that I could only describe as heavy and thick.  I loved the density of the winter color.  For the first time in a long time, I considered painting the landscape.  I would never do that because landscape painting is really fucking hard.  Especially for a control freak like me.

I pulled out this painting yesterday and thought about heavy grey.  I mixed a bunch of color in the memory of the snow.  I looked at my jawline in the mirror and repainted the picture.  It’s not a big painting, about 12 x 16 inches.  It took me a few hours to repaint it.  I used my jaw and I painted over the perfect nose of the man but for some reason, I thought about his hair and I used it.  I invented the cheekbones and followed the line of them to place the eye pits and the line of the skull.

I thought he might be blind.  I painted his eyes and then I thought he might be blinking or winking.  I thought he might not want to see what he was seeing.  I thought his mouth might be a sign of life, bloody, vibrant.  A dead head with a living mouth.  I thought he was somewhere between the lusty and the dead.

His ears were bigger.

I set the painting on my table so it would be the first thing I saw when I came back into the studio and I went home.  When I came in today, that’s when I knew it was finished.  I didn’t want to do anything to it and I was looking at it for a long time.  I was a viewer, I wasn’t a painter then.  That’s how I knew it was done.

I started making a base for it.  It needs to be a free standing painting.

Halo, 2002, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches

Like a lot of artists, particularly painters, I’ve made my share of self-portraits.  I did these paintings to teach myself about myself, to mark time, to solve a painting problem, a variety of reasons.  Not all of them are art, but the ones that are have a special place in my practice.  I look at those pictures and I can think back to the moments when they were painted.  In fact, I think they contain the haptic trace of my emotional life.  Some of them, many of them in fact, I have destroyed.  Sometimes I’ve done this because they were failures as paintings and sometimes I had to get rid of them because it was enough that I knew that I painted them.  I have some photos of these paintings, but the objects themselves are gone.  Even though I am a painter, it is very hard for me to make a painting.  It’s expensive in a variety of ways.

So when I got contacted to be in a self-portrait show, I was kind of skeptical about doing it.  Like I said, I am a painter but I am not someone for whom the self-portrait is a key part of my practice.  The other artists in the show included Anne Harris and Susanna Coffey, both of whom I know and the latter is a dear, close friend.  There was also Maud Morgan and the divine Gregory Gillespie.  For that reason alone I wanted to do the show.  Coffey has had a profound impression on my work.  Gillespie, with his relentless reworking and extensive understanding of surface and material has as well.  I was thrilled that some of my work would be in consideration with these giants.

I have a self-portrait project Circumference that I offered as my contribution but the curator was interested in paintings only.  (Looking backward I also think that the underlying content in the work was, shall we say, difficult for the curator.) I have three self-portaits from a very difficult time that are very precious to me.  I struggled with them in the making and there were a lot of difficulties that I resolved in the work, and they bear that out in the making.  I talked to Julia Lavigne, the Associate Director at Samsøñ about them and she felt like it would be a good thing to have them in the dialogue created in the context of the show, which was called Self-Examination through Portraiture.  I trust her judgment.  The largest painting of the three, Self-Portrait at Skowhegan was on uncradled panel exactly the way it was painted.  In order to have it exhibition ready, I had it framed with a gorgeous float frame to accentuate the irregular edges of the picture.  (The folks at PSG Framing in Somerville did an amazing job.)

They were painted on panel and they are hard-won.  I discovered things about scraping and sanding and allowing the surface to show in the picture that are basic tools in my practice today.  My show at ICA Boston there is no one left to blame includes paintings that were begun at the same time as the self-portraits and they contain all of the lessons I learned from making these pictures.

Once I agreed to the show, I was informed that there would be a catalog for the show as well.  I was also told that all the artists were writing statements.  I wasn’t really interested in making statements about the work and said as much and the gallery provided them with a general statement about my practice.  Also, since this was for a text that was going to be published, I really balked at being asked to write something for publication without being paid for it.  I was asked multiple times and advised that it could be short.  So I eventually relented.

Here’s my statement for the show:

Self-portraiture is a form of self-location. It is a means to understand where I am physically and emotionally, in addition to being a way to explore formal issues and materials.
I made these paintings at a time when a lot of things were coming apart. There was the tremendous loss of the AIDS epidemic, my mother’s decline, and my own constant fight to have an identity as an artist. I made these paintings to prove that I could do them. I wanted to make a record of myself, my time, and my likeness knowing that it would change but knowing that the paintings would hold the memory of the moment and would be a truer record than any other thing I could access.
I wanted to prove that I existed in the context of art. The most concrete way I could do that was to paint myself into history and into being.

Steve Locke, Boston Massachusetts

I sent the statement and Julia and Camilø Álvårez handled the transport of the work to the venue.  They managed the entire process, consignment agreements, photos of the work and all that things that they do all the time for the artists they support.

I got an invitation to the opening and I was thinking it would be fun to go if Anne and Susanna were there.  I had seen Susanna earlier in the year and started doing watercolors with her at her family house in Connecticut (which led to an exciting new body of work).  Unfortunately, neither of them could get to the opening and I figured I would still go alone.  It was then that the curator contacted me about giving a talk about my work at the opening.

I got this email:

On Oct 8, 2014, at 10:09 AM, Audrey Pepper <audreypepper@mac.com> wrote:

Hi Steve,

Everything is in place. The catalog is at the printer, plans for picking up the work are in place.

I am checking in regarding the talk that will take place during the reception on Thursday, October 16th. The reception is 5 – 7 p.m. and the talk/discussion will probably be 5:30 – 6:30. I hope that this still works for you. Rick Fox will also be participating. I will be introducing the exhibit and then introducing you and Rick. There will be time for you to show images of your work and considering the theme of the show, it would be interesting to hear about your larger body of work and how the self-portraits play into it. I am asking the same of Rick Fox. There will also be a chance for there to be a Q & A.

I am thrilled to have your work in the exhibit and look forward to meeting you.

Best,
Audrey

I replied that I had the opening on my calendar, but I had no idea that there was a talk.  The curator then said that she had discussed the talk with Julia (who told the curator that she would have to ask me directly) and she thought I was on board.  And I certainly did not know that there was a talk that would include me showing images of my work and a discussion of my “larger body of work” and doing a Q and A.  All of this during the opening of the exhibition.  So it’s not an opening for me, it’s an artist’s talk and a Q and A.  And there was no compensation for my time or travel offered. So I made the work, framed it, supplied a text, my gallery arranged consignment and photos, and in addition, I am supposed to provide my time and discuss my work.

For free.

I said as much in my reply:

On Oct 8, 2014, at 11:12 AM, Steve Locke wrote:

Hi Audrey,
I apologize. I didn’t realize that I was being asked to speak about my work and my studio practice. I thought that contributing the work and the text for the catalog was all. I guess I misunderstood.
I am sorry, but I am not able to contribute my time to the talk.

S

I got an apology for the “lack of clarity in communication” and a hope that I would come to the opening.  I didn’t go.

Later, Julia did a follow up with the curator.  She asked about the catalog and also about the response to the show.  She got this message in return:

Hi Julie (sic),

I am waiting for the photos of the installation from Debbie. You will see that we only hung the 2 paintings that were in good shape. I don’t know if Debbie has been in touch with you regarding the damaged painting. I do know that you responded to her concerned email, the day of the installation, stating that one of the paintings had a large chip of paint off of the front surface of the painting. I saw the photo that you sent back in response, confirming that you knew of the clearly damaged surface. I must say that I was shocked and disturbed that a painting would be sent out in that condition, and that you thought that we would include it in the exhibit.
I was down in your neck of the woods for a couple of hours, a week or so ago, and although your lights were on, the door was locked. I had the catalogs with me at that time. I will mail a couple to you.
As far as interest in Steve’s work, I was there for the reception and haven’t been back since. I know that they get a certain flow through the gallery, but the exhibits are mostly for the benefit of the students. Debbie is the best to answer your question regarding interest in his work and responses by students and faculty. I know that they used the exhibit as material for classwork/papers/research.
These exhibits go by so quickly. This one ends this Saturday. I am making arrangements with Matt Clark to return the paintings to the gallery the beginning of next week. Does this work for you?

Best,
Audrey

Night, 2002, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches

In fact, Julia had been contacted about “damage” to the paintings. She thought it strange and assured the curator that there was no “damage” to the works; that they were how I intended them to be.  Apparently, the curator knows what my work is supposed to look like, (which works are in “good shape”) more that I or the people who have represented me for years.  In fact, Halo, has a small mark where I scratched to the ground of the picture to bring a dot of light to the surface. She also saw fit to reprimand the standards and qualities of the staff and owner of Samsøñ.  To that end, Camilo Alvarez sent a reply:

From: Camilo Alvarez [mailto:kmilo@samsonprojects.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 3:20 PM
To: Audrey Pepper
Cc: Julia Lavigne; Disston, Deborah
Subject: Re: image

Audrey,

My Assistant Director’s name is Julia.

These paintings belong to the artist’s private collection. They are in the condition the artist and I are completely comfortable in exhibiting.
They would never have been released if we didn’t believe they deserved to be seen. Our attention to detail with all the unique works that come through us is thorough.
These works are not ‘damaged’. I would say more ‘damage’ has been made to those who have now been unable to see them.
We look forward to receiving the catalogs, installation images and works. Please note we are open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 to 6PM.

Best,

Camilø Álvårez
Owner/Director/Curator/Preparator

This is really the point where I found out about any of this.  Camilo and Julia worked hard to insulate me from this insulting behavior but it just got to a point where I had to be included in the discussion.  Especially after the Director of the gallery sent Camilo this email:

On Nov 11, 2014, at 3:46 PM, “Disston, Deborah” <D.Disston@snhu.edu> wrote:

Camilo, I think the tone of your email is unnecessary. It was our decision to not show the large painting by Steve because it gave the appearance of being damaged and we did not want to be perceived as poor stewards of our art exhibitions and/or collections. Steve’s reputation and work has in no way shape or form been damaged. As you recall we have exhibited his work in a group exhibition Traversing Gender for which he happily came to give an artist talk. We have happily included his work in our catalog and as Audrey pointed out she was hand delivering them to your gallery and the gallery was locked during your office hours. We all take pride in our work and we should all be respected equally for those efforts. We will be de-installing our exhibit on Sunday and arrangements are being made with the art shipper. I will mail you catalogs and email you installation images. Until then, let’s continue doing the good work we all do and give each other support. – Debbie

Self Portrait at Skowhegan, 2002, 20 x 24, oil on panel with floating frame

Apparently, all of us needing to be respected for our efforts doesn’t apply to me or my vision for my own work.  And again, someone really feels the need to reprimand an adult who has worked in contemporary art venues for his entire career about how an artist’s work should appear – an artist whom he has represented for over 7 years.  And as far as my reputation is concerned, well, I’ll let Camilo address that:

Deborah,

I thought Audrey’s tone was unnecessary as well. I hope you agree. I wonder why I was admonished for expressing and defending my viewpoint?

I am never worried about perceptions. I think if you had shown the painting and someone remarked about its perceived ‘damage’, it could have been a teachable moment about the artist’s process. Steve and I spoke about that very work and its moments and the fact that there is no such thing as perfection. Considering it is a self portrait, the correlation of ‘damage’ upon the painting by the artist makes it art. Think: Dorian Gray. The reflection of time in a painting, with the artist…

I also didn’t mention anything about Steve’s reputation. The inference was that I (or the artist) was being irresponsible by unleashing a ‘damaged’ painting into the world was an affront to my responsibility.
Thus it was more about my reputation being sullied. It seems to me more worry was felt about the perception of your respective reputations in fact by not exhibiting this work.

It is impossible to respect all equally. Some do more than others. I do a lot. I’ve been told I do good, sometimes great work. I have also been told I support great work and whenever anyone questions the inverse, you can expect to hear from me about it.

Best to you and yours,

Camilø Álvårez
Owner/Director/Curator/Preparator

You can see why I love him so much.

I found out about all this as I was driving to get groceries.  I saw the email string and had to pull over to a parking lot to get a hold of myself.  I am used to being insulted about my work.  I am used to being misunderstood.  I am not used to not being taken seriously as an artist and I do not appreciate being told that the decisions I make about presenting the work I make are not art, or worse that they are “damage” or mistakes, or evidence of me not caring about my work, the venue, or the viewers.  This has the weight of a gutter insult to me.  Especially in light of the way this whole thing has been handled.

Camilo calmed me down and I was able to drive the rest of the way home.  He told me to forget the whole thing.  I just cannot.  I sent the following to the Director and the Curator:

Debbie and Audrey,

I am really at a loss to understand the events that have taken place around this show and my work in it. I have learned late that one of the works I sent at your request (Self-portrait at Skowhegan) was not exhibited because it was perceived by the two of you to be damaged. I cannot believe that you think that I would send a damaged work for exhibition. In fact, I had the painting framed at considerable expense to HIGHLIGHT the irregularity of the edge of the support and the difficulty in layering the painting’s surface. This show was supposed to be ABOUT self-examination and that guides every aspect of my practice. Had you seen there is no one left to blame at ICA Boston, you would know that the surfaces and edges of my paintings often show the stresses and decisions that happen in creating a picture. In a show that contains Gillespie (who famously reworked and abraded the surfaces of his pictures) I find it hard to believe that you could not or would not see my work as part of that conversation. I cannot believe that I am so disregarded as a maker that my choices in the way I make my work are questioned and dismissed because of the way they may look to viewers.

My work is supported by the statement I wrote for the catalog.

Camilo Alvarez has known me and my work since 2002 and he and his staff, particularly Julia Lavigne, are deeply knowledgeable about my practice and my ideas. A simple call about the situation would have allowed them or me to educate you about the pictures I make. My “reputation” and my career are in a great amount due to his belief and support of my vision and my work. I found Audrey’s and your messages to Julia and to him very sad. They really do not deserve to be addressed as though they do not understand the work of exhibiting and contextualizing works of art.

Lastly, I was asked to contribute a text to a catalog, for free. I framed and prepared the work for exhibition at no cost to you. And I was put forward to give a public talk about my work under the guise of coming to an opening with no compensation for my time in speaking about my work or my travel. I loved coming out to SNHU and talking with students; it’s part of my life as an educator. But speaking at an opening or giving a talk about my work and my practice with images is not something that any artist would be asked to do for free. I am left with the feeling that my refusal to participate in the talk was the reason for the removal of my work.

After the wonderful experience of participating in TRAVERSING GENDER I am completely shocked and frankly, hurt, at the way my work and the people who work so hard on my behalf have been considered.

I advised my friends Anne and Susanna about this.  I feel a little bit better after getting this all out.  It boggles my mind that in 2014, this is the way that people make determinations about their audience, the people with whom they work, and what they think deserves to be seen.  It is difficult to bear that a  work I made to prove something to my self and to the world was hidden from view because people could not understand the difference between intention and their own ideas of art.

Luc Tuymans, Gaskamer (Gas Chamber) 1986

 One of the greatest works of art of the 20th Century is Luc Tuymans’s Gaskamer (Gas Chamber). In addition to being an image yanked from one of the unspeakable horrors of the murder of European Jewry it is a painting that refuses to obey the conventions of paintings of history.  It’s a modest size instead of being epic.  It is painted in tonal neutrals instead of a rich palette of color.  It is on a warped and angled stretcher that prevents it from being a regular rectangle and instead presents an uncomfortable image in a new form.  This is because of Tuymans’s choices, both formally and conceptually.  I can imagine the curator and director of this exhibition keeping this painting from view because to show it would make people think badly of them.  I think badly of them because they do not understand that art is not about comfort or ease.  It provokes a public conversation.  It’s sad that they do not trust themselves or their viewers enough to ask the question, “Why did the artist do that?  What are they saying to me?”

In light of all this, I got another email from the director of the space.  You would think that I made all of this clear, but apparently, I still don’t know what I am talking about when it comes to my own work:

Dear Steve and Camilo,First I want to preface that I know you both are committed to your profession and do great work. I have always admired the verve with which you engage in the arts and this is one of many reasons we invited you to be a part of our exhibit on self-portraiture.

I believe there are some significant misunderstandings here which I would like to attempt to clear up. First, “Self-Portrait at Skowhegan: is included in the exhibit, It was “Halo” which we chose not to exhibit because there was a significant white spot (chipped paint)on the surface. I contacted Julia the minute I noticed this to let her know of the condition. She in turn sent me an image showing that there was a chip of paint missing. We were not provided with the explanation that such a thing was intentional. Audrey and I discussed what we wanted to do and chose to not include “Halo” .

Here are a few thoughts about your comments about compensation.

It has been our practice at the McIninch Art Gallery to ask our exhibiting artists to speak at our opening reception, to provide bios, artist statements. I do not pay a stipend for that. If you were a guest speaker and not an exhibiting artist, I would. Why is this? Out of our incredibly small budget, we pay for advertising, marketing materials, the cost of printing catalogs, art shipping, insurance, installation costs, staffing, curatorial fees, hospitality costs, taking the artist to dinner after the event. And then there is the in-kind cost of time spent working with professors and providing them with didactic materials so that they can utilize the exhibit in their curricular activities, which is all the time. In exchange for all of these expenditures, I feel that it is fair to ask the artist to speak at an opening reception. It is entirely your prerogative to disagree and chose not to participate.

We are very proud of the exhibit. There is still time to see it. The show runs through Saturday.

The art will be returned next week. I will be forwarding installation shots and more catalogs.

Debbie

Her initial message states that the “large painting” was not shown.  At 20-by-24 inches, Self-Portrait at Skowhegan is the largest work.  But now she says that painting was shown and Halo was not.  So truly, I really have no faith in anything about this at this point.  Listen, if you don’t want to show the work, fine.  I don’t really care.  Just don’t tell me that my work is damaged and don’t be “shocked and disturbed” that a contemporary art work might try to trouble conventional standards of art.  If this is so upsetting, maybe the curatorial career choice is a bad one.

So even though Julia sent them a photo saying that she knew about the spot on the painting and that it was intentional, they still decided it was not.   It was also good to see where the gallery’s priorities are; they have so many expenses that their operation sort of requires the artist to work for a meal.   And clearly, if they were so concerned why didn’t they just send the piece back to me?  Why hold on to it, not show it, not inform me that they were not showing it, and then tell me reprimand me and Samsøñ for sending it?  I am deeply confused and feel silly explaining this over and over again to them.  I contacted my two friends who were in the show and let them know how ridiculously unprofessional this whole thing has turned out to be.  I found out that one of them hadn’t even been invited to the opening and that neither of them had received the catalog. If I was to go out to see this show at this point, it would be to take my work off the walls.

Deborah,

What you referred to as chipped paint on the surface is called a mark. I put the mark on the painting. It’s not an accident, it’s not damaged, it’s not “chipped.” Julia made this clear to you. It would have been better if you let me know you were choosing not to include the work. That would’ve given me the opportunity to take all of my work out of the show. My question to you is this: why do you assume that I do not know what I’m doing as an artist and that I don’t know how I want my paintings to be seen?

Samsøñ provided you with my bio, my CV, and a general statement about my work. They also provided at no cost to you Hi-Rez images of the work for publication.I was asked to craft a special statement for this exhibition. Since as you probably know language is part of my practice as an artist, this is also artwork. Since this was to be published as a document in a catalog for the exhibition, it would be normal for an artist to be compensated for a contribution to a publication.

Lastly, there is a difference between speaking to someone at an opening and being required to provide a slide talk with images and an overview of one’s work. As I said, I enjoyed talking with students during Traversing Gender. That is a very different situation.

Joe Biden famously said, “if you want me to know what you value, show me your budget.” Thanks for making your priorities clearer for me.

I’ve advised my colleagues Anne Harris and Susanna Coffey about this unfortunate situation.

If artists are only valued for their ability to entertain, then they are not valued at all.  In this case, the appearances were more important that the message of the works.  Instead of seeing the artist who poses a question (“Why is that white spot there?  Oh wow, it really makes it seem like it’s a piece of dust illuminated by the light, doesn’t it?) the artist is an irresponsible person who sends out damaged work and needs his “reputation” maintained.  Again, this entire thing has left me very sad.  I cannot wait to get my paintings back from this show.