I am taking a little break from painting after finishing the Bathers show. My husband and I are in the process of buying a house, so I’m just packing, packing and packing right now. After we move in, I’m going to sit down and start doing research for a new series of paintings. I’d love to do a series about my current environment — something about the habits and rituals of lefty, urban professionals in Berkeley, Brooklyn, Philly, etc.
Tell us a little bit about yourself: where is home, and how long have you been a painter?
I live and work in Philadelphia, where I’ve been for about twelve years. My husband and I moved here for my graduate school in 1999 and loved it, so we stayed. I’m originally from Los Angeles — the San Fernando Valley — but I’ve been on the East Coast since college. I’m definitely more of Northeastern city person, although there are a lot of things about the Valley that I miss, and that creeps into my work. I still have a lot of family and friends in California and visit pretty frequently. I’ve always drawn and painted, but I guess going to art school was when I committed to doing it for real.
Could you tell us some more about your paintings? How would you describe your style?
I guess that I’d call them hyper-realist paintings. Stylistically, I think they’re a bit different from photorealism, which I think of as being more faithful to the lens. I use a grid for drawing, but for the painting part, I usually work on the whole painting at once in a fairly classical way. I’m just working from a computer screen instead of from models and studies.
Can you explain how and why you use photography in creating your paintings? How does the use of photography, and the classic “photographic eye” affect your work?
Just for pragmatic reasons, I think it’s hard to get away from using photography as a source if you want to work representationally. If you want to work exclusively from life, no photographs, it places a lot of restrictions on what you can paint. That’s a big part of it: I want to paint images of a world outside my studio. But beyond that, I find the whole visual language of snapshot photography to be so inspiring. I love the intimacy, the awkwardness, the cliches. And with the advent of digital photography, it’s become even easier to take hundreds and hundreds of photographs, which I think has made personal snapshot photography even more of a spontaneous and ephemeral medium.
Paintings, on the other hand, are anything but spontaneous. Even the fastest, most direct paintings require so much preparation and forethought. I think the contrast between the qualities of those media — digital photography and painting — has become an important part of the content of my work. I take what I want from the language of photography, like the “bad” compositions, strange spatial juxtapositions, but I alter other aspects: I do a lot of compositing, I correct for lens distortion and I supplement with other source material (a lot of the images I work from are really low-resolution, so I have to do a lot of interpolation). I pick and choose what I want to emphasize, how much detail I want to include in one area versus another, which is different from the kind of photography that I’m looking at (although not so different from the way a lot of fine-art photographers work).
Would you give a brief walk through your work flow?
I spend a lot of time looking for source material online. When I’ve collected enough images to convince myself that I can make a series, I start to make studies in Photoshop, changing things around to varying degrees. I use a combination of gridding and transfer paper to get the initial drawing down. Once that’s there, I work the painting up with a quite traditional, indirect painting technique: monochromatic underpainting, opaque paint, then lots of glazes. I usually have a few paintings going on at once: one that I’m starting one that I’m finishing, and one that I’m in the middle of.
What artists have influenced you, and how? Who or what inspires you in your personal life and work?
I tend to get really fixated on a few artists at a time. While I was working on this last series, I was looking a lot at 19th-century French painters, like Manet, Monet, Renoir, Seurat. I hadn’t looked seriously at those artists in a long time, and it’s been great to immerse myself in that work for a while. Other artists that come to mind, in no particular order: Ingres, Edward Hopper, Rene Magritte, Wayne Thiebaud, William Eggleston, Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Robert Bechtle, Chuck Close, Mary Cassat, John Singer Sargent. I’ve been going to the Penn Museum in Philadelphia a lot with my little boy, who is Egypt- and Classical-mythology-crazy, and we’ve been looking at a lot of ancient sculpture. I always make him go to the Roman room, because I love Roman portrait sculpture so much.
How has your work evolved over the years from when you where beginning?
I’m kind of a hard-wired representational painter, but that was pretty uncool when I was first starting out. Student attempts at tight representational painting are usually quite painful to look at, and mine were no exception. I tried to do other things, paint more loosely, paint more abstractly, but none of that every worked for my hand, so everything just looked really stilted and mannered. I think artists who work like I do just have to muddle through the awkward years, until they get a chance to build up their technical skills enough to support what they want to do. By the time I went to graduate school, the contemporary art scene had shifted quite a bit. There was starting to be more support for figurative painting, so I didn’t feel quite so much like I had to defend my existence, and I had a chance to think more about my subject matter. I started doing the work that was the foundation for what I’m doing now while I was in grad school. I began using my own archive of family photos as reference material, then branched out to other found photos as my interests shifted and source material became more readily available through photo-sharing websites.
What inspires you to paint and how do you keep motivated when things get tough in the studio?
I’ve always drawn and painted, so I feel a little adrift when I’m not doing it. I love Chuck Close’s line: ”Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.” I’m lucky to be kind of compulsive about my work habits, but there’s definitely some tedium involved in what I do. I have a constant stream of podcasts and favorite TV shows running in the background, which provide just the right level of distraction — it’s kind of amazing how rarely you have to look at the screen to follow what’s going on. So, really, I guess I could say that the prospect of getting to half-watch Lost and Buffy and the X-Files all day long is my motivation when things are tough.
How have you handled the business side of being an artist?
I’ve had steady gallery representation for a while, which helps, because I’m not very business-savvy. My husband has been incredibly supportive of my career, and my mother and in-laws have done a lot for us, especially with child care, which is such a huge issue for women artists. I could do a whole Q & A about that issue alone.
What is your family background? Were there any artists or creative types in the family?
My grandfather was an extremely talented, self-taught commercial artist, and my uncle, John Lane, is a terrific illustrator and animator. I’m the youngest of five kids. The older four all have very successful careers in grown-up fields — I’m living the youngest-sibling cliche by being an artist.
What upcoming shows, exhibitions, do you have coming up?
I’m in summer group show right now at Lyons Wier, but I’m starting from scratch with a new body of work, and I’m not sure when I’ll have enough done to show it.
What’s the best part of being a painter?
I love working hard and making things. But seeing finished work on a wall, nicely lit, out of my messy studio is probably the best part.
The hardest and the easiest part of your painting passion?
How do you keep yourself motivated and your paintings fresh?I’m very slow with my production, so deadline panic is my great and constant motivator. The flip side of being obsessive is that I tend to burn out on my subjects after a while. Changing over to a new subject series every year or two helps sustain my interest.
Do you conduct workshops for aspiring painters?
I teach beginning-level painting part-time.
Before you put your work “out there”. Do you have it critiqued by someone else, or do you just go with what your heart tells you is right?
I sometimes ask for critiques, but for the most part, I go with my gut with the actual paintings. I tend to talk over the idea part of things a lot more, especially with friends who work in other fields (academics, writers, etc.). It’s important to me that my ideas resonate with non-artists.
The first painter that comes to your mind in front of your next blank canvas?
Sargent. I’ve been looking a lot at his amazing, creepy portraits of children. I don’t know how or if that will find its way into my work, but I love them so much.
