LUCY MINK

Makeshift, oil on linen, on wood, 14 x 15 ", 2011

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I am working on 9 different paintings that will be the last paintings I work on in this studio. I am moving from Syracuse, NY to the Concord, NH area in June. The way I work is very close to the way a person writes in a diary. My plan is, hopefully, to finish most of these and the unfinished work will bridge my current and soon to be past Syracuse life with something unknown and new. On a recent trip to NJ (where I am from) I came up with some titles, I love it when titles come so easily you just know they are right.

Can you describe your working routine?

My studio is in my home. I love it that way. I basically wake up and take care of the kids. If they are at school I can paint, if they are home due to snow days, sick days, vacation, etc., then I just paint in the evening hours. I work on about 3-4 paintings at once, but if one is going really well I'll stick with it for a few hours. I hang work in progress all around the house when I can't get as much done, this way I can at least be looking at them.

                                                                 work in progress

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

My studio space is currently a front room in our house with lots of windows with leaded glass. It has great light, but it’s small. I share it with my kids because my daughter loves to draw as well. In New Hampshire I will have more room. We will be renting a house at first, but the rental house has an extra room that is great for a studio. This could change my work in a good way. I will be less cramped. This latest body of work has me wanting more space. I want to make bigger paintings and smaller paintings and I can just step back further from them.

I take what life gives me when it comes to art making, and the time and space allowed for it. One of my strengths is working in any situation. For instance, this summer I will be driving the kids to a 3 hour camp 5 days a week for 3 weeks in a row, it’s a 25 minute drive from my house so I decided instead of losing work time in the car I am going to park in Manchester, NH and paint from the back of my Subaru, only in small 8 by 9 panels. This way I get the maximum amount of studio time and I save some gas. I hope it works out.

studio

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

The first few layers of paint often get put on and wiped off until I find something I'm comfortable with. I will draw in some lines with oil paint and often they will stay. I start adding thicker layers. There’s so much editing that goes on with some paintings, and very little with others. Every painting is different and I like it that way. Some start a certain way and stay on the same path, others get completely derailed over and over (for the better), almost not making it, and then somehow I find a way to end it and even title it.

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

At the moment, that I'm going to be excited to paint in NH and when I arrive in the summer, my kids will be out of school. There will be lots of trips to the ocean and other directions, and then how I will paint at night.

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

For years I experimented with everything from wax, rubber, latex, cloth, and way too much galkyd. In 2009 I stopped using additional materials with my paint, and I stopped using galkyd because I was using so much with my oil paint that it was very runny. Some paintings have wax as well, but it just run its course with me, and I lost interest. I longed to just smell oil paint again like I did in grad school. I now only use oil paint and linseed oil.

You are all allowed in the rejected area,

oil on linen, on wood, 14 x 15", 2011

What does the future hold for this work?

As far as upcoming shows, this summer I will have 4 paintings in a group show at the Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA. The show is titled "Grey" and it opens July 30.

Thank you Studio Critical for the interview and all of the other wonderful interviews on here, they have been great to read.

SHARON BUTLER

Study 2, 2011, acrylic on wood, 9.5 x 12"

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I am working on two 40 x 60” oil-on-canvas diptychs, four larger acrylic pieces on a six-yard roll of unprimed canvas, a few scraps of canvas and linen,  and some studies on wood panels. I’m interested in linear perspective, geometry, incompleteness, scale and color. The particular factor I find the most intriguing these days is the utter relativity of color, which provides endless surprises.  

Can you describe your working routine?

I discussed my rigid winter schedule recently at (standard) interview, but from May to August, when I don’t have to teach at Eastern Connecticut State University, my routine is much more flexible. I usually have a long to-do list that includes posts I want to write for Two Coats of Paint and ongoing studio projects. Unless I have deadlines for articles or exhibitions, I can work on whatever I please.

The attic studio

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

I have a warren of rooms in the attic of an old New England house in my hometown and a small studio at the Elizabeth Foundation in NYC that I share with a fairly well known, frequently traveling, conceptual artist. I’ve adapted my art practice to suit my circumstances – that is, by working on some projects that are essentially portable, such as blogging, writing, and digital compositions.

 Working in small spaces affects my painting as well. Scale is content. I like figuring out ways to make big work within my limitations: I work alone in two small spaces, spend little money on materials, and transport things in a small station wagon and via the US mail. Large pieces that I see in Chelsea’s hangar-sized spaces often seem institutional – as if they were funded by corporate interests, made by an army of assistants in an assembly-line fashion to fill museum walls. Eventually, as I consolidate my New York painting practice, I’d like to work at that scale while keeping the work as personal and introspective as it has been with smaller pieces.

Studio at Elizabeth Foundation, New York

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

 

These new paintings have been hovering in an unfinished state for a couple months. I like drawing out the process, so I’m using pencil and acrylic on small wood panels to make interim studies of details in the paintings. I used to do this on the computer, but now I do it by hand. I’ve enjoyed working on the studies so much that I’m reluctant to finish the paintings, the very incompleteness of which has provided a good subject for new work.

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I suppose trying to accept the fact that things may never be resolved. I’m not trying to be glib. Accepting profound irresoluteness is harder than finding more superficial resolution; hence the interest in incompleteness that I mentioned above.

Sometimes I also feel misunderstood. I’m a slow, doubtful painter who’s more comfortable using the different languages of painting like ready-mades rather than trying to develop my own unique language. I go through convincing periods in which I believe in painting, but when critics call me a modernist, I feel like an impersonator.

Unfinished diptych, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 "

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

Recently I’ve begun to use acrylic paints. After working with oils for twenty years, the quick-drying time was initially frustrating, but now that I’ve discovered retarder, I’m growing fond of acrylics. I rarely buy expensive paint – I’m content with basic colors from Utrecht’s and Gamblin – and only buy what I need. Acrylics do, however, have intrinsic limits, which means I will always go back to oils. I like the paint to age in unexpected ways, and acrylic won’t do that. I loved the 2007 Morris Louis show at the Hirschhorn--the unprimed canvases had yellowed and in some places the oil had separated from the pigment creating unexpected halos around the poured paints.

When I visit other artists’ studios, I check out what kind of brushes, paints and mediums they use. It surprises me when they use tiny tubes of very expensive paint or have stockpiles of supplies in their closets. I like the feeling of having just what I need and no more. I prefer brights and filberts to rounds and flats, and I use both bristle and synthetic sable. I sewed a linen carrier for my brushes so that I can bring them back and forth between studios.




What does the future hold for this work?

I have no idea what direction the work will take. That’s what I’m trying to wrap my mind around: we never know what’s going to happen. Kelly Reichardt’s new film Meek’s Cutoff, about three families lost on the Oregon Trial in the 1800s, is a fascinating meditation on not knowing.

"Incompleteness is relative"

Is there anything else you would like to add?

As far as exhibitions, I’m curating “Forget-me-nots,” a group show for a non-profit space in Connecticut that opens at the end of May. The artists, all colleagues from Eastern Connecticut State University, transform transient thoughts and vague private recollections, allowing them a place in our shared memory and collective history. I’m also co-organizing ArtExchange, an exhibition of more than 50 artists for the 2012 College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles. I participated in the exhibition two years ago in Chicago and I’m pleased to be an organizer this year.

In conjunction with an exhibition of my paintings at TowerBrook Art Project, curated by Joelle Held (on display through the end of August) I’m in the process of making Sketchbook, an artist’s book that should be available at the Two Coats Bookshop this summer. I’m also about to make some new videos for Two Coats TV, an online channel that features videos made by (and about) painters.


Thanks, Studio Critical, for providing an opportunity to share my projects with your readers.

PAUL CORVERS

Recent painting, oil on canvas, no title, 2011

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I am currently working on several canvases at the same time: a few small paintings and a number of bigger works. One of these is a 50 centimetres high by 180 centimetres wide horizon which I have been working on for a while already. It is progressing steadily.

Can you describe your working routine?

I do not really have a routine. I hardly ever work at regular times. Only when I arrive in my studio, do I decide what I am going to do. I may continue with canvases that I have already been working on, but sometimes it is better to let a painting rest/mature, give it time, and take some time myself. In that case, I may start with a fresh painting or do preliminary work like preparing or mounting canvases, or making panels.

works in progress

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

I have an average size studio: it covers 50 square metres (10 by 5 metres) and is 4.25 metres high. Two large windows facing north provide me with beautiful filtered light; no sharp sunlight with cast shadows etc. The space is suffused with tranquillity. That is what I need to be able to work, to distance myself from the issues of the day. I have been working here for more than ten years now. Unfortunately, in one and half years time I will have to move out.

My present studio has definitely had a great impact on my work. My previous studio was a garage from which finished work had to be replaced to a storage space as soon as possible to be able to start with new paintings. Fortunately, my present studio offers the opportunity to have my work around me for a longer period of time. This is important because sometimes looking is better than working. You start asking yourself questions like: Did I make the right choices? Am I sure, and why? The proximity of the paintings that preceded the present work helps to create a dialogue. It clarifies the steps I have taken, confirms my decisions, gives incentives or raises questions.

The calmness and space of my studio are the most important pillars of my work. Since the moment I have rented this studio, my work has developed more explicitly in the direction of serenity. The landscape elements that were already present in my work have received an increasingly prominent role.

studio

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

I generally start from a concrete idea. This idea is usually connected to things that I am working on or that keep me busy, and is often landscape related. My inspiration is frequently sparked by little pencil sketches -- often not much bigger than a matchbox -- based on observations that I have made in the countryside. I also make sketches from photos I have taken. Sometimes it is a combination of these things. There are many of such little drawings in my studio. I often flick through them when I want to start working on a new painting. Once I am working, I let myself be influenced by what happens; the next steps usually present themselves automatically. If not, then I just give it some time.

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

That is a difficult question to answer. Of course, difficulties often arise, but in the end there is always a solution.

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

I usually work with paint on canvas or panel. I rarely use paper as a ground. The choice of the paint has a great influence on my work and depending on what I want to make/achieve, I choose acrylic, egg tempera, or oil paint. In the past I used to work primarily -- for practical reasons -- with acrylic, which is ideal for creating strongly diluted layers. However, the risk is that it turns out too much like plastic. That is the one of the reasons why I started using less acrylic paint. I prefer oils and egg tempera now because of their possibilities and the skin of the paint. Theme and material go together, and my current work asks for these kinds of materials.

work in progress

What does the future hold for this work?

Nobody knows what the future holds; not for my work and not for myself. I would like to follow the path I am on at the moment and continue my journey, in search for new horizons.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I really enjoyed taking part in Valerie’s initiative. I hope the readers of this article took pleasure in reading it, and might have learned something from it, maybe to go and see visual arts more often and -- most of all -- to take their time to appreciate it.

FARRELL BRICKHOUSE

The Falconer @ Rest II, oil on canvas, 8" x 10", 2011

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I was invited by the Silas Marder Gallery to submit 3 canvases each 8” x 10” for an annual group show this Spring. I usually hate due dates but this is an excellent opportunity to introduce my work to a new community in the Hamptons on Long Island, NY. So it has focused my efforts in the studio but I still need to keep my normal creative process going. These 3 small canvases are the inheritor of my other labors and it’s been surprisingly fun.

Can you describe your working routine?

Fortunately I live and work at home. I need to putter, make a cup of coffee, answer emails, pop into my studio and see where I left off the last working session and then catch 10 minutes of news before I settle down to some serious fun in the studio in the afternoon. I read my journal to remember what I was doing the days before. I teach two days a week and so there is some re-entry process from being out of the studio. I break for dinner and then in the evening realize that the day’s efforts are usually but a warm up for the hours of painting to come.

Studio

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

For many years I had a rather large live/work loft in Tribeca, NYC. Lots of wall space, which allowed me to pin up dozens of works on paper, sources and other things that interested me, as well as a many works in- progress. I lately moved to a smaller traditional house, the only one I’ve lived in since my childhood, and it has necessitated the editing down my whole process into a micro version of itself. I’ve also reduced the size of my canvases to accommodate the smaller studio, once a living room.  I have a separate “dinning room” where I move works I want to live with and consider if they are actually done or not.

Studio table

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

 I’m 62 now and I have this large vocabulary to draw from, imagery found a decade ago is available and malleable. The poet Yeats called it his “circus animals” he could bring out on stage to perform. The issue is to animate them anew while all the time looking to expand one’s vocabulary. So the question is what do I paint today, what needs to be said and how best to do that? I always have a number of canvases going creating a dialogue between things that frees me to take the chances I need in my work. I will run with themes seeing which canvas realizes it best freeing the others to then spin off and improvise yet further variations or something new altogether. Of course things take their own course regardless of what I intended and there are always surprises in how things unfold. We start with a kind of monologue on the canvas that then needs to turn into a dialogue.

Studio table

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I am on a wonderful creative moment and things emerge each time I work that surprise me. Sometimes the whole process collapses, what was a presence in a previous painting now is just a cartoon of its self, it’s frightening but part of the making of things. I work my way through these times very quickly right now fortunately.

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

I like gouache, oil paint and encaustic, lead foil, wood, plaster and canvas. Just the sight of these materials in my studio thrills me. These days I am painting in oils on canvas or wood panels and experimenting with mediums. There are periods of expansion and ones of consolidation. It’s a talent to know where one should be in one’s process.

Stapleton Rainbow, oil & media on canvas, 20" x 16", 2010

What does the future hold for this work?

I hope they end up in wonderful collections and be seen by lots of people if that’s what you mean. I have a one- person show coming in September of 2012 with the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY. I also love living with my work and often return them to the studio months later with a better understanding of what’s possible.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I’ve stated that my paintings are a personal odyssey, a vehicle to carry me forward and find some deeper unity in what is happening in and around me. I believe the making of a painting needs that moment of epiphany and a trace of how the imagery conveyed through paint was discovered and experienced by the artist. Not a graphic notation of the language of experience but the mystery of it. And thanks for this opportunity to share my work.

KY ANDERSON

Sewn, 22" X 22", acrylic & ink on paper, 2011

What are you working on in your studio right now?

Last year I had a solo show in Kansas City, MO. The space was large so I ended up working non-stop in my studio for several months to prepare. After that I needed a bit of a break. I felt my work had become repetitive and it needed to digest for a while. So I took a few months off from the studio, but over the past few months I have gone back to my studio to start working again. I am working slowly & freely with no real plan in mind. It’s actually really nice.

Can you describe your working routine?

I work in blocks of time, sometimes almost every day for a few weeks and then nothing for a few weeks. I really have no routine; sometimes I work better at night and then sometimes better in the morning. I often walk by my studio, something grabs me and I go in for 10 minutes and paint blocks of color on all my paintings. Then walk away for the rest of the day. I always check in with my studio at least once a day. It helps to keep it fresh in my mind, and then as I’m doing other things throughout the day I have a crisp image of what I’m working on.

2010 studio

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

I am always moving studios. Living in NY it is has been hard to find a good, affordable space. So for the past 15 years I’ve been packing it up and moving it around every few months. Right now I am working in a small bedroom of a house my husband and I recently bought, it’s 2 hours outside of NYC and luckily it came with a barn that we are going to fix up this summer for studio space. I can’t express how excited I am about the idea of settling into a space. I have simple, but wonderful fantasy of shelves with supplies, clean wall space and a giant worktable. The space I work in really affects my work, if the space is small and clean then my paintings become small and clean. If the space is larger and I can make a mess then my paintings become looser and I can really work the way I like to work. A larger space lets me work on many paintings at one time, sometimes 15 or more. I walk around with one color and paint just a touch of something on each painting. Then stand back and assess the situation.

Future studio

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

I paint on many paintings at the same time, each one works with the one next to it. Working in this way I layer the paint, ink and subtle imagery. I paint intuitively, without thinking of the finished painting. I paint until something clicks and I know it is done. Often the real meaning of a painting comes out after it is finished, and often I don’t really quite understand what they are about. I feel that throughout my years of painting my paintings are slowly turning more and more abstract, and I’m slowly becoming okay with that. I used to try to define everything, or think that each painting had to have its own story. I’ve learned to let the story be less defined.

Present studio

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I have a pile of unfinished works on paper, probably 100 paintings or so, that are unresolved. I go through them about once a month and look for something to pull out. Sometimes I’ll finish a painting I started years earlier, so a simple work on paper can be a painting that was started 5 years prior.
I rarely toss a painting I feel is unsuccessful, I put it in the unfinished pile, and sometimes it is so satisfying to pull it out a year later and paint completely over it.

Pushing up, 22" X 22", acrylic & ink on paper, 2011

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

The final piece is usually always a painting, but I do experiment with other materials. I often make 3D work with all sorts of materials and sewn versions of my paintings. Most of these things never leave my studio, but they are a necessary part of my working routine and help feed my paintings.

 

   

 

SANDRA PERLOW

Pitted streets, 41 x 30 cm

collage & acrylic on canvas, 2011

What are you working on in the studio right now?

I am working on some mixed media images on canvas. I lay different papers as well as fabric on the canvas. and pull the images together with oil sticks and acrylics.

Can you describe your working routine?

I get to the studio about 9;30. I look at  my e-mail, ,pick up mail. I begin with sketches that  I might have done on location.  I observe other work in different stages of completion. I start working on current work. I work until 4:30

  studio

                                                                        

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

My studio space is located in the downtown area of Chicago. The space is divided into two rooms. One room has my computer, bookcase, files, closet and sink. The main room has two tables, one for sketching and the other for painting and reading. I like the studio  to be near  people and buildings. I like to watch movement and look at worn surfaces of buildings. as well as patterns on buildings.

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

I make drawings constantly as I work on my paintings.  I look at my collections of photos as well as color charts and keep adjusting shapes and colors until I am satisfied with the images, color and composition.

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I have the most trouble with my mixed media images working with fabric. I want the fabric to be a secondary part of the composition. I have to find a way to incorporate the images with oil stick and acrylic.

Studio

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

I experiment with different materials. In the last year i have combining woodcuts as well as monoprints into my work. I also have been working with fabrics in my collages.

What does the future hold for this work?

The future holds for me continuing to combine printmaking with oil sticks and acrylics. Traveling and drawing on location is important to my work practice

Hung up, 41 x 30 cm,

woodcut & mixed media on paper, 2011

Is there anything else you want to add?

My art work has continued to make my life richer and more exciting. I hope to keep working for the rest of my life.