Recently we had the opportunity to interview William Ruller, a current featured artist at the Linda Matney Gallery. Through conversation regarding his childhood in upstate New York, his history with use of tone and color, and his work currently featured at the gallery, he contextualizes his art in a broader dialogue about disaster and human intervention. Ruller’s artwork reflects a childhood spent living in an environment contaminated by humans. Through anecdotes about his early life in upstate New York, Ruller describes the connection between his childhood memories and the abandoned, disintegrating environment featured in his art. His pieces underscore themes of nature, decay, and cycles of deterioration and regrowth. Abandoned buildings, structures, and their effects on the living environment are key elements to his work.
During his interview, Ruller gives us insight into a few of his specific pieces, including one painting titled, “Silence I Huile, Argile sur Toile,” currently available for purchase at the Linda Matney Gallery. William shares details about his creative process, including techniques in use since his undergrad as well as his more recent use of vibrant, electric colors that strike out against the more faded tones of gray and blue typical of his work.
Our conversation with Ruller centers his paintings in a larger discussion about humans and our environment. His interview sheds light on his artwork as individual pieces contributing to an ongoing larger commentary on the fine line between disintegration and reclamation; or the point between life and death.
Hannah Kuhns
Brian:
I was looking at the article about you in the landscape art review from earlier this year. And I was trying to kind of get a sense of where do landscape or the lived environment, places that you've been how do they kind of make their way into the painting, into the design? And this quote from you kind of struck me concerning the truly ephemeral qualities of existence.
“It's, what's really connects all my work. My work will eventually be gone. I will be gone. And there's a good chance that the landscapes that I have seen will still be there most likely different, but still there”
Brian:
So I was really struck by this idea of different landscapes. So some parts may be upstate New York or parts of Southeast France that you're now thinking about and the idea that human intervention ruins things and alters the environment, but also we're also seeing the world of nature reclaiming it and maybe this can be kind of an opening question that directly takes us back to the Task that is the Toil group show. The theme of that show, if I want to characterize it, how I'm kind of interpreting the theme of the show, it's emerging from darkness emerging from disaster COVID or otherwise. And so I found it really interesting that your work reflects on the ultimate disaster, which is when we're completely gone and all of our stuff disappears. And so I was very curious, how did you specifically pick a work for this show?
William:
That's a very good question. I tried to pick something that I felt was right the moment where I something would be just beginning to recognize that it's coming out of the horrific event. Like it's still in the event, but you're just starting to go “ I can go in that direction and get out of it. “I wanted to pick some that hat had somewhat of a Chernobyl-like feeling because there's a lot of interesting things that are coming up about like Chernobyl now. They're bringing in all those drones and things like that in the area. I liked that idea of the exact moment when things are about to completely disintegrate, but at the same time, everything is still there
American, b. 1981
Silence I Huile, Argile sur Toile, 2020
Oil, clay on canvas
17 7/10 × 11 4/5 in
45 × 30 cm
.
Lee:
I had asked you to find us a work that was Jungian. Can you comment on how this piece intersects?
William Ruller
American, b. 1981
Gore, 2020
Oil, Clay on Canvas
32 × 24 in
81.3 × 61 cm
.
William:
When you brought up the Jungian concept, I really wanted to have “that moment” again, because he did a lot of dream analysis and whatnot, and I want it to have that moment where you, where the piece was not completely sure if it was still asleep or awake and where it was going, like having all of these symbols present, but not completely formed and not completely explained. So I was trying to play with both Jungian concepts of the dream analysis, but then also man and his symbols, so some sort of nod in reference to that book also
With painting, I like when you hit a point when the painting can either collapse upon itself or it can continue to work, but there's always this moment when it's sitting on a Razor's edge, I think every painter goes through this, you recognize that you don't really have any idea what you're doing, even though you've been doing it for X amount of time, but the painting could completely just fall on its face. And I, there are certain times when I, like, I feel like I can extend that feeling with the painting and then basically call it finished
Brian:
Your pallet is a lot of neutrals and I think it's very evocative of earth, clay concrete, be things are natural, also kind of manmade materials. When you're working with the paint, are you, are you thinking in terms of like, I want to be using like ochres and I want to be using CNAs in terms of like actual pigments that you're using that kind of reinforced this materiality of mineral ?
William:
To be honest with you, I'm not, I'm not a big color guy. I'm a tone person. So I know my tonal range at this point in my career. I always usually will start off with bright, pretty colors, really obnoxious, like super bright reds, super-bright yellows. I always try to begin with a work like that, and then I always just muddy them down because it's not something that I know. I personally don't really think that there's an awful lot of painters that have a full, complete understanding of color. I know what colors work and I know what colors don't work for what I want to say. I try not to like push too much to try (make it) like anything more than what it is. And also I'm really basing everything off of my childhood of growing up in upstate New York. So I know what the colors are there. If it is a red it's the barn red, but it's faded. It's not, it's not freshly painted anymore. It's like ( it has) been there for a few years. it's, it's kind of like you know if your mother makes like apple pie, that you like that sort of apple pie (and) you always gravitate towards it because you have an instinctual memory that's just there. So you know where to go with it. Occasionally I will purposely hobble myself within a painting by making myself do something, especially color wise or form wise that is outside of what I normally do and usually it will push me. Recently I've been working more with solid blocks of brighter colors to offset the sort of earth tones that I normally do.
Brian: I actually, I've got a few of your, your paintings Williams that I think are kind of you know, so like this one here, I 'm curious, was this like very red and then slowly it kind of got knocked out?
William Ruller’s small works at the Matney Gallery
Yeah. Yeah. And to be honest with you, I even went back in with the red on the left-hand side. I went back in I was like I really need to re-redden this up I put those circles in like just brilliant, mixing permanent pink with a cadmium red. I was thinking I am going to go all out on this. This is going to be like candy, apple red. And I put it down and honestly it becomes this fun test for me. I'm like, how long can I keep this here before I have to do something to make it so that I can, be a little bit more comfortable with it. So I generally we'll see how long it will.
I went through this really interesting moment where I was doing these. , I don't know completely what is behind the of the concept of these circles, these three circles in an image I have to be honest, I've been putting circles within work of mine, I think since I was an undergraduate. Maybe around 2000 and 2003, I remember that I was drawing a lot of circles and things. And then years later, just when I did this body of work, the circle slowly came back which I guess is a pretty normal thing. Like all painters end up kind of going back into earlier concepts at some point in their career.
Brian:
It feels like a passage of time with moons over a landscape. Whereas in the previous one that red reads more like a sun right on horizon. I think if it was just one painting by itself and if I didn't have the larger body of work, I think I would be reading it in a much more just like flat geometry but it's interesting how, when you repeat the same shape and a small change in color it is enough to give it a different kind of interpretation for me. To be honest, even though they are very, very similar as paintings, this particular one to me was a little bit more like subtly violent. Whereas the other one to me, reminds me of Sunday morning or something
Lee:
This kind of reminds me of really intense psychotherapy or a psychological crisis. I'm looking at the colors which are kind of raw and they're very acidic, and there's a kind of honesty here.
Brian
So I think that this idea of like the color is that you have a, when you're a kid, like what are the colors in the landscape and in the town? One of the things that has always struck me, I live in Northern Virginia, and just Virginia as a whole is such a green place. Right. It is so incredibly green. There have been times for example, where like, I've like this sounds kind of strange, but like I would be taking photographs of my paintings and when I'm like setting up the white balance and everything, the thing that always would go wrong is like, if I was taking photos, unless it was the middle of winter, if it was like the middle of summer, like all the shadow would be green. Like it would be one photo after the other, if I was using any natural light and there was like this green to it everywhere. And then my family, we always have the story of this coworker of my mother's, who grew up in Arizona, New Mexico, moved to DC for a job and only stayed for a year and said she couldn't handle the green. It was too green. And it was unnatural for perspective, it was unnatural for it to be so green.
Victoria:
She should not go to West Virginia.
Lee:
It feels like it is kind of a caustic green to me
Victoria:
(Lee,) I really liked what you said about it being acidic because it does kind of have a toxicity.
William;
Yeah, to be perfectly Frank, it does. There was a good size stream that runs through the town that I'm originally from. There were leather mills. The city itself is produced leather. That's the main thing that they did for their entire history. This was upstate New York and it is totally different than New York city and they're not big fans of the EPA up there so they would just dump the leftover dyes from the gloves right into this stream. And I used to swim in this stream when I was a child, which means that most likely if you turn the lights off, I'll glow, but this sort of color green was a known green to me cause I've seen it in coming off piping and things like that. Because my family all still lives there when I go back, I usually go into a lot of these old mills. They're all condemned now and I photograph everything. That way I have some sort of mental record and I will base things off of particular images that I'll take and be like, oh, I really liked that passageway. I might see a weird acidic green puddle of God only knows what that's sitting there on the floor and it’s something I could eventually mine.
Lee:
I was thinking urine when I saw this work
William:
Totally it’s got that. It’s sort of like the Warhol Oxidation Painting his assistants’ made. They were like drinking different kinds of beer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lee:
That is exactly what I was thinking when I look at the work in the gallery
Brian:
So, so I take it, uh, Gloversville New York, it's got a lot of like chromium salts and acids., all through these factories?
William :
Yes, When I was a kid, this is not a fake story, the elementary school that I went to was right across the street from a mill, and one spring, we were all playing during recess, we were all playing football outside and there were all these sink holes with this purple sludge in them because the mill across the street during the summer had ripped the ground up and just dumped their chemicals and then just put the grass back over the top of it. And now to this day, they have to, every couple of years, rip the ground up and then put down a huge amount of clay and then put the ground back down just to keep the chemicals down in there Really like the EPA disaster.
Brian:
I'm imagining what these landscapes look like when we're gone. Like those sinkholes reopened and you just have purple acid purple puddles for awhile.
William:
Exactly. That's like the thing I always keep coming back to in my brain, especially now, since I live in a place this. I'm sitting right now in a building that was constructed before Europeans came across the ocean. So it's really interesting to me too, to think about the idea of all of these things. You can look back, especially, in the states at all of the malls that were constructed in the seventies and the eighties that all eventually closed by the two thousands and they are now building new ones right down the street. And those old malls are rotting in on themselves. And it wasn't like, it was that particularly long ago. It was 20 years or so years ago
Brian:
One and two, they filmed in a mall very close to me specifically because it was falling apart, but it also hadn't been renovated in awhile. So minimal set decoration was needed to make it look like it was still in the mid-eighties. And the idea is as soon as they were done shooting, it was already kind of on its way to permanently closing. When you moved to France, this was my naive belief. I was thinking you would have found like Roman ruins, you would have gone from, here are the ruins of the 20th century in America to here are the ruins of like millennia, but it sounds also like, you're like I'm in this house that's just older than the US . There are these ruins in the US very recent ones. I'm now in something that's kind of still alive. That's way older than that entire tradition. Is there a sense of a lack of ruins in the Southeast of France for you?
William:
I have to be honest. I don't really think that it's completely sunk in. I have lived down here for two years and I've been teaching down here since 2016 and I drive past a bridge that was built, by the Romans almost every single solitary day. I don't think that my brain actually computes it . I know that that, that thing has existed for well over 2000 years. But like at the same time, I don't really think that my American brain fully comprehends that vastness of time within a structure. Does that make sense?
Brian:
It makes, it makes a lot of sense. Um, and this is a non hypothetical. These are discussions I have every semester I teach a class that's like art appreciation, intro to art. So I'm asking non-art majors questions about ancient architecture. World history. And when we start looking at things like the pyramids of Giza or, uh, Roman bridges, a kind of ancient masonry that kind of stands the test of time. I often ask them, we live in the Washington DC area Mid-Atlantic , what's like the oldest building you can think of, and how old is it? And people really struggled to think of anything that is more than a hundred years old. And maybe they'll say the White House, maybe it sells to say the Capitol and then they'll immediately think it's older than it really is. And I have to explain like, well, I mean, this is the third version. It burned down twice. And even then it's maybe 200 years old.
William:
it's a very funny thing. I'm assuming that not all Americans have that way of thinking about things. I can think about forts that are in the Northeast that were used during the French and Indian war, so 1757 and to me that's old, but something that is BC, it's old, but again I don't think that my brain can comprehend that old. it's like knowing that your grandparents are old, but knowing if you have great great grandparents that were alive, I don't think you can comprehend that amount of time. at least I can't, like, I know that my brain doesn't really go that far. Like I get it, but I don't totally get it.
Tori: I feel like in the U S you almost have this culture of disuse where if something does feel old, then we don't kind of continue to live in and with it. So the fort is something to look at, but then when you're in Europe, these things are ancient. They've been there for thousands of years, but it's something that's part of life instead of separate from it
Lee.
They tore down what they called “peasant dwellings” in Norfolk Virginia in the sixties, and they were dating back to the 1600s. They didn't care about it.
William:
I think that, that, that is also also a part of the thing, but the other part is too, I think, um, th the, the reason why I probably Brian is to, because now I'm thinking about your question of like, why is it that I don't really make work based on that is that, uh, there's not, I'm not, I, I have to be honest with you. I'm not really interested in that conversation. I think, I think I'm more interested in the conversation a little bit more dealing with like modernity to a certain extent and a little less with antiquity. Um, because I think the other part is too, is that, and although I could abstract things down in a way that that would, would suit more in my particular aesthetic. I think that if I did start to paint as I, you know, like some of the co like a Coliseum in oral or, or something along those lines, or like, uh, you know, huge Roman aqueducts, I think that it would, it would become, I think that that conversation would change what I'm really trying to, to, I guess, not necessarily like shed light on or talk about, but, but what it would be like my voice talking about it would be like me as a singer singing someone else doing a cover song, I guess.
William:
Yeah.
Brian:
So we've talked about tanneries in upstate New York, you also mentioned Chernobyl briefly. I'm curious if there are like places that maybe you haven't yet been along this line, kind of these post-industrial spaces that you've been interested in visiting or, or other places
William:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, I remember that again, I don't really know what is going on in Detroit at the moment, but there was like a moment when Detroit--I think it was pre before they tried to sell off their art collections. So this was maybe 10 years ago. Um, when I was really like, I would love to go into some of the mills in Detroit cause that's a really interesting place, but I really have been lucky enough to where I've lived throughout. Like I lived in Oregon for quite a while and also in New Mexico. So I understand the "It's too green." And also like in Georgia, I've lived in Philly and things like that. So, and I've, I worked as an art handler when I was younger. So I drove trucks around all over the place, um, from the east coast to the west. So I was able to a lot of times to just like stop and see interesting places, but I know that there are definitely like the US is sort of randomly littered with these small areas. Like you can even just find old hotels. I remember taking photographs of a place in Illinois where there was, it was an old Super 8 motel, or maybe it was a like Motel 6, completely abandoned for maybe five or 10 years, maybe maximum 10 years. But they had literally built one--I'm not exaggerating--like 10 feet away. So I got to like go in, but like, I, you could find these places pretty much everywhere in the US, which is kind of a horrifically beautiful thing, I guess, ‘cause it's like kind of saddening, but at the same time for me, it works out nicely because you can see something interesting for me anywhere.
Brian:
I think the motel can be like that. I also think of, you'll be driving down a country road or route and there'll be the big farm and there'll be like the currently in use barn. And then like, you know, a few thousand feet away, there's like the barn that they decided to abandon. And then a few thousand feet after that, sometimes there's the one that's like just like a lump on the ground. That clearly was the barn before that barn. And I think it's tricky when it's a mall or a tannery, but if it's like a two-story or three-story wooden barn, that's actually something that nature can reclaim in right time. And it is kind of sad and beautiful.
William:
Yeah. It's like seeing poetry, but as opposed to hearing it, I guess is the best way for me. And knowing that, like in all those seconds that you're standing and looking at it and as you're breathing that air, that the thing itself, the thing that you're looking at, is falling apart and then disintegrating. But at the same time, the thing that is making it fall apart and disintegrate is like creating more. That juxtaposition or duality to me is like, I think that's phenomenal. So again, I don't want to get like too hyperbolic, but I feel like it's very much the human condition. I mean, every breath I take keeps me alive and at the same moment, every breath I take is a moment that I'm getting closer to my ultimate demise. So it's that really like, sort of interesting play between those two things happening simultaneously and in conjunction with one another.
Victoria:
I feel like that can be very tragic and sad, but at the same time, it's also very reassuring, which is interesting. My first thought, when I looked at your piece in the show, was that I found it very calming oddly. I was curious and you know, the green was vibrant and like acidic, but something about the circles, I think, and also, like you were saying your kind of appreciation for tones, set me at ease.
William:
Yeah. I never really am attempting to be particularly abrasive. I don't know how to really like, fully describe it, but if I was going to speak about it musically, there are certain times that I wanted to have a little bit of like a punk aesthetic, you know, a little bit of like a punch in the face, but at the same time, most of the time I'm really more interested in, if I was a musician, I would be like an ambient musician. I wouldn't be Brian Eno, but I would try to be Brian Eno.
Brian:
Do you feel like there are other artists and I don't think they necessarily have to be painters, they could also be sculptors or ceramicists that you see as kind of working in a similar way when it comes to this idea of the kinds of spaces and our relationship to nature and time?
William:
That's a good question. Yeah, there's one, I mean, to a certain extent, and I'm not completely familiar with a ton of his work, but, there's one artist and I'm going to mess it up and I'm going to say, Mike Kelly, cause I always say Mike Kelly, and then I had to like Google search them. Yeah. Well, Mike Kelly is yes, but not in this vein. But, uh, he was a British installation artist that I--Mike Nelson is his name just remembered it--who did really a couple interesting things. One was at the Venice Biennale a number of years ago. He just does these interesting things with space where they're calming and unsettling simultaneously, which I quite like. Um, and then another painter who I really, really like, who is a good friend of mine, Adam Sianna, which I think he does an awful lot of work that really is very like sort of Americana and also is looking an awful lot at the kind of like things falling apart. So those guys, those two are the two that pop off the top of my head. I know that like, like visually there's an awful lot of ties that I have to plate paintings, early plate paintings by Julian Schnabel of like that sort of textual abstraction and then also in some Kiefer. But with both of those guys, I like Julian Schnabel, I think he was probably just talking about how awesome he was. Cause that's what he really likes to talk the most about. He's like the Kanye West of the art world. And then Kiefer is really interesting, but I mean, he's really dealing, I think, with less about a particular place and more about, you know, the emotional impact of the Holocaust and also like space and things like that. You know? So I think that there's a little bit of a difference.
Lee:
Did you talk about Michael K Paxton and your work?
William:
Yeah, Paxton's work was really, really interesting for the fact that again, his work also deals specifically with where he's coming from. And I think that all artists and I might be really, again, making a really broad generalization that is completely incorrect, but I think the foundations of the things that people are interested in or that creatives ultimately create come from something from their youth. I think that there are, and it may not be an exact thing, but I think that those moments that are really like the kind of foundational moments of who you are really playing into what you ultimately make, and it may be in a really broad term or maybe in a really concise term. But I feel like, you know, like with Paxton, looking at his older work it's more figurative work comparatively to his more abstract work and more abstract work to me, hits more home for the fact that I feel that with, with complete representation, it starts to hit into a narrative that maybe like you are really directing the viewer where to go, and I'm not against that in any way. Like, if you have an exact message you want to viewer to take, then that's good. Um, and I think that figurative work does that or more representative work, but I think with abstraction, it allows more for, um, like vague notions, like it's a little less of like, you need to go down that road and a little more of like, you need to head in that direction if that makes sense. So,
Lee:
So your work is opposite Michael Paxton's in the show and I'm really glad we have some abstraction. The show, a lot of it is figurative.
Brian:
And I was also gonna say, uh, some of the more recent work you've been doing is kind of like a combination of like sculptural installation, like with the paintings, is that right?
William:
Yeah. I've been trying to, 'cause I worked for a number of years as a ceramicist. So I've been trying to kind of breach this. Which isn't really like, you know every artist thinks that they're breaking new ground, which none of us are. We're all just figuring something else out again. But I'm trying to kind of like, I, when I show a lot of work now sometimes, I'm really trying to add sort of sculptural elements so that it becomes a little bit more environmental. 'Cause I make these like small books that I just cover with either paint and clay or just clay. But they're supposed to be touched so that the viewer can like touch and smell and basically ultimately taste something.
I really am trying to, I engage in something slightly beyond just looking at something on a wall, you know. Like some paintings that I make, I know are just, they're supposed to be looked at on a wall and viewed that way and all that's nice. "I think that would look good here or there or wherever." And then other times I'm really trying to be like, the painting itself is just a part of this whole thing. Like it's not itself the art, the whole, the whole arc of these ceramic pieces, these found-object pieces, these little sculptural branches, and this painting all are one big thing that has to, you know, be within themselves big near each and one another.
Lee:
The diptychs, the new pieces that's minimalism in that it had the textual element on one side, I can comment on those. I really, really love this, that they have color on one side of it.
William:
Yeah. , those were things that I've been recently trying. I want to put this like large, large colored sort of area that I need to now fight against. Like, I'm not going to mess with them. I'm not going to mute the color. I'm going to make the color, the color. And then I'm going to have to deal with the fact that I'm going to make a painting, like my sort of painting next to that. And they're going to have to work. They're going to have to live within the same world with one another. And I really, really enjoy those paintings because I feel like they have a little bit more to them, they're subtle, but to me, they have a little bit of like aggression to them. They're like if Mariah Carey was singing and occasionally just screamed randomly.
Brian:
Perfect. It's interesting to me also, cause it's like all of this work is about kind of this mediation between man and nature. And so like we have the landscape but then it becomes a painting. We have like clay and neutrals and you know, but then it's almost like if like I'm going to do another screen share here. It's like on one hand we have like the mountain and we have the neutrals, but then there's like the painting itself, which has like a hot pink. Yeah. So it's like nature and painting and increasingly, I just have to find a way for all of this to coexist. And you're kind of the medium between all these things.
William:
Yeah, it is completely that and I'm realizing how dark it's starting to get into here. So I'm going to turn the lights on. I hope that that doesn't mess with the continuity of the image. So just give me just one second. Sorry.
They have electricity in the south of France. But yeah, there are definitely, again, like I think I was saying earlier, like occasionally trying to do the hobbling myself off, I know that that within these elements are not supposed to work together. It's like, so how can I somehow piece them together to where they will work? And I really enjoy that. I mean, just as an artist, because I think that, you know, everyone gets like kind of like, they learn how to do things. Basically, painting is like learning how to juggle. So you learn how to juggle. You can juggle three things, then you can juggle four things, and then maybe you can eventually juggle six things. So now you know how to juggle, but occasionally you need to change like, okay, so you juggle oranges. What happens if you juggle butcher knives? You know? And then eventually you just want to stop learning, like, you know how to juggle and it becomes, it's not so much style. It just becomes like a trope. And I don't wanna like be bogged down into that thing. Like I know the things I'm good at. I know the things how to work them, but, you know, I need to just keep forcibly pushing myself out of the comfort zone like that, just, you know, and get it. It's like buying a new pair of shoes. You buy a new pair of shoes. You hate those shoes. Cause they're not as comfortable as your old shoes. You wear them for a while. Then they become your old shoes and then rinse and repeat.
I feel like each body of work has to kind of have that for an artist to keep moving forward. Otherwise it just it's like the same repetitive thing, you know?
Brian:
So, at this kind of time, would you say things like these like strong reds or like yellows or pinks, is that kind of thing at the moment?
William:
Yeah, those are the elements that I'm trying to kind of like push into myself. And also like, although a lot of my work I slipped between super abstraction and then somewhat of more image-based work. So between the solid blocks of color and bringing more image-based work into things, those are the two things that I'm really trying to kind of put into my work and to make them kind of co-exist with what I know is already there. So that's the like little battles that I'm forcibly pushing myself into on a regular basis.
Brian:
So first for this idea of putting imagery and versus like something very, non-representational, let's say it's a mountain range. Is this something where the beginning stages of the painting look a little bit like a conventional landscape where we already have like a foreground middle ground background maps in effect, and then you're slowly reducing?
William:
Yeah. I work very much like--you know, cause I think when I was an early painter, I was introduced to Diebenkorn. So I have that very--I don't know, I feel like when you like get taught and learn like about Diebenkorn, like as a painter, your brain, just either it registers that and it always goes that way or it registers then it goes in the opposite direction and my brain was like, okay, so what I need to do is I need to map things out. I need to destroy, I need to rebuild, I need to destroy and I need to rebuild. Like I have to constantly do that. I can't just map it and then make it finished. So there's a lot of paintings that really start out where, when I look at them, I'm like, "My God, I should just become like just a regular landscape painter." I could make millions, you know, because I could just get these done so quickly. But I enjoy--it's very similar to me to making ceramics where you throw something and it's done and you've taken some time to do it, but then you put it into a kiln and sometimes it blows up, it cracks or whatever. So you have to have that ability to just let it go. Like it's just is going to happen. So it's a nice thing with painting to have that, you know when to let things slide. Like this looks great, but it's not really what you want. So you should go in there and see what you can do to either really screw it up or make it really what you want it to be.
Brian:
So that's a really fun thing about painting the fact that you don't have to be precious, that you can go, "I don't like it," smear it, scrape it. And I do think that in other artistic disciplines where there are a little bit more rules, like do this wrong and it blows up, you know, it's a little harder to cultivate that kind of attitude at least initially.
William:
And there's that great film about Gustin where, I remember he's, you know, doing Gustin and he's chain-smoking cigarettes and talking to the thing and he just busted this painting out super quick. And then they go back like in the next morning and it's totally gone. And he was just like, "Oh, it just was too easy. So I scraped the whole thing off."
Brian:
This is like a Frank Auerbach kind of thing as well, where he would like to paint it, knock it out that, scrape it down, knock it out, scrape it.
William:
There's something really, I agree with you with, I think it's, it's, it's a really medium based thing in, in that particular way. And I think that, that the painters that are willing to do that, like to really get something, but recognize that like, it's not really quite the thing I'm going to ultimately destroy this and then I can rebuild it again. I think that those painters are like, they're painters, you know, they're not like, you know, they're not doing the math on how much the materials cost
Brian
I'm also thinking there's like certain forms of printmaking. Like something like Monotype, you can totally take the painter mentality to that. But if you're doing like multicolor screen prints with like photo transfer at a certain point, it's like, I gotta plan this in a certain way and not in a, I've got a kid and I've got this much time. How do I use it efficiently kind of way, but any like, um, in a, in a much more, you've got to have a plan early in the design. Yeah,
William
Yeah. Which the, I, and I, I think that also like for myself, I, I, when I walk into a piece, like I sketch the thing out on, on the canvas. Like I think that, like you're saying, I mean, printmakers have to have a plan, you know, most sculptors kind of have to have a plan. Like you need to know the materials, you need to know what you're doing with it. And like how much it's going to cost and like the time and all of these sort of things where like you were saying, you know, like painting just lends itself to like, you know, I can just do whatever I want to do
Brian:
Plastic plastic in the sense of like how people use the term, like a hundred years ago. Yeah. As opposed to like, after petroleum, plastic, this stuff about Diebenkorn. I think also just makes a lot of like, cause I'm looking at the work on totally seen, um, some of his kind of ideas of composition, um, especially like the way that there could be something weird at an edge, like something linear, because one of the questions I had, uh, about your work as I was seeing a works that would have like color bands, like just horizontal color bands or there'd be something in a corner. Um, and it wouldn't have an obvious connection. I think some of that is what we're talking about with kind of using the color or something to play against, you know, uh, and react to. But it's, it's also definitely like a, uh, a kind of thing that I, I think about with Diebenkorn pieces. Um,
William:
Yeah. I, I, yeah, to be honest with you, I try occasionally to do things like, so I went, I went to the, the Pennsylvania academy of fine arts for awhile, and I had an, I love the, the faculty, what was some of the faculty that I had, but they, they were very like strict with the rules, like, you know, and there are, you know, rules, like if you're going to do a model drawing, like you can't cut the head off or like cut that, you know, uh, off of the elbow, if you're doing the arm, things like that. But so there are these moments where, you know, which everybody as a teacher, you know, that you've, I'm sure you've said this before also where like you have to know the rules to like, try to break them or flex them to your own things. So like, I occasionally do these things that I know are aesthetically incorrect or that are going to cause problems, but I really just want to see how far, like I can kind of like bend that stick before it snaps. Um, so I'll throw those things in there just to kind of be like, let's see if this will work. If it doesn't work, we'll take it out. If it does work super, maybe no one will notice, you know?
Brian:
Yeah. I, I think that, you know, that phrase, like you have to know the rules before you can break them for me, it's like, you know, it's, it's no fun to break the rules. If you don't even know you're breaking the rules, they have to actually know enough about the rules to know that you're transgressing or subverting them. Um, and, and so, you know, everybody starts out, like, they don't even know they're doing the thing they're not supposed to do. Right. Then it usually doesn't work. Yeah,
William:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're, you're completely correct. Cause I think if you do now, then you're really like, yeah, I did that. I'm I'm, um, I'm completely owning up to the fact that I completely thumbed my nose at what you said I shouldn't do.
Brian:
Yeah. It definitely has a kind of a more structured and kind of linear way of, uh, working, I think, uh, at least, at least at the undergrad level too.
William:
Yeah. It was very, it was like an know, I remember sitting there and like, you know, uh, sitting in the cast hall and taking my measurements on like the cancer, the, the bust of like Voltaire or whatever for like 20 some odd hours. And just being like, oh my God, I'm not built for this. Y
And this is too much, this is like too much time. How do you do this? You know? And then I would screw something up. And I just remembered the, the faculty that I had. He had like eyebrows that, I mean, he was so old at the eyebrows, like almost one or two, his hairline, you know, like one of those old guys, I don't remember what his name was. Cause I only was, I was there for like maybe two months and then I was like, I'm dropping out. I'm done. I'm going back to like it because it costs a ton of money for me. And growing up in upstate New York, like you go to school for free in New York. It's the same as like the California system, you know, with the, with the SUNY schools. Um, but he, that guy could like walk over and to see exactly where my screw up was. And I was like, this is stunning that you have the skillset like that. You can just see that it's, you know, an eighth of an inch, the ear is off by an eighth of an inch. How do you see that? Like, I don't see that.
Brian:
So yeah, you could, you can see it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm also thinking of, uh, this was a professor of mine at Indiana university, which, uh, it, there's all kinds of cross connections between a place like William and Mary patho, Indiana university. and there's also kind of this really interesting mix of like, it was a program that was very figurative, but it didn't always have to include the figure, but sometimes it did. And I remember this one professor would say things like, if you're going to do a painting of a person, you should paint them at like life size, unless you have a good reason. Otherwise. So somebody had paintings where like they had the whole figure and the canvas was this big and were like, if you're gonna paint the whole figure, you know, make it, make it this big, unless you got a reason. And I was like, it was like, what? That was a new rule that wasn't, but then the weird thing is you would start to look in certain parts of art history. you could look at like Italian Renaissance frescoes in kind of modest sized churches in Italy. And all of a sudden you're going, like most of these figures are somewhere between three quarters life-size and lifesize again and again. And you're like, ah, and it's actually a pretty good scale.
William:
Yeah, no, it's a funny thing is that like, that rule is a little, like, I would never tell a student that, but at the same time you look at, you know, a Velasquez painting, those figures are pretty much like sizes, you know, like we're pretty darn close. So yeah, no, it's a, it is a funny thing. So, you know, but the other part is too, is that it makes it so much easier because their are no conversion marks
Brian:
In that last minute. I'd like to just show one painting to you, William. that I was thinking about a little bit as I pour through your work, uh, just to share if you have any reaction, that would be amazing. Okay. Um, you have no idea what I'm going to put up. No, it really doesn't. Uh, Max Ernst, Europe, rain to mid world war two, not an American moving to Europe. This is a European moving to America during this period. And, uh, here we have another kind of erosion of the man-made landscape, something that is like simultaneously bombed and rained out.
William:
Yeah. Or like, it looks like it was almost built out of wax and then like, you know, like candles, you know, and then slowly like burned into nothingness. Yeah. No, it's a beautiful painting.
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