Jack Whitten, Gimmicks, And The Grind Of Abstraction with Jamele Wright Senior.

What if paint could hold fear, wonder, and the cosmos all at once? That question runs through this conversation with guest host Jamele Wright Sr., where we explore Jack Whitten’s radical break from gesture and the relentless search to make painting enough on its own terms. From turning acrylic into “glass” to trapping forms on a truly flat plane, we trace how Whitten rebuilt painting through mechanics, experiment, and time in the studio.

We get candid about gimmicks—when devices clarify and when they distract—and why one stunning passage can sabotage an entire canvas. A spontaneous pilgrimage to see a 10-by-10 Clifford Still became a turning point: white walls, no tricks, just a square that redefined what the work needed. That experience sets up a bigger argument for seeing art in person, where edges, drape, and surface detail can’t hide behind the glow of a screen. Along the way, we connect Rothko’s vertical bars, Twombly’s relentless repetitions, and the sheer grind that makes a monumental gesture land with authority.

Whitten’s language of the spiritual, magical, and cosmic opens the door to the era’s space-age curiosity and Black futurist soundtracks—Sun Ra, Funkadelic, and Earth, Wind & Fire—and to the ambition of putting “the fear of God” in paintings. We talk practice as training: ten-painting cycles, breaking boredom at eight, honest tests of scale, and letting assistants’ “mistakes” become creative constraints. Color mixing from scratch, documenting stages, and cooling down after a studio crescendo all feed a process that values interiority and invites slow looking.

Abstraction here isn’t an absence; it’s the artist’s inner weather made visible. One hundred people can read the same canvas a hundred different ways, and that plurality is the point. If you’re hungry to make work that holds up off-screen and in real space, this one will nudge you back to the studio and into the museum with fresh eyes. If it resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who loves painting, and leave a review to tell us what artwork last made you stop and stay.

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Transcript

Jack Whitten’s Post-Gesture Breakthrough

SPEAKER_02 0:05

For today's episode, we have a special guest host, Jamel Wright Sr. I did a proper bio and intro for him in the previous episode, so please go back and listen to part one if you haven't yet. And that's where you'll learn all about Jamel. He's just somebody that I have a tremendous amount of respect for. I've learned so much from him. I've really gotten into know him over the last few years here, and just grateful to call him mentor and a friend. So with that, hope you enjoy part two of our Jack Went episode with Jamel Wright Sr. This is after he had made a very intentional choice to remove all gesture from his work. You know, he realized how how heavily influenced he was by DeCooning specifically, and now he wanted to, and he he speaks about this in this in this interview, but he said, I realize, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said I realized that I was making the same sort of repetitive marks that were all within that ABEX, you know, school of thought. And he wanted to remove that. So in this in the context of this particular excerpt, I am paint is the vehicle, I am the medium, not the brush. You know, I mean he pretty much set the brush aside completely, right? Um going forward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah. I mean, um, and that's why I would say when we when we go, when we talk about him being a painter, I think he even went beyond painting. I think he became more of a mechanic or more of a a carpenter and more of a maker. Scientist. Scientist. Yeah. Where he's just he's breaking down the element itself. He's breaking down the material itself. Um, and then as he goes further on, he starts talking about how can you break it? Can you break paint? Can you scrape paint? Yeah. What can you do to this substance? And how can I still use it in that way?

SPEAKER_02 1:55

I mean, he he turned acrylic paint into glass.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Right.

Turning Acrylic Into Glass

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Uh having had a chance to see some of that work in person. Actually, it was, it was, it was, it was it was hilarious. I was there with my daughter. I remember looking at at one of those pieces where you know it's it's it's transparent. It looks like it looks like glass. And I remember a couple of other visitors were were looking and they were talking amongst themselves. And one said to the other, that's glass, right? Oh yeah, it's gotta be. And then they they'd they'd look at the they'd look at the title. It says acrylic. Right. It's glass, and you know, offer my my right, but it was for the opinion. Yeah, yeah, my my yeah, uh but it was it was a it was a fun conversation, but um, real alchemy, you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yes, that's just a lot of time in the studio, like we were saying before. You know, trying to figure out like how to make this thing.

Borders, Lines, And Flat Planes

SPEAKER_02 2:51

And that's what we've talked about this earlier in in previous conversations, but just that's that's one of that's why he's on my mount rush more, is just the number of times, numerous times throughout his career he could have arrived and just hung out for the duration of his career and made tremendous work, probably, definitely. But he kept seeking, you know, he kept pushing forward. Um, just like you said it. Okay, I did that. Not to want to do this. Right. Do this. Page 71. You had wanted to discuss the following. The problem I'm having with abstract paintings cannot be landscape. At least that's what the tradition of the New York school says. Consequently, I've had to introduce certain devices to combat this tendency. My incorporation of the border edge was about this. Now I am utilizing straight directional lines within the plane with no attempt to divide the total picture plane in no manner. I want a flat, continuous surface plane trapping forms in space, a natural space. I read more than you had underlined there, but no, no, no, that's fine.

Escaping Landscape And Vertical Reading

SPEAKER_00 4:04

That's fine. But you know, what's interesting is when you when you read what he's doing versus when you see what he's doing, that becomes abstract itself. Right? Like the part where he's talking about making the paint itself. Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of in the phase of landscape, so I know that abstraction cannot be a thing at all, but we're also talking about like that's why some of his paintings were in portrait uh mode as far as um as opposed to horizontal or vertical, uh, so he could alleviate the idea of the landscape.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Well, that just goes back to our primal wiring for reading the horizon. Right. Almost almost anything horizontal could be read as a horizon.

Rothko, Still, And The Power Of Scale

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Exactly. Exactly. And if he would have done those paintings horizontally, they would look completely different than they do vertically. They would read completely different. Yeah, you talked about it. I think that's why like when you like when you look at someone like Rothko, even Rothko had to shift from everything being horizontal to creating those bars in there that were vertical. Yeah. But those bars begin to look like doorways as opposed to looking like a sunset or sunrise. I always think Rothko and me. Rothco to me always feels like uh those spaghetti westerns. I always see like the spaghetti westerns in those. Like I always feel like Clean Eastwood is gonna come out like you know, like I mean, they're beautiful and they they cause you to levitate at the same time. When I'm being funny, I see them as spaghetti westerns.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

You talk about the horizon back to that that Abex New York school, Clifford still. One of the things I love about his work is is the verticality of his lifeline. I mean, that's one of the things that I don't know if I ever made a conscious choice to do this, but I'm I'm inherently drawn to more verticality uh always than the horizontal line.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

And I I can't really say why specifically, but well, yeah, oddly enough, that's actually what I'm kind of dissecting is this idea that like how the horizon has changed for us because of cell phones. That now, because of cell phones, everything's in portrait mode. Yeah. So everything's vertical. Yeah. So the horizon has now been shifted because of the cell phone. So these traditions are are leaving us. Clifford Stills, interesting story about Clifford Stills. So when I was in grad school and I was in my final, uh I was heading towards my last semester. And I had just done open studios.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

Yeah.

A Life-Changing Clifford Still Moment

SPEAKER_00 7:18

And I took my paintings and I put them in the corner. I had painted the whole studio. I had had some paintings on the floor, and I was just trying to figure out like what these paintings were supposed to do because of them being textile. And you know, grad school is this time where you're using, as I call them now, gimmicks, like trying to think of different ways for your paintings to look good. But I didn't like it, it just didn't feel good to me. I couldn't figure out like why I didn't like it. So I had a studio visit, I did that studio visit, and then after that I had some time, and because of where SVA is, I am maybe about seven blocks away from the Whitney, I'm four blocks away from Chelsea. So I just walked down to the Whitney to just go look around. It was close. And I was just I was just really frustrated in my studio. So I go to the Whitney and they also gave us free we have free passes to Whitney. So we have free passes to the MOMA and to the Whitney. Going to grad school at 46 years old was probably one my my greatest gift I ever gave myself.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Really?

Let The Painting Be Enough

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Yeah, because for a number of reasons. But mostly it was because if I would have been 25, 30, I wouldn't have known what I was doing in New York. You know? But being 45, 46, 47, then I knew exactly why I was there. I was on a mission, right? So I went to the Whitney, I get up to I think it's the eighth floor where they have their American collection, their collection. I remember this as clear as day. I got off the elevator, I turned right, because there's this big wall there, and then I turned left, and right when I turned left, I saw 10 by 10 foot Clifford Stills. And it was as if the angels were behind me going, ho, right? And the heart was playing, and the sun came and shot through the gallery and was spotlighted on me and Clifford Stills, and we were engaged. And then I was like, I now know everything that's wrong with my paintings. Really? Yes. It was just that quick. Seeing that Clifford Stills painting, it was just that quick. And you know what it was? It was very simple. I painted the walls of my studio, I did all this stuff. I took all those paintings, I put them in corners, all that stuff, all that stuff. All that stuff. Clifford Stills 10 by 10 painting was on white walls. Square. No gimmicks, no putting it in a corner, no putting it on the floor, just a plain white wall. Because the painting was enough. It didn't need anything else. The painting was enough. And after that moment, oh my god, dude. I had one more studio visit to do with my mentor, and after that, I I tore into my studio. I painted everything white. I I reconstructed everything, and then I started figuring out how to create that same effect as that Clifford Stills painting. And then the key of that is you know, uh let the painting be what it's gonna be. So often we're trying to force it to be this thing, and we're putting it and sure it's innovative to see some works in corners, and it's innovative to see those things, and sometimes it works. But sometimes a painting is a painting, like Tommy Greensburg said, a paint is paint, surface is surface. You know, a sculpture is a sculpture, a relief is a relief. You know, like sometimes all the gimmicks don't make it any better. Sometimes it just is. Hit that thing and let it go. Sometimes, like we people say, I messed up this painting. I kept trying to work it and work it and work it. And leave that thing alone. Start over. You learn the lesson from it. Go to the next one. Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Have you had a chance to visit the uh the Clifford Still Museum in Denver by chance? I have not. I have not.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

I did apply for the residency twice, though.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

It's I mean, it it is unlike any other museum in the world.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

You know, I can imagine.

Defining Gimmicks And Artistic Honesty

SPEAKER_02 12:39

They own it's it's an astounding percentage. It's like 91% of the work that he ever made is in their permanent collection. You know, it's a fascinating story. I mean, he wrote it. You talk about but bold uh bold and uh you know odd Audacity, he wrote it into his will that uh with very specific instructions that his you know late wife and widow um spent the better part of a decade you know attempting to execute to find the right place for it. But anyway, it's uh it's incredible. I've had a chance, I've had a couple shows there. Um really in in Denver, yeah. Um but while there, I've had a chance to uh visit the museum probably four times now, and every time they they turn over the entire collection, um, I think it's three times a year. So I don't think I've ever seen the same piece twice. Oh, wow. It's tremendous. Yeah. We actually the the Clifford Still episode that Ty and I did, we recorded when I was the I got a chance to get connected with the space there, and they were kind enough to let me record from the from the space. Oh, that's great. Interesting. Yeah. And you know, speaking of Rothcoe, you know, the relationship that's still a very complicated relationship between Rothcoe and Still. It's it's it's interesting. It's really really inner yeah, it's a look it up. It's it's it's it's fascinating. They they um they had uh um a close friendship at one point and then not uh later later on for a variety of reasons. You've used that word gimmick, um, Jamel, a couple times. I I'm I'm interested, how do you define gimmick in the context of art?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

I sometimes Okay, now you're gonna get me in trouble. So I sometimes believe that adding the figure in a painting is a gimmick. I I think sometimes we recognize gimmicks. Sometimes an abstraction is great as an abstraction, and then the artist doesn't feel as confident about the work so they put in a figure. It was good as a sunset, bro. Just leave it alone. Right? You you put this, you know, you added you we could tell you added these things in later. No, leave it alone. Let it be. So I think gimmicks are these things that happen, and it's not just the figure, but I think that sometimes there's things that people do to a painting because they're not as confident and they want people to like it, or they will try something that that causes the viewer to not see that the painting is not good. So sometimes putting it in a corner, they're able to cover up the spot that wasn't that great. Yeah. Sometimes putting it on the floor escapes us from our we're we're not allowed to look at it as a wall painting anymore. Sure. Putting it over a ball, we no longer are in investigating the work as a painting. Like Elizabeth Murray was really good at making these paintings that kind of appear as sculptures, but they're really paintings. She's more interested in the painting. She's just creating the form that the painting is on. Right. But she's not a sculptor.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

So like there's there's these things that people are doing. They use these little tricks to kind of like get us to not look at what they're doing, and they and then what happens is I don't know, I I I start seeing it as the artist is trying to seduce me. And then when I start feeling seduced, I kind of go, I don't know. I like that. I what are you selling? Because and then after a while, I start, oh, okay, well, they didn't like this part of the painting. So then they tried to distract me on this side of the painting by putting something over here that I I would like this and not pay attention to that. So gimmicks are, I don't know. Gimmicts kind of they kind of irritate me a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

When when you're when you're making, when you're in the studio, is that something that you are consciously or subconsciously wary of within your own work?

Nature, Cosmos, And Emotional Charge

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yes. Yes, very much so. Yeah. Very much so. I I'm very much of like in my practice, and that's why I feel like I'm I'm having a conversation with Jack Witten in this book. And that's why sometimes I'll put it down because sometimes he just he's chewing me up a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

I I want to make the Jamel Wright painting. Yeah. I want the Jamel Wright painting to be the center. Like when you look at painting, you'll go, that is a Jamil Wright painting.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

That is not intrinsically connected to these other things. That it's all those things boiled down and then turned into a sauce. Yeah. Right? That is drizzled upon something, but not the entirety of. Because I mean, after 2,000 years of painting, it's impossible for us not to pull back those those ideas, right? And that's what's great about abstraction. Abstraction in the scheme of painting, it's incredibly young. There's still new places to explore. There's still new things to experiment with. There's still new ideas to be had.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Um, so I'm very conscious of if I think that some, if I I'm if someone comes to my studio and says, Oh, that looks like a cat right there, and I just go to the paint and I just erase the whole thing. I just cover it. If um someone says, Oh, that part right there is really beautiful, I just go and I just paint over it. Because it's not the section that has to be beautiful, it's the totality of the painting that has to be beautiful. And if you get cornered in, if you get into this one spot, what happens sometimes is people will find one beautiful part of the painting and then they spend the whole rest of the painting trying to make that part as beautiful as that, and it never works.

unknown 19:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

So then you end up sacrificing the whole painting because you want people to see this one part. Cut it out. Cut that part out, sew it to something else, or paint over it. Yeah. I get in a lot of trouble for my opinions. I love it. I get I get in a lot of trouble. People ask me for critiques sometimes. I just go, Man, you don't really want to go like critique, man. Leave me alone. Just come by the studio, we'll talk. I don't you know give you a critique.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

I've been trying to Just because I have courage to ask you for it at some point. I'm just going to do that. Oh brother, you're good. I need more therapy.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Let me tell you something. Me talking to you is me saying, me engaging with you on a consistent basis. I really appreciate your work. I think you're a very talented guy. Thank you. That means a lot. I really, I really like your work. And that's the reason why I have these conversations with you. That's why I suggested the book to you. Because I think that you there's a lot of good stuff there.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Page 86. I really appreciate that. Page 86. I take my cue from nature. Even with color, I take my cue from nature, i.e., presenting an all-overtonal range with occasional patches of hue. I want to put the fear of God in these paintings. I want to evoke a spiritual, magical, cosmic existence with a material connection, emotionally charged. Yes. Yes. How do you take that? It's interesting. Um, so I did an episode, a solo episode, actually, um uh on the on this book, and I I spoke about this quote specifically a lot. This is this is one of my favorites from the book. Spiritual, magical, cosmic. I mean, Jack was obsessed with the cosmic, you know? He was the the material connection emotionally charged. At the risk of talking about my own work here, what what what that what that does for me is it connects. So you you mentioned something before about just like when when when you read Jack's words, you're like, oh, thank you. All right, I'm on the right track. It's not just me, you know.

SPEAKER_04 21:52

Right.

Seeing Art In Person vs On Screens

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Um because I really, especially with with the relationship that I set out to build with all of the different materials, you know, that I that I work with, it really is that that that emotional and sort of spiritual connection to the in at inanimate and trying to animate it into a a soulful, a collection, a holistic work that does have have that, you know, that emotional charge. Um I mean you talk about ambition. I want to put the fear of God in these paintings. It doesn't get much more ambitious than that.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Yeah. I think we all want that though. I think that like when we when we're done painting, we want we want to set the world on fire, you know? We want to, I mean, I I will say it out loud. I want when artists come to my gap come to the studio or come to the gallery that I'm showing in, I want them to go home questioning their own existence. I mean, I've done it a number of times. I saw Jenny Seville in person. I questioned why did I even go to art school? Like, why am I doing that? Yeah. Why'd I pick up a paintbrush? I look at Side Swambly, like, what am I supposed to be doing here? Right. Like, maybe I need to go back to waiting tables. Like, there's some of these painters you look at and you just go, like, why am I here?

SPEAKER_02 23:31

What's the point?

Process, Assistants, And Variation

SPEAKER_00 23:31

There's very few painters I look at and go, Well, no, not very few, but there's like when I talk about Michi Miko being one of the greatest painters alive right now, he makes me believe that I can become a great painter too. But when I look at Rothcoe sometimes, I go, I have so much work to do. You know? Um, and maybe that's because Michi is my peer. Sure. But some of these guys, like I just have you ever seen like side twamilies just scribbles on a chalkboard? I saw them at the Gagosian and I walked right past them, right? I really didn't pay attention, but the more and more I think about that exhibition, the more and more I think about like how many times he did this over and over again. And sometimes it's not the fact that he's not the fact that you are looking at the scribble, as much as you think about the repetitive nature of doing this over and over again. And what he had to do over and over again to get that, and how his arm had to move, how his hand had to move, how the chalk basically like disappeared in his hand. Like all these things are happening as he's doing that. That's the kind of stuff that's like fear of God. Like you you gotta and you think about audacity for him to do it over and over and over again. You know, and there was hundreds of them. Like you would go from room to room, and you basically think that you're looking at the same thing, but it's not, it's him on every single one doing this. So I mean, I asked, like, what is the purpose of that?

SPEAKER_04 25:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

But then someone will say to you, How long did it take for you to make that? Well, I did a hundred of these. Yeah, and then that way, when I did those huge, when Cytolik does those huge, like ones that look like roses, you understand that he was able to, he had practiced so much with his arm, he knew exactly what his arm was gonna do. Yeah, from small to large to larger. I mean, that's practice. Practice in the same way that a lawyer practices law and a doctor practices medicine. Same thing. Yeah, and then like the idea of Jack Win uh taking his cue from nature. I mean, nature is where everything is. Yeah, that's where color is, that's where line is, that's where form is, that's where texture is, that's where shape is. I mean, all that stuff is in nature. What you're then doing is trying to create something by bending nature in your studio. How do you take nature and put it on a two-dimensional surface? How do you take nature and put it in three-dimensional surface? Like, how do you recreate that?

Abstraction’s Labor And Decision-Making

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Talking about Psy, we spoke with this the other day on the phone, but when I was in Munich earlier this year, it's at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. They've got Psy's uh Lepanto cycle. It is a monumental room and 12 work series that was the so the the the the room, this this whole wing of the museum was was built for this work, or the work was made for the space, I can't recall which. But you walk in and it just it's a it's a it's a visceral reaction. It's a it's like I don't even know I don't even know how to exist in in this space. Right. You forget to do you forget what to do with your your body, you know. And it's it's that type of experience at the same experience, you know, um at when when when viewing the messenger. Thankfully, I was with the the one member of my family, uh, our youngest daughter, who could hang with me and and camp out, you know, for a while. Um, but but the experience of of walking away from that, I mean I don't know about you, Jamel, but after after an experience like that, I feel so simultaneously charged and absolutely drained. Like I need a nap. I can't do anything after this. You know what I mean?

Staying Hungry And Lean In Practice

SPEAKER_00 28:17

I have to admit that there are times I've left galleries and I'm turned on. Like I'm I'm like my body is tingling after leaving some artworks. Like I and then sometimes when I was in in grad school, I would just jump on the train and head to the MoMA and just go see work. But I would also go, there was a a collection there, their in-house collection, and I would go see Rousseau, I would go see Matisse, I would go see Pollock, I would go see um Pollock. Picasso. Picasso was able to do something that I don't think people like I know that people you know, we get tired of hearing Picasso, but what's really interesting is he knew how to put enough paint on his brush that if he created a line, he can create a perfectly straight line. His lines were impeccable. And that's what it is. It's like when we're looking at these painters, we look at these artists, we're gathering like all these little bits, these little bits of things here and there. Like Picasso could really draw too. I mean, he was he could draw. Um there's all these things, and like people say, well, this artist is problematic for this, or this is problematic for this. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Let's put in context where they were, how they were living, and even when we talk about Jack Win and context, and I'll get to that in a second. But it's all these little things that we collect as artists and then say, I need to think about that one more. How do I how do I make that perfect line? Yeah, how do I how do I make my line have that same effect? That when someone looks up close at it, a hundred years from now, they'll go, woo! He did that line right there. Yeah, that line is scary. You know? Yeah, yeah. But but the thing is, you were talking about uh Jack wouldn't talk about the cosmos, and we have to remember that during that time America was going out of going to outer space. There's also a movement that was beginning during that time where there was um groups like Funkadelic, Earth Wind and Fire, Sunra. There was this like this Afro uh futurist movement that was going on during that time too. So everyone during that time was kind of interested in this kind of black future, but America was interested in this outer space. Was it, you know, there was the Jetsons, there was like, you know, like there's this idea of like what does the future hold for us? We've gone to outer space, what does the future hold for us? Yeah, and there was a lot of money put in the space program um during that time, but mostly it was like, what does the future hold? So for him to say cosmos and then spiritual, he's really talking about wanting the viewer to actually feel the paintings. He didn't have something, he didn't have like cell phones back then, so he didn't know that people just gonna walk past his painting, take a picture, and keep on walking.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

His hope, like your and my hope, is that they are so compelled when they walk past our painting that they have to sit in front of it. Yeah, so they cannot just walk take a picture and keep on walking. That they'll never look at again. They're never gonna look at the picture again. No, you know? But they'll walk past the painting of one of ours and they'll stop and go, why isn't there a chair right here in front of this painting? You know? So I think that's what he was that fear of God. Yeah, I know that feeling. You get done with a painting, you're like, woo! That was it. That was it right there. Yeah. We often, I'll, when I was in high school, we used to talk about um wrestlers. And we used to talk about the nature boy.

unknown 32:48

Woo!

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Let me tell you something, Mamo. He's one of ours, uh, Minnesota boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Studio Cadence, Cooldowns, And Photos

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Woo! I I every now and again, like maybe about two or three times a year, I'll go through um I'll go back and find my um, I got a Rolex watch. I flew in on a jet. I came here by limousine, and I'm having a hard time keeping these alligators down. Like that kind of bravado.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

After you're done with a body of work and you know you did that thing, I'll be I'll be watching those for like two or three days after going.

unknown 33:28

Woo!

SPEAKER_01 33:30

I did that. I did that.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

I love that you brought professional wrestling into the mix because that's that that is the definition of a gimmick. If if you know, as they're as they're sort of curating, you know, yes, their sort of persona, are they gonna be heel? You know, whatever it's it's what's what's gonna be your gimmick?

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Right. There's your identity. What's the main thing that links in? And I think I think in um I think in art making, the gimmick, the branding, those kind of ideas actually combat the uh humanness that we're trying to express. And the gimmick kind of makes you like sometimes when people look at my paintings on on photographs, they'll go, oh, that's nice. But then when they see it in person, they're like, I had no idea it was gonna have this effect on me. Right. Social media would tell us it needs to look good on social media, but I think that becomes the gimmick. I think the humanness comes when you see the piece in person and you go, I had no idea. Like, look at that curve, look at that line, look at that, oh I can see that gesture there. Oh, I couldn't see that paint in that place online, or I couldn't see this pattern online, I didn't see that drape online, like there's all these kind of things that they didn't see online, yeah. And it forces the viewer to return back to the museum in the same way that uh the movie theaters are trying to get people to go back to the theater. You know, like there's a value in seeing the movie in a movie theater, and there's a value of seeing a painting that's not in a two-inch square.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

And like my students asking me when they see something on the on the screen in the in the classroom, how much is that worth? There's no way you can tell how good this painting is in this classroom from this screen.

SPEAKER_03 35:56

Yeah.

Color Mixing, Constraints, And Flow

SPEAKER_00 35:57

On the screen. The only way to tell how good this painting is is to visit the painting in person. Yes. You don't levitate from a Roth toe when you see it on a 12-inch screen. No. A 72-inch screen. You only levitate when you stayed in in person.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Yeah. I I did not buy the book at MoMA for that reason. They had a number of them strategically placed, you know, throughout throughout the show. Yeah. And I was they they had one laid out with with the the the work that was in front of it. And I was with my daughter, um, she was she's 17, and I showed her the picture, and it went and she hadn't seen the actual work yet. Right. I said, tell me what you think about this. Yeah, it's cool. I like like it. I said, All right, now look at that. Right. And she asked me, she said, is that even the same, is that even the same thing? And I said, Right. It's right, it's not the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 37:11

No, it's documentation.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Totally. Yeah. And the ethereal energy that comes from seeing something in person the way it was intended to be seen. You talk about film. Have you seen One Battle After Another? The new Paul Chase Anderson. There might still be time to see it in the theater. Okay. You can go see it in the theater.

unknown 37:34

Okay.

Why Love Abstraction

SPEAKER_02 37:34

It's a great talk about film. It's just a great example of because he shot it on film that hasn't been produced since, I don't know, the 40s or the 50s, I mean the 50s or 60s, had to go through an arduous process of collecting all of this film that was just really being collected by creators just for the sake of owning it, you know. But the difference between seeing something the way it was intended to be viewed and and and absorbed is so different than than the any digital recreation. You were talking about, I love this. You're talking about social media, what people see. We were talking about wrestlers before. I don't want this popped to mind, but you think about uh actual wrestling or actual actual fighters, for example. You know, what people see is is the fight. They see the bright lights and the, you know, um, what people don't see is what those athletes have to go to go through in order to make weight. They don't see the they don't see the grind. They don't see, I mean, a friend of mine, we were we were talking the other day. He's a he's a gymnast. He he toured with uh Cirque de Soleil for for over 10 years all throughout the world.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Wow.

Closing Gratitude And Artist Community

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Like he's a proper athlete. So um, and he said, you know, I think I think wrestlers actually are fighters in general, are the most disciplined athletes that there are. And it's hard to argue when you consider everything that you can do 24 hours a day just to get on that scale to even be able to, you know, step on the mat or enter the ring. But in the art space, you know, that's it's it's the grind, it's all of the things that that we don't share because they're boring, you know. I mean, the time that you've that you spent that we spend, you know, uh manipulating and playing with the infinite number of variables. How long do I let this dry? Do I let it dry inside or in the sun? You know, I mean it it the the the decision tree just keeps expanding and and expanding in an infinite.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

And that's why I think that abstractionists are the hardest working artist. I mean, whether an abstractionist is making a sculpture or if he's making a painting or he's being conceptual. I think figurative painters, although very talented and necessary, I think that they're not making some of the same decisions that abstractionists are making. after you paint I mean and De Cooney says you know all you need is a mouth and a nose and you have a face. We know what it is at that point. Make a nose and a mouth done.

unknown 40:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

And but abstraction to make really good abstract okay let me separate really great abstraction. It takes time. It takes you're not going to become a great abstractionist off of one painting 10 paintings or 20 paintings. You're getting into 50 60 paintings before you're becoming a decent abstractionist. Because you really don't know what you're doing at 10 you figured it out at 20 around 30 and 40 you start going okay okay but I've now the Dutch wax paintings Dutch wax cloth paintings that I've done I've now done 60 and I'm now at a point where I'm just like okay let me think on these a little bit more there's some other places to go. Yeah I've learned some new things recently I thought about maybe letting somebody else make them for a wall and seeing what I come up with. What do you mean by that? Meaning that like having them do the taping the painting and then I come in and do the draping. Yeah I do the very in because after my favorite part about letting somebody else do my do the work sometimes is them messing up. Yeah yeah maybe making the paint too dense maybe making the you know maybe doing the taping wrong they may do these other things out of place or wrong or whatever. Right. And then I have to come behind and figure out like how to still make it good.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Yeah yeah we did um a recent episode on Ursula von Ridingsguard and one of the things with with her process that she talks about is how different members of her her staff of her studio assistants you know that work is extremely labor intensive you know they're using the circular single piece. But she talks about how she will she will consider which one she has do different portions because she knows that while they're using the same tool on Cedar, you know, circular saw on Cedar cut right it's gonna it's gonna be a little different. Yeah it's really interesting. Before we move on I should mention that the views of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of just make our podcast we love all of our representational artists as well I get in trouble because they go you don't like figurative work.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Like I do like figurative work but I just feel like after 2000 years of painting what are you adding to figure it figure eight sure you know I'm not discounting it it's very valuable okay but how are we going to push it further?

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Page 148 I want to stay hungry lean always on the edge only then does life speak life does not speak to those who are comfortable it is not it does not when did you start your journey painting how old were you or making I started drawing as a child and I was very fortunate to have my my parents' friend group had two working artists and teachers in it and they encouraged me from a very young age they got me lessons with um Doug and Julie and they both had very different styles and approaches to to teaching so that was in my formative years is really when that began to be something that I thought about all the time and that was that was one of my many things you know growing up. I didn't revisit it you know until you know I I spent the better part of two decades in in the business space and and doing other things. So I hadn't really done much of anything until I came back to it um yeah about six years ago.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

So two answers since I was a child and what I'm doing now yeah since about 2020 I would say that's that's what it is right it's like I was living in my mother's basement after my divorce and I had four kids and I'm trying to get my life together and I had a newborn child and at the time I was living in my mother's basement and I was trying to figure out like what was next and then I had some work I used to do audio visual and I used to tour with it. So I was in Tennessee and I saw I went to this um this artist walk art walk and I saw these there's this a bishop in Tennessee I think it was in Nashville and he did these watercolor abstracts and when I saw one of those I said I could do that and then I went and I got some water I went the next day got some watercolor painting got some w 12 inch watercolor paper took it back home to Atlanta and started doing these these small gestural paintings. I got some markers so I can do like I used to draw graffiti as a kid so I started like creating these small little gesture lines and these kind of patterns that come from breaking apart letters and rep straction and you can still see them in my work now. That's how I I got back to it right I was uncomfortable I'm in my mother's sewing room sleeping on her pull out sofa trying to figure out what was next in my life I'm telling you dude if I would have seen myself I would have thought dude it is over for you bro like how can you come back from this yeah and painting was my way out painting got me out of that room painting got me to believe got me to be hopeful painting got me to think about other things besides what was happening traumatically to me and what I was participating in. You know that was to my own detriment right so painting was my way out of that thing. Yeah um and I say that to say because I was uncomfortable and in my practice now if I get too good at something I have to break it I have to break it and start not start over but find out where the holes are that needs some other investigations. I always say and I think I said this to you before so if you do 10 paintings right the first four are all the ideas that you came with okay now what? You get to six you get a hold on it okay so this is what I'm doing. You get to eight you get bored of it and bored is when you start thinking about other things that you could be doing. And when I say that I'm talking about like that's when the questions come okay so I did this and that worked that way I did this and worked that way I wonder if I went and did this and sometimes at eight I'll go and make a whole nother body of work and then come back and do those last two. Yeah but eight is this eight is an interesting number because it's a number of new beginnings right it's a a number of reincarnation it's this number of like shifting so in that I say that like at eight you're kind of comfortable uncomfortable like you know what you've done but you're kind of tired of like being so dedicated to this one thing so you'll go explore some other things make some other things and then you'll come back yeah and I think you kind of need that you kind of need the other thing even if that other thing is to make like I I I really like making large paperworks. I really I love making large pieces. Yeah there's something again it's that warrior mentality of conquering something that's 20 feet by 20 feet you know conceptually so sometimes that other thing is just seeing by number eight or ten can I make these small I'm making them really great at 10 at this scale but can I can I make it as effective at four by four three by three two by two can they still be as good at two by two as they are at twenty by twenty right so you have to make yourself uncomfortable scale can be a gimmick scale can be a gimmick because there's a lot of things that you can you can skip over at 20 feet that you can't skip over at two feet. But Dinzel Washington says Dinzel Washington says ease is the biggest trouble to growth the biggest hindrance to growth.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

Being comfortable will keep you from growing yep back since we're talking about fighters today or or uh combat sports I think I think it was Floyd Mayweather I could be wrong about this but um said something like it's it's hard to get up at 4 a.m when you're sleeping in silk sheets so how do you stay how do you stay hungry? How do you stay lean?

SPEAKER_00 50:46

How do you stay uncomfortable you um teaching teaching helps me stay uncomfortable I don't believe in comfort um most of my friends will tell you like I don't if I get too comfortable I get itchy kind of like I just like I don't I don't really like things to be perfect. I don't need a lot of compliments I don't need I don't dress in a way that's like I'm I'm not trying to look like everybody looks I'm not trying to do what everyone does I'm I'm not trying to which is my own hindrance like I could have you know gone to finish high school and then gone right to college or gone to military then go to college and and my spirit just wouldn't let me do it. Going to school it took me 13 years to graduate you know I I learned French at 44 years old comfortable is not I I don't know if there was a such thing as past lives or whatever I think I came to this one saying I want to be as uncomfortable as possible because most of the things I do are uncomfortable. Being an abstract artist and being an African American abstract artist black abstract artist I think is extremely uncomfortable because it's so much easier for me to make figurative work paint some pictures of Muhammad Ali and you know and everybody loves me and I sell but to do the kind of conceptual aspirations that I'm that I'm working through hoping that someone else can get it too and then spend an absorbent amount of money in order to su to support my practice yeah I think I I think I live an uncomfortable life. Yeah I am um encouraged when people purchase things I'm encouraged when I receive residencies from places that I really want to be I I'm encouraged by you know teaching but in teaching what makes it uncomfortable is I I change my lesson plans up probably about every three years or so. Well I go through and I revamp all the artists I've discovered new artists I'm thinking about new artists and because I revamp all the artists not only is that for the students that means that I also have to go back and study all these artists I have to dwell into their into their um practice and the students are then asking me questions about these artists and ask me questions about their process they ask me questions about how some how much something cost. During my residencies like if I drive to New York for residency I'm stopping at the moment to go see a show I'm stopping at the Baltimore Museum of Art to see a show. If I drive anywhere I whenever I go vacation somewhere I go to a museum so those are kind of things that keep me because you know you would think that if you go to a museum you're gonna see the same work from state to state but you don't you see local artists people who people are thinking about locally then you think then they have to satisfy what people are thinking about nationally then they have to satisfy what people are thinking about internationally. But what's the most interesting is finding out who that gallery selected locally that they think is important. You know and then you learn something new and then sometimes that person gets put into my curriculum. I learned Wislow Homer by going to the Met I hadn't heard of him really before but the paintings were so gorgeous they were beautiful that I had to add them to my curriculum. So like those are ways that I I stay uncomfortable and then I have to kind of like wrestle with their practice and then I come home and then then I have to wrestle with you know they they end up staying in the room with me. Okay so what are you gonna do? You saw the painting now what? Sometimes I think that I'm Rothko's uh abandoned child because he died the same year that I was born and I think he actually died like maybe a month or two before I was born.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

So I'm just like am I Rothko reincarnated to live this life of pain trying to figure out these paintings thankfully you may have already outlived him I'm not sure right right yeah um you know I was talking to a friend of mine Halima and she's uh um she hung around a lot of these uh African American abstractionists and I was talking to her about uh Joe Overstreet and she said and I was asking her about like his practice and what she thought or whatever she goes that sometimes he would just get really frustrated with a painting and you ask him like how's the practice going how's that painting he'd be like man forget that painting let's talk about something else I don't want to talk about that painting you know and I and I get that you know you get so frustrated with it that you kind of I'm gonna read the the part of this quote that we just read that that that precedes it because it speaks to something you just said about Overstreet that painting assertion one I've been looking at it for hours every day every night it's trying to tell me something I have truly done something significant. I love this painting I must wait and continue to look at it before starting another painting I don't have that experience very often very rarely I have had it but it is so when you're finished for the day when you're finished for the day what do you do we like when everything's wet and it's time to like pack it up for the day how much time do you spend in the studio after that oh none like zero really yeah yeah no the time I'm always working until I am about to fall over or I'm I'm mentally or and or physically and or spiritually exhausted. Yeah. And then you directly the studio because uh it it's um the time that I spend with the work is the next day I have to look at it with fresh eyes I have to have fresh eyes for me. I mean if if it's I mean very rarely do I do something and be like that's it. If if I have that experience it's not until the next day or in many cases days or weeks later you I generally um I'll go through and photograph everything I take pictures of everything in their stages most of the time and then I will I sit in the studio with the work probably about a good hour hour and a half it's kind of like after you work out you know and then you go to the sauna or you go to the whirlpool um to the to the steam room or whatever it's kind of like that it's kind of like I have to calm down before I leave.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

Yeah because I'm so high yeah and I am exhausted I am spent but I I need to come down because I'm I'm ramped up and my studio is not as big as I like it to be because I could probably do probably ten paintings at the same time if I had the space and I like I like that pace. I like that to me that's if I had the kind of studio I wanted that I would I would be able I would have different rooms that I can go from room to room to room to room to room. I don't really get like I was about Muhammad Ali they called him a gym rat I am a studio rat. Yeah or studio cat like I would I would go from room to room to room I can during COVID I literally spent 12 to 13 hours in the studio just getting it right go out and get something to eat things dry come back get to it you know just trying to figure it out just trying to make it do that thing.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Yeah as you I'm thinking to give you a better answer to your question before it the the my my cadence is usually one of the first portion of the day is the sitting the listening the considering and then most days sort of end in this crescendo of activity right um I probably should try to find a way to have that cool down period you know to decompress.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

I'd I'd take the photos of the work so I can like when I'm at home, yeah, I can um look over what I've done. And then sometimes like because I mean with teaching and everything, sometimes I can't go to the studio the next day. Or you know, you have family, you gotta do with them. But you know while you're waiting on them or you're eating at the restaurant with them, you're kind of going through your phone. Yeah. Um and I'm sometimes looking at those yeah marinating. Then that way when I get back in the studio I may sit around like you said and look and listen and pay attention. But oftentimes what's really great is by having pictures of things, then I will I'm listening on the phone. I'm listening while I'm looking and then it will tell me you know I need some blue right I need some blue right there. Or you know right there that area needs to be blocked off you need to subtract some stuff over there or I need more of the same color like right in the same space which is often challenging for me because I make all my color so I never use straight out the tube. Right. So like sometimes when that color's gone it's gone so then I have to figure it out which I love I love the challenge of sometimes trying to remake that color because some oftentimes I don't know how I made that color. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

We could do this for four more hours oh yeah yeah easily I would like to and hopefully you and I will yes yeah uh we don't have to record it to still to still do this but I would I would definitely like to uh uh on camera invite you to come so maybe maybe when I finish maybe when I finish the book then sure we can come back and uh do it again do a part two I want to ask you one question because you've asked me a lot of questions sure why should we love abstraction what is it that makes abstraction great to you I'll answer the second question I don't I don't make it my business to speak for the we um it's infinite possibility it's infinite possibility you you spoke earlier about when people see the cat or the fill in the blank oh there's a face in there right now what I love about I mean I I think we're all making the type of work that we want that we enjoy the most hopefully you know I'm making the work that I want to spend time with so when I when you think about you know our influences and the artists who have who really move us you know the way that we've been talking about so far today I am I will always be until you know my my last day in the studio whenever that happens to be I will always be chasing that first and foremost for an audience of one do I love this does this move me and that will keep me going for you know however much more time you know that that any of us get I I just it's that idea of discovery you know you used that word excavating earlier discovering what is there but can't yet be seen that to me is the power of abstraction and the fact that once the audience expands you know from just us that a hundred people can have a hundred different interpretations and experiences with the work that's it that's it yeah for me I believe that configuration figurative representation of work is an exterior experience of the artist I believe that abstraction is the interior experience of the artist and I think that abstraction is vulnerable and abstraction challenges the viewer because in a world where everything is speeding past us abstraction forces the viewer to slow down and to experience the work and when they experience the work I believe that they'll be able to allot something in themselves that's what I hope. I don't want to land the plane but that feels like a good place to land it for today. Yeah Jamel thank you so much for doing this thank you I so appreciate my pleasure uh your friendship your your guidance your influence on me is is significant and the fact that we get to do this and share it with others is is fantastic so please let's let's let's stop and do this again that'd be great all right you take care have a good day you too brother be well bye bye all right I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did tie and I talk about this all the time but it's our responsibility as artists to surround ourselves with other artists just to talk about art. And so I mean just thinking about this conversation like I've spent so much time reading this book absorbing it reflecting on it and there were still numerous times during these conversations with Chamel that just opened up a completely new way of thinking about Jack's life his work and his practice so do that. Go find other artists to commune with form a coven like Jerry says and we'll all be better for it. All right thanks for joining us for today's episode and please join us next time for whatever we talk about in our next episode of Just Makeup