Artist Interview: Robert Jessup

Alright.  So I just recently had a whole bunch to say about Robert Jessup.  After I said what I had to say, I figured I would take a shot in the dark and send him an email letting him know just what it was that I had been saying. 

So now I have something else to say about Robert Jessup.  Dude is a gemstone.  What a great guy.  Robert got right back to me, both thanking me for my interest and responding that he would be “delighted” to answer some of my questions about his work.

A bulk of my questions centered around one bigger idea:  “What is going on with the major switch in stylistic choice that began in 2008?"  Looking through Robert’s work during this time period,  it is clear to anyone that this artist was making some major decisions about how to make a painting.

Check out these paintings:

2008

"Man Climbing a Cliff in the Mountains", 2008, 68 inches by 64 inches , oil on canvas

2010

"Robert", 2010, 44 inches by 42 inches, oil on canvas

2012

"Landscape with Two Figures" , 2012, 60 inches by 66 inches, oil

Pretty clear, right?

“My work has changed drastically since returning from a life-changing trip to Europe in 2008. I went with the intention of learning from the techniques of the great Baroque masters, but I came back fueled by a spirit of radical invention and expression. While my narrative paintings had always been anchored in my ability to envision what I could remember and imagine, I returned from this trip determined to not just envision, but to become aggressively visionary.  I wanted to reconfigure my imagined world, to subvert what I knew and destroy what was comfortable. So I changed what I imagined. Then I changed how I drew.  Then I changed how I painted. Now, my drawing is primarily directed by my capriciously impulsive, insouciant, and perverse Line.”

  

I am in love with Robert's more recent body of work and am so thankful (Thanksgiving day post people!) that this transition developed.

In the studio:

Another thing that I am thankful for is the dedication that was drilled into me at my alma mater, to straight up do WORK in the studio.  I think my parents can probably get in a bit on that hard work and dedication thankfulness too, but I'm getting away from my point here.  Because of this beliefe that hard and steady work in the studio is so vital, I am strongly compelled to hear about other artists’ studio practice.  The variation from artist to artist is huge, but one thing seems consistent and that is that the artists who go to the studio with consistency, and make SOMETHING, even if it is terrible or unimportant, seem to be the most satisfied with their efforts.  I remember hearing Dana Schutz (post about her work from a little while ago) answer questions about this during a talk she did at BU four years ago; she sleeps in, gets coffee, makes her way to the studio in the afternoon sometime, looks at things, preps for a while, breaks to eat, then paints until about 4am.  I could live like that.  laxin laxin laxin WORK.

What a beautiful mess this pallet is!


























A studio day for Robert is any day that he does not have a class over at the University of North Texas where he is a Professor of Drawing and Painting in the College of Visual Arts and Design.

"Sometimes, the painting sessions are fifteen minutes, sometimes they are three to four hours..."  "I'm doing these little works on paper and when I don't feel quite up to the messy work of slogging around in the oil paint, I can make these little pictures. My table for doing them is set up in my studio, where I can look up and see the canvas that I'm working on. I usually only have one painting on canvas going at a time, but during the course of a painting, I may have several works on paper going. I also usually don't complete a work on paper in one sitting. I often have a fast start of one sort or another then leave it alone. Then I'll come back and respond to those first markings and try to advance the form and nascent imagery. Altogether, these little works probably take between two and four hours over a couple of days to bring to completion. The paintings proceed in much the same way, but over a longer period of days and sessions. Most paintings, though, have always been completed in a week to ten days."

Influences:

A woman looks at 'Le jardin d'Hiver,' 1968-1970, a work by French artist Jean Dubuffet 

Jean Dubuffet

Sean Scully

Guston, de Kooning and Picasso were also on the list.

Dubuffet and Scully are two artists I haven't seen before, always thrilled to see more artist's work.  I know the last three artists' bodies of work but they are definitely worth looking at for those who are unfamiliar.  

So that wraps it up.  A big thank you to Robert Jessup for being game for my question, hopefully this is something I can do with other artists in the future.

Sandpaper Factory

I've been back in the Sandpaper Factory for a month now thanks to Scott Ketcham's artistically generous spirit.  This is the third Summer he has given me rein over the space while he is away at the Vermont Studio Center (I MUST go there someday).

I've been getting tons of work done and am absolutely thrilled about it.  I am also currently thrilled about the opening I will be having in the space on July 21st.  My girl Zheyu will have some work up as well; she has been busy making gigantic things in there lately. Check that link I made through her name in that last sentence, her work is amazing.

 Lots of portraits have been happing.  Originally I started making them as practice for a piece I am doing for a friend, but I've been getting into them a lot more than I imagined.  I'm having a lot of fun working the oil pastels in with the paint and searching for a rhythmic balance back and forth between them.  This portrait above kinda looks like there is a swollen mouth situation going on, but I think I'm over it.  I suspect that my precision in portraiture will increase with more practice.  While I do care a lot about the growth of that precision, I am equally as invested in the compositional quality of each piece.  I want to add another sentence here figuring out that equation and what it means for my paintings, but this is all very new work for me and I am still working on those answers.

Been getting outside a bit too:

And what I feel to be an obligatory "Serious Painter" portrait.

I truly hope that if you are reading this you will be able to come to the exhibition.

"Summer 2012"

July 21, 2012

7p-9p, party to follow

83 East Water Street.

4th Floor

Rockland, MA

Practicing Studio Practice

Back in the studio.  Working there on a piece for a friend and from home on a piece for me.  Here are a few shots of the evidence to support that information:

organization.

prep.

(partial) mess.

happy hand

too bad it is probably letting tons of horrible chemicals into my boddy.

work in progress.

If the Face Had Wheels

While in Miami I had a little time to pop into the Miami Art Museum where a Dana Schutz exhibition was on display.

I don't know exactly when I became familiar with Schutz's work, probably around 2008 when I went with Meghan Dinsmore to see her speak at Boston University as a part of their Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series.  I just found a link to the talk here if you are interested in seeing it. It has been really good for me to go back and flip through this talk again, she sounds sweet.  What I remember from the talk is being annoyed with the simplicity of the stories of her paintings, but as I continue to look at her work it is now, of course, that simplicity which keeps bringing me back.

Cover for the catalog (that I am ordering tonight!)

"If the Face Had Wheels" was organized by Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College and State University of New York.  I checked out the Neuberger Museum of Art website to see what they had to say about her paintings and it was just what I was hoping for.  A quote that summarizes the obvious about Shutz's work, which is TRUE, and I UNDERSTAND why it is talked about all of the time, but can we not move on?  The quote is, "The subjects of Schutz's paintings spring from an absurdist sensibility as she invents imaginary stories or hypothetical situations that are bizarre and impossible, yet oddly compelling."  This line of thought has been so thought about that I've decided to NOT think about it over the past few years, which has led me to not bother keeping up with her work.  Yes, Schutz's work IS all of those things, and there is a lot to think about and enjoy there, but there is this whole other thing that I haven't heard enough about and didn't even know existed until I saw this show.  How am I just finding out about her Tourette's Series?!  Apparently Dana Schutz has things going on other than telling hypothetical stories and that rocks because her application of paint alone makes me want to roll around on one of her wet canvases, never mind a concept that I can get into as well. 

Carpenter 2010
Oil on canvas
50 x 72 inches

The painting I really wanted to show here is "Licking a Brick" from 2011 which is owned by Nina Grill.  Who is Nina Grill and where is there a photo of this painting?  Well I'll get a photo of when my catalog is delivered I suppose.
Much like in "Carpenter," "Licking a Brick" sends the viewer a direct snapshot from Schutz's brain of an impulse she has had.  I've always been intrigued by these impulses, Where do they come from? What do they mean? How much do I really want that?  I equate Schutz's impulses to scrape wood with her teeth and licking bricks with my desire to throw myself over the upper level railing at the mall and chuck my phone into the Biscayne Bay during an enjoyable conversation.  I also often think about steering my car off the road while on the highway.  These impulses always come at times when I am absolutely chilled out, I dont really want these things, I'm just impulsively curious about the experience and it kind of freaks me out.  What if my action followed through as quickly and unexpectedly as my curiosity arrived?  I love Schutz's ability to capture these fleeting thoughts into these sometimes gigantic paintings.  They are simple and quick thoughts that she manages to translate into complex and time consuming objects while not changing their impulsivity a hair.

Some of the paintings that gave my eyeballs a place to pack up and move out of my head to were:

The Breeders 2002
Oil on canvas
84 x 90 inches
Collection of Gagosian Gallery

Chicken and the Egg 2003
Oil on canvas
75 x 90 inches
Collection of Diane and Robert Moss

Notes I took about Chicken and the Egg while at the museum pretty much sum up my feelings about it, "Blue - Fucking Blue. Unapologetic!" Also, the pattern of negative space as stars in the sky and their reflection in the water below is kind of awesome too; over half of the painting is spots!

Her Arms 2003
Oil on Canvas
Collection of David Teiger

This is a scan from some promotional paper I got at the museum; it does no justice to the actual color of the painting.  The painting has got to be at least 6 feet tall; I will update the info when I get my book on the show.  Things I loved about this painting cannot be seen in photos, thick paintings just do not photograph well.  In the areas with thick paint you can see so many different colors in each stroke, it gives the marks a greater presence of time in the history of the painting.  And the hand on the left of the painting is structured so well and it is an entry point into how thoughtful all of the marks are.

Gouged Girl 2008
Oil on canvas
Collection of Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz

Some of the text that went along with this piece in the museum referenced Rene Magritte's "This is Not A Pipe" painting.  I can't totally get on board with that.  Yes, this is not a picnic and this is not a real girl or real anything else, but I just find this painting to be more about pattern, color and experimentation -with a still life as the vehicle for these things, than I see the edited still life as the actual point of the whole thing.

I loved the play of thick and thin paint in this piece.  The orange splash of color you see between the girl and the bottle is one of the thinnest areas in the piece although it appears to be additive as far as color is concerned.  That bright orange is such an intense color that along with its thin application gives the appearance of beaming, color as it's own light source, I love it.  

Another area of interest I found was with the flesh colors on the girl and the watermelon.  The color used is pretty similar and works as one color compositionally, but in reality it is a cool tone used in the fruit.

Schutz is holding it down and I'm glad that I got back on board with that.

Oil on Paper

Well, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Here are a few of the images that I am currently working with in preparation to go up onto my website.  I've begun the color correction process to get the images identical to the paintings.  They are all just about perfect.  From there I will crop and square them to have a clean looking image.  

Earth Hole in Red, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Landscape with Grayscale, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Markers, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

Primary and Gray, 2011
Oil on Paper
10.5x12"

I always have to keep an eye on the clock while working in Photoshop because I could very easily get sucked in for the entire day and miss everything else I am supposed to do.

What I've been up to in the studio

Visual Update

Images 1-6 are on 10x12" canvas painted with oil

Image 7 is on approx 40x26" stretched canvas painted with oil

Image 8 is on 16x20" canvas board painted with oil

(Don't know why this guy is washed out, probably because I need to work on my photography skills.) 

(In progress)

I've got some more things going in the studio but you'll have to check back later for those!

Forward Moving

Forward Progress!

Here is a fresh sketch for a new piece I'm about to start. I can't wait to get into the studio to try it out with some oils. I'm thinking I'll throw it out on a 16"x20" panel. More on this later.

My landscape series is continuing on, I have 10.5 out of 14 of them completed. As I work on finishing those up over the next week I'll be stretching a big guy (4'x5') to paint a large version of one of them. Can't wait to post the pieces I've completed recently. I'm proud of this series and have to give a shout out to my girl Arlee who's paintings are a great inspiration for me. I just checked around for pics of her work online but couldn't find anything, I've put a request in so hopefully we can see some soon up in hur.

14 Paintings Progress

I've been painting pretty hard this week, even at the studio now on tired Sunday! I'm really pushing myself to get 18 hours/week of work done for this project.

Each un-stretched canvas is 10"x12"

As you can see some of the painted edges come to a sharp and distinct edge while others are a little more loose. I began working with the tighter edges but decided to see what would happen with the visual tension if I was less focused on the hard edge and more into letting the mark making show itself.

I have a deadline to have the whole group of 14 to be done by February the 8th (which sounds a lot further away than it is!)

I really thought I would be blowing through these but I had a very tentative start. Each piece seems to be coming out a bit quicker than the last.

This one will be finished this evening and after that I'll be adding some Damar Varnish I made into my medium mixture. I'm very excited for this as I've never worked with varnish before and am looking forward to seeing the results once the pieces are dry.

Went out with friends last night and had a really fun time... ended up eating my friend's pizza and then almost an entire box of mac and cheese out of the pot with a spoon, always a sign of a good night. So now I am tired and don't really want to work, but I suppose that is part of the professional practice, working a lot and meeting deadlines instead of just doing it whenever.

It's just me, my coffee and coco puffs.. I think we can do it.

p.s. all of these colors are a bit more bright in real life.

New Ideas

Here are some new sketches I've been working on for new paintings.

I'm using a new process which begins with doing digital sketches then printing those out and spending time with them in my studio.
Physical edits are made, worked on digitally further if needed and then on to the painting process.
This group is nearing the end of their editing phases and one is being worked on with oils in the studio.
These are to be seen as reference and only time will tell how closely they stay or far they move from these sketches.
More sketches are being worked on and aside from these I have a completely separate body of work developing:

I'm embarking on a journey into politically themed work. Hopefully I will be able to find some humor within all of the passion for change I am often consumed by while maintaining my message, I have things to say!

Stay tuned for further painting updates, this should be moving along quickly with all of these ideas moving around :)

In other news about getting my painting out and into the world, I stopped by The Better Bean Coffee Co. this afternoon in Bridgewater, got a killer Cafe Latte with Jeff and dropped off my information to be given to the owner so we'll see where that develops! Jeff has been going there for years and the place really seems to be developing every time I've stopped in there. Always new artwork showing and sandwiches now too! ART AND SANDWICHES!!!

If anybody has any more suggestions on places to get my paintings shown, please let me know!