Matthew R. Murphy

                           

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I am a painter. Canvas and oil are a primary mode. However, I work with a variety of media. The constructions inherently express similar things differently. Depending on the necessities of the idea or my curiosities in material or presentation the work will take different forms. I find my work caught between the world of illusion and the object with no clear way to resolve this. I find some ideas must be objects posing as paintings and sometimes paintings posing as objects, while still other times paintings are simply paintings.

What drives you to make work?

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to make work. One may be simple curiosity, another may be a need to express something or perhaps to draw some meaning out of a particular kind of organization. Much of it is simply sorting through and organizing ideas.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I struggle for a concise answer to this question. It is difficult to find time for any consistency in a working process while trying to balance “real-life” and other responsibilities. So trying to cope with a fractured working sequence can disrupt the feeling of the day-to-day. Most days work begins with prepping surfaces. This could mean priming, sanding or wiping so that paint will stick. Sometimes it is shaping pieces for painting this can require a lot of plotting and measuring. Very practical things. At some point painting will happen so this means mixing colors, applying them, scraping and wiping them away and mixing again. Somedays work is simply drawing or collaging, or otherwise working toward generating ideas. I am usually searching for something that is hard to point to. It could be an idea or combination of ideas about color, composition, materials, or perhaps something I have read about or listened to or have seen.
 
How long have you been working in that way?

I am not certain.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

William Turner, Arshile Gorky, Blinky Palermo, Philip Guston and Chaim Soutine to isolate a few.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Many things. Teaching informs my practice.   The carpentry/craftsman work I do provides encounters with new ideas and new materials that can set off or inspire new ideas in the studio. I read a lot and listen to a lot of music - these things help. I do a lot of thinking while riding a bicycle or riding a train. Mostly, I try and keep my eyes open wherever I am.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

This is an interesting question I sometimes think about. I feel that one cannot dictate to the viewer how to engage with a piece. People bring what they bring. But one can direct the viewer. After all we engage with an El Greco differently than we do with a Pollock. So I suppose I would like the viewer to slow down and look closely. I would like them to be actively engaged but receptive.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Imi Knoebel's shaped panels for Blinky Palermo.  

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

Whatever it is I'm not ready.

William Bradley

                             

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make paintings about abstraction. More specifically I’m concerned with how meaning is produced within abstract painting. To this end I move in and around various positions, combining many elements from within its history with external visual sources and quotations.

What drives you to make work?

A need to better understand what it is that fascinates me about painting.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I work in distinct stages. I will spend a few months developing ideas through drawing in ink and watercolour. I then select those I feel will develop into the most interesting paintings and transcribe the designs on to flat colour grounds. This marks the beginning of a few months putting together a group of paintings.

How long have you been working in that way?

For a few years, the move towards a kind of design process was a major turning point in my work.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

There are so many. Growing up close to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park meant that Hepworth, Moore and Caro made a lasting impression but it was an exhibition of the work of Eduardo Chillida which first moved me toward abstraction. I adore his sculpture but it was his work on paper and his ‘gravitations’ which sparked my first steps down this path. American Abstract Expressionism obviously has had a huge affect and I continue to react to their arguments as well as their imagery. British painters like Sandra Blow, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, John Hoyland and more recently Dan Perfect, Philip Allen, Danny Rolph and Stuart Cumberland. Probably the greatest impact has been made by Thomas Scheibitz. His approach of generating images from a vast number of sources has proved incredibly important in my practice.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Everything is fair game and there is no hierarchy in my approach. I am filtering many elements from things such as graphic design, advertising, cartoons, architecture, anything that I find useful.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

In their own way. I purposefully try to set up ‘ways in’ for the viewer. Some people can respond to a painting in a purely visceral way, others look for clues for interpretation or the familiar. I load my paintings with cues and quotations, alluding to the familiar in an attempt to set up a situation where the viewer utilises their own experience as a means of deriving meaning.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Some work by Sally Taylor. It wasn’t at all what I expected from the images I had seen and was, in the flesh, quite beautiful. Loved the work of Neil Ayling. The Sparrowhawk in the back garden, not uncommon but beautiful.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

The new body of work I’m developing, it’s the most excited I’ve been about a group of paintings in a while. Beyond that 2012 looks like it should be a good year.

Guy Yanai

                  

Can you briefly describe what you do? 

I make works of art in projects. I want to change the world. It’s that simple really. I want my works to change the visual culture that we know. I want to create a new lexicon of visual processes.

What drives you to make work? 

Anger, anxiety, more anxiety. Not creating and not working drive me into a very, very quick oblivion. Happy people do not make art, so I guess that is what drives me.  It’s really a burning sensation that never leaves. Not very pleasant, but no other way, and it’s the only thing that makes life somewhat possible.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I wake up very early. I have two kids, Romy and Ava. I am in the studio all day every day.  Usually in the morning I try to avoid working at any cost, knowing that I will soon be facing all my weaknesses is very scary, at some point I begin, sometimes as late as 12, sometimes as early as 9, it depends.  Emails really help me feel that I am doing something ‘productive’.  I only work in groups of works, near the end I will work 12 - 14 hours a day, in the beginning less so.

How long have you been working in that way? 

Before I had kids I wasted a lot of time and somehow got a lot less done. Having children gave me a renewed sense of urgency, so it’s been about four years of working like this. The more I work the more I feel that I don’t work enough.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work? 

All of the really good painters. I love them all. Piero della Francesca is still one of my favorites, same with Paulo Uccello. There are so many good artists working today as well. Really exciting; I like artists that have a real freedom to what they do, like Tal R.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice? 

EVERYTHING. I consume it all, and in massive amounts, much more than I look at painting now. Films, music, magazines, women, internet, vimeo, youtube, etc.  In some ways, I have started indexing all of these ‘sources’. Looking at all of this is very crucial for me. I like the way there are moving images everywhere now. On a plane now, from Newark to Chicago, I saw on TV that some restaurants have iPads as menus; that is a challenge for us, one more layer to be aware of and defeat.

 How would you like people to engage with your work? 

I guess that I would like the first engagement, those first few seconds, to be an emotional response, something beyond cognitive thought.  Then after you can go and understand it, the quotations etc. I just started a large work called Therapy, and with this work I would really love for people to look at it and just get very emotional and feel all of their personal baggage, to really confront their subconscious. 

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression? 

Last thing that really blew me away, and has not left in ANY way is Michel Houellebecq’s latest book, The Map and the Territory. I read it in Hebrew, it comes out in English Jan 3, 2012, and I’ll read it in English as well.  The book changed me. 

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon? 

Yeah, 2012 is going to be great. I have a solo project at The George Maciunas Foundation in NYC, Noam Segal is curating something of mine at Yafo 23 in Jerusalem, with a large “re-mix” of Uccello’s Battle of San Romano and a lot of sculptures. I am also curating a show in Tel Aviv, at the Spaceship at Hayarkon 70 of international artists.

William Stein

                    

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make paintings on chalk gessoed panels. This very particular ground allows both a light and vigorous approach, and so the works are layered, moulded, and excavated into their final incarnation. They explore an interior life, drawing attention away from the known, and towards our more essential selves.

What drives you to make work?

An ineluctable, nightmarish, selfish, absurd, niggling, errant desire. To function well and kindly I must make work.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I work on chalk gessoed marine-ply panels. I will prepare a number of panels over a period of days, which I will then work on over the following few months. The daily activity: In the studio by 9.30am, coffee, spend time looking, usually fifteen or so paintings will be hung around walls. All works are 53x40cm and are hung grid-like, organised, level; I may spend time moving works around, opening up new dialogues. Quite by surprise I will find myself making some urgent moves on a painting. I should continue with concentrated activity (painting, drawing, rubbing, scrubbing, sanding, looking, throwing, thinking, oiling, hoping) on various panels in rotation, until mid-afternoon .The day’s practice closes with the cleaning of brushes (rinse in spirits, cleanse with vegetable soap, put to rest), and some further time spent looking and re-hanging.

How long have you been working in that way?

With the specific work dimension and chalk ground: Two years. 

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Munch, Klee, Morandi, Guston

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Bleeps, basslines, shadows, the city, nerves, lack of sleep, wind, rain, corners, thoughts, words, my children: their clarity.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

With patience; I do not demand this though, it is my responsibility to draw this from them. I hope the image I present would encourage a viewer’s calm attention, carry them along, and eventually away from the visual and to then experience the work/themselves in its/their entirety.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

The spectacular garden at Upton House, Warwickshire

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

A show at Studio 1.1, in March 2012

Paul Pagk

           

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I spend my time painting, even in those moments I am not physically painting. I am a studio artist as that is where I spend most of my time and where I principally make my work. I paint in oils but I also have a large drawing and works on paper practice.

What drives you to make work?

I do not see myself doing anything else other than working on, thinking about and looking at painting. However here are a few of the reasons that come to mind, which may give an insight into what makes me work. The dialogue that manifests itself between me, painting and the painting; between me, my painting and the art, some of which I have seen since a very young age, that I am challenged by; between me, the painting and the development of an ever evolving language of painting and by the continuous occurring metamorphic nature of the painting and painting.

 Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

My studio is adjunct to my living space, so when I get out of bed in the morning, the first thing I do is to go into the studio to see what I did the day before, only after that do I shower and have breakfast, I can be in my studio sometimes way past midnight, I have small lunch and dinner brakes. My studio has northern light and my painting wall is on the eastside of the studio and the door to my studio is in the west studio wall. I usually have one large painting that I will be working on mostly, but also have 6 or more on the go that are in waiting as well as there are many small paintings in different states of completion. I use dry pigments that I grind into oil paint on a large glass slab, that I use as my palette. I do not prepare my colors in advance but I grind the colors while I am working, changing the hue of the color to the needs of the painting.

I will be thinking about where this or that painting should go in terms of painting, I will be thinking about the last paintings I have just worked on or brought to a level from where I am able to move on to the next work. I spend my time adding and removing from the painting, finding the color, the light, removing an element, adding to remove once more, allowing the painting to slowly define itself.

My drawing practice takes place in the same space as my painting; I have two different ways of approaching my drawing time, one which is drawing on and off while I am working on my paintings and the other which is more intensive where I will solely work on drawing for as long as it comes, producing numerous drawings until I feel that I have worn out that precise moment of drawing activity.

How long have you been working in that way?

Forever.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Difficult to answer, as art is an all out and all receiving practice, like when we breathe (without a dust mask), whatever comes your way you take in, even the work that I may not like will have something that may inform me on my own work. And to define which artists and paintings had a great effect on me would be long, due to the fact that my interests are in many different pictorial forms and in many different artists; so here is a small list, which should be by no means taken as definitive as there are many that I have left out, Giotto, Vermeer, Titian, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Goya, Eduard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, Nicolas De Stael, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, Agnes Martin, Eva Hess, Blinky Palermo, Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Joan Mitchell,  Jo Baer, Donald Judd, my work is also informed by my close artist friends and my contemporaries, I have also spent long hours looking at Classical Chinese painting, Islamic art, as  well as at Classical Chinese pottery such as Sung dynasty pottery.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

Local light, air, local color, color, space, aura, the Hudson river through my studio windows, Merleau Ponty Phenomenology of perception, Baruch Spinoza, Gaston Bachelard Air and Dreams, Gilles Deleuze Difference and Repetition, Li Po, music of all sorts, films, life, the space in front of the painting.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

-Totally- mind and body. Totally is how I would like people to engage with my work.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

The Henri Matisse show, Radical Invention at MoMA, The Edward Manet, the Man who Invented Modernity at Orsay, The Blinky Palermo Retrospective at Bard College and the DIA Beacon, Donald Judd’s and Dan Flavin’s installations at the Chinati Foundation Marfa.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

11 large paintings as well as 29 smaller ones I prepared in July, with which I have my work setout for me for about a year.

Emily Gherard

               

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I have been painting and drawing distilled images of rocks and walls. I tend to work in a limited palette and use the physicality of materials to define the space, form and tension within the piece. 

What drives you to make work?

I always need an idea/concept/theme to begin.  The painting or drawing begins with an idea of a particular form and how it might fit in the space of the painting but as the work continues what keeps me in the piece is manipulating the materials. So I try all sorts of stuff: sanding, scraping, layering, degreasing, buffing, engraving, pouring, subtly altering the color, value, temperature or composition. I look for when the use of materials adds more information, clarity and definition to the original idea.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I tend to work in a series based on the materials. So I do works on paper for a few months then work on canvas for a few months to a year. Right now I am painting so: I have about 25 paintings in a range of sizes. I work in my studio 3-4 days a week. I find that there seems to be a rhythm to my studio day. I start out organized and systematic. I begin by cleaning up from the previous work day. I lay out colors, mixing huge piles of paint. I’ll mix colors for an hour or so, this gets my eyes and thoughts warmed up. Once I am painting things fall apart.  The paintings always start off hideously. This seems to be part of it for me. By the afternoon, I am scraping and smearing paint- trying anything I can think of.  By the end of my studio day- the place is always a complete mess- left that way for the next morning. When I begin a group of canvases- I work on all of them at once. After a while, I spend more time with fewer paintings. I’ll work on a group of canvases for about 3-6 months.

How long have you been working in that way?

I have been working this way for about 5-6 years, with the exception of small changes depending on my schedule and studio. I moved into a home studio a year ago, that combine with more days off has been wonderful.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

Goya, always Goya. Piranesi’s Prisons, Fan Kaun, Brueghel the Elder, Claude Lorran’s ink drawings, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Guston, Auerbach, Kossoff, Morandi, early Georg Baselitz,

Lately: Edward Burtynsky, Abakanowicz, Julie Mehretu, Manolo Valdes particularly his sculptures, Richard Serra.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

I live in Seattle, and love the gray rainy weather. The coast line and dark rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula, a few hours west of me. I listen to various NPR radio programs while I paint- I don’t know their direct impact on my work but they are always there.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

Although it is always evolving, one of the core issues that I return to is how the viewer moves though the space of the painting. So I hope that those ideas come through. It is also important to me that the piece feels like it just exists- that the viewer is not made aware of the hand. 

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

A friend showed me a book the other day of photographs of water towers. Half of my studio floor is covered with a thick layer of plaster and the light falling on the bright white floor is really beautiful and harsh. The Herzog’s movie Cave of Forgotten Dreams reminded me of something that I have always loved. An interview with the poet Irina Ratushinskaya about poetry and politics. The sound recordings of Tony Schwartz.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

I have a show in February at Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle. I am trying to make new work while forgetting about the looming deadline. 

Emily Auchincloss

                   

Can you briefly describe what you do?

I make paintings. Labels are unwieldy and weird. I don’t very much believe in a hard line between abstraction and representation. But I guess I am more concerned with calling attention to moments when symbols and gestures come into being, and when they fall apart.

What drives you to make work?

The painful and wonderful feeling that comes when you see what you want to make, and you try to make it, and you fail partly, and something comes out that is a result of both trying very hard and giving in.  Perhaps like giving your ego a series of hugs and slaps.

Can you tell me something of your day-to-day working practices?

I work on two or three paintings at a time, most of them are large- usually one will completely take over and then I reach a sort of plateau and then others start calling out. When it’s really good they all could perhaps be talking to each other. When I do drawings with oilstick on Duralar it is very fast work, and I have to be really conscious when I transition to the slower process of painting on canvas- I’m definitely still figuring that out. There is usually a lot of waiting, and then fast moves, and then some long slogs.

How long have you been working in that way?

About a year or so…I recently got a studio in Bushwick where I finally have everything where I want it to be, more or less, in terms of materials and tools, which is helping enormously.

Which artists have had the greatest affect on your work?

A selected list: Poussin, George Stubbs, Turner, Whistler, Johannes Itten, Francis Bacon for his stages, Phillip Guston, Elizabeth Murray (her early work very, very much), Charlene Von Heyl, Al Taylor, Keltie Ferris,  the amazing and under-known sculptor Phyllida Barlow, Alisha Kerlin very much, Celia Gerard, Linda Francis. My amazing fiancé, the sculptor Joshua Hart.

What, outside visual art, informs your practice?

The ocean and the sky: how the clouds and waves stand in for things vast and unseeable in their totality. Also Navajo Blankets, Gees Bend quilts and knitted patterns. Somehow I feel they are akin to the computerized aesthetic of fractured spaces and digital readouts. There’s a connection there that is compelling to me.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

I’d like them to suspend their disbelief. I’m starting to feel we live in a constant state of disbelief…that’s sad. I sure don’t want to. I’m a believer.

Have you seen anything recently that has made an impression?

Being in a glider plane at 9,300 feet made an impression. That was in the California desert, where I was recently.  We did what’s called a Wing Over, which is a trick where at one point you are completely upside down and the cockpit is filled with just mountains and sand, and you’re weightless for a moment… Also flying home to New York and looking out the window made a big impression too: seeing the irregular circles, lines and squares of crops and irrigation ditches and desert roads…I am sure they are going to make their way into my paintings. This country is a very beautiful thing from up above.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

I have a solo show in New Jersey in September and a group show in NYC. And hopefully a lot of studio time.