Art Sync: Color and Space

EJ:  The blue/lavender haze in both the older works and present ones recalls muggy East Coast summers, and Monet’s landscapes in Giverny. Do you squint to see trees and landscapes as you paint? Do you have a process that dissolves images into a dappled cascade?

KM:  That haze evokes deep feelings of pleasure and memories of beautiful summer afternoons. I’m not depicting any visual forms, so squinting or stepping back won’t reveal a picture. I want these paintings to be seen first and foremost for their abstract qualities. I want my colors to appear to be affected by light. But how I place them on the canvas relates to the space of the painting, and the neighboring colors don’t correspond to this or that object’s actual form. Hopefully, this frees me to make paintings that are inspired by more than just how something looked. They can also include the people I shared my experience with, or the way the sun felt that day, or anything else I associate with a particular memory.

KM: I’m chiefly exploring color. But the associations of those colors are just as important. I never think of landscapes as empty: I’m always thinking about the air, light, and space that define these places. In the past, I made many bather-themed paintings. I was trying to achieve a particular feeling of sensualness about our bodies and nature. The literal reading of these paintings was unfortunately inevitable, and the paintings were put inside a narrative that I felt was detrimental to my purpose. Painting nudes is always political: viewers want to know how these images relate to our society. Of course, they’re right to ask these questions, but I wanted to paint something less tangible, and I often felt my work was getting redirected by its realism. Abstraction opens possibilities in this regard, and I think I can revisit––and keep––these sensual feelings while ignoring a narrative structure.

I’ve always admired Cezanne’s bathers––particularly the late ones––because he was able to transfer the sensuality of the nude away from the narrative and onto the overall sensuality of the canvas. Gottfried Boehm described this in his article, “A Paradise Created by Painting: Observations on Cezanne’s Bathers”: “. . . What we see in the Bathers is not an Arcadia that is independent of the picture; instead, the picture itself appears Arcadian. It is the organization of all the elements, components and parts, the approximation of bodies and objects, that together determine the experience.” I think this is what Cezanne meant when he said that “art is a harmony parallel to nature.”

KM:  I feel that we see color all at once, in a pure visual language without theory or logic. I work empirically, trying to find relationships between spots of color that seem to animate one other. The colors all rely on one other to exist in a particular light.

EJ:  Earlier you expressed the hope that you are “free to make paintings that are inspired by more than just how something looked,” and you gave great examples: people you were with, how the sun felt. Since you say that “the painting must succeed on its own terms,” do you prefer keeping the associations private so that viewers concentrate on the how the painting moves them? Or do you like to reveal the associations to see if you have communicated your feelings?

KM:  This is a very important point to elaborate on. The ultimate goal of my painting is to be a vehicle of transcendence for others, not to express my particular personal emotions or memories.  I’m thinking of Monet’s waterlilies. The experience of viewing one of Monet’s large waterlilies has little to do with his pond in Giverny. It’s much more about the feeling of immersion in color and the special kind of space he created. The subject, and the artist’s intentions, fall away and we see the painting as a magical object of man-made beauty.

Making art is one thing that connects me to the world. I feel inwardly connected when I make something that enriches my soul, and I feel outwardly connected when I present my work to other people. I think the great paintings of the past are truly a gift to humanity and I would love to contribute something to that collection of riches. I title my paintings with some reluctance because I don’t want viewers searching for images of “Matilda” in Arriving at Matilda’s. But it’s still important to give some information in the title so viewers know that the painting has some external meaning to the artist. I want viewers to find something for themselves in the work, to have their own relationship to the colors and spaces, and I fully expect those connections to be different from mine. If they do––regardless of my intention­­––then, yes, I have succeeded.

––Elizabeth Johnson
(elizabethjohnsonart.com)

edited by Matthew Crain

(instagram.com/sarcastapics)

February 2022