Art Sync: Soft Power

Elizabeth Johnson: Your statement on the Gross McCleaf website says you are interested in, “the ways in which the grid and images can direct our attention to the painted surface." You say you think of the surface as "twofold." What do you mean by twofold?

Lauren Whearty: The surface of painting was emphasized at Tyler when I was in undergrad. Most of the faculty worked abstractly, so the focus on color, materiality, physicality, and gesture was the foundation of my painting language. Although this may seem to contrast with my recognizable still lives, I see all painting as a kind of abstraction because we’re using this colorful mud combined with our bodily gestures to make a record on canvas. This attitude frees me to combine flatness with illusion, realistic colors with invented ones, and to include influences that play with our perception of surfaces, illusionistic space, and depth.

EJ: Does using the grid or a tabletop view and layering up different flat planes reflect an attraction to Cubism, trompe l'oeil, or collage? How does paying attention to the grid inside the painting relate perspective and abstraction?

EJ: In the interview on Art Spiel, you mention that you’re consistent in your "sense of first-person perspective" and that you’re “interested in the paintings creating a sense of totality––an embodiment of my experiences that is documented through touches and color." Do you feel like you are channeling Matisse, working with domestic subjects, yet living now in our flat-screen age?

LW: There’s a long history of artists working inventively with domestic subjects. Rather than channeling any one artist, it excites me to be in conversation with such a rich history. Matisse was my first painting hero, I’ve always been energized by his gestural brush strokes, his sense of color, ease, and speed in painting. In terms of the domestic subjects, I think a lot about how still life painting is an underdog genre. Across history, still life has been one of the few areas for women painters who weren't permitted to attend schools, libraries, or figure modeling sessions. Because it has been insufficiently acknowledged, I believe it’s a genre with great potential for invention as a form of language building. Still life hinges on how artists treat their subjects in paint.

LW: The grid in this painting is definitely influenced by Matisse’s Large Reclining Nude. It channels many aspects of Matisse’s work at that time. I was most excited about his playfulness, use of decoration and pattern in textiles, animated shapes, ease of mark, color, and gesture. His paintings feel like he got it right on the first try, and the exhibit’s emphasis on drawing fed into my process as well.

I included a couple of Matisse paintings in the mural, and my painting pays homage to my experience of looking at Matisse. For example, Yellow Odalisque, which I first saw as an undergrad. I was amazed at its impact and visual power, though I questioned the museum's decision to hang it between two bathrooms in the Impressionist wing. I came to realize this probably had something to do with taste, since the painting has such a deep punch of color.

I took this curatorial choice personally because I question the privilege and power of how and what art has historically been presented in museums. I’d never been to an art museum before college, and this experience demystified and humanized the process and politics of curation. It raised questions that continue to inform my work: How can color become the subject of a painting and have power? How does taste affect perception? What kinds of imagery and subjects are acceptable to a museum, and who or what is excluded?

LW: Flowers signify time. They wilt, they dry out, petals fall. Their ephemeral quality is like a memento mori, without skulls and candles. When you work from life, especially from flowers, you are working against time. Their nature is to move, open, and close, making it important to pay extremely close attention. Their vitality is akin to painting a living person whose movement and presence becomes reflected in the painting itself. Flowers and the sensuality of nature express joy and pleasure.

EJ: Still Life with Quilting Fabric and Summer Flowers references Cubism in the piling up of layers of fabric and rattan and trompe l'oeil trickery by asserting that flowers––be they real and unique or repeated images––can coexist. The viewer feels both inside and outside the action. What does integrating the different views and treatments of flowers both as surface and objects mean to you?

LW: My combinations emphasize soft power. After graduate school, I worked a few years in a sewing workshop, where I came to appreciate what has been deemed “women’s work.” There is real power in working repetitively and meditatively on finely executed sewing and embroidery; the work embodies women's resilience, community, and ability to carve out time and space for ourselves. This parallels the position of still life in art history, which often ranks last behind historical, landscape painting, and portraiture.

EJ: Painter's Table applies experimental treatment of vases and mimics the side-by-side contrast of planes in Cubism. What are your strategies for simplifying complex passages of layered form and surface? Or is there no such thing as excessive in your visual world?

LW: This was an exciting painting to make. It's five by seven feet and everything is from life, which made it a very physical process. After I drew the basic composition out in charcoal on the canvas, I painted all the living flowers before they changed so much that my drawn composition would be irrelevant. Again, this is like painting a person from life: you’re working with a limited session, the understanding that the whole setup will change over time.

EJ: Your painting expresses the overlapping roles of teaching, studying art history, curating, and painting. Everything all at once is up close and personal. Do you feel your painting is moving toward weighing different parts with different meaning?

LW: Everything all at once is a good summary for the work. I was once asked what I wanted to paint by Ed Valentine, a professor at The Ohio State University, where I received my MFA.

I replied, “Everything!” He said, “Do you really mean that?” And I thought again, and I said "Yes!" 

“Painting everything” is about building a world of my own vision and thinking deeply about the world that I exist in. The stuff of life, the materiality of paint, and the material world we find ourselves in, is a rich and apt way to discuss things that are not physical, and not always visible. 

For me, active painting is about observing the subject just as carefully as I am observing my own material decisions. Painting is a material language, an individual sense of touch. It’s a specific language for capturing an embodied perspective.

Exhibition Dates: July 5 -29, 2023

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 8, 1 - 4 pm

Lauren Whearty is an artist, educator, and curator living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH), and her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (Philadelphia, PA) and has been a Co Director at Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and non-profit in Brooklyn, NY since 2017. Lauren has attended residencies such as Yale’s Summer School of Art through the Ellen Battle Stoeckel Fellowship, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Golden Foundation. She has recently received an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. Her work has been exhibited at The Delaware Contemporary (Wilmington, DE), The State Museum of PA (Harrisburg, Pa), The Woodmere Museum (Philadelphia, PA), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Bridgette Mayer Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Center for Emerging Visual Artists (Philadelphia, PA), Satellite Contemporary (Las Vegas, NV), Monaco (St Louis, MO), The Painting Center (New York, NY), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Underdonk (Brooklyn, NY), and Deanna Evans Projects (Brooklyn, NY). Lauren currently teaches at The University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia.