2.13.02
Is there an anecdote you could share about how the life, cooking, painting thing came together for you?
This is a hard one because it feels like the main thing they all have in common right now is a plodding
along and a routine that mingle them all together. I guess one example of food, art and life coming
together in a way that makes sense is in the surprise cakes my friends and I make for each other:
Budweiser six-pack cakes, turkey dinner cake (with white and dark meat/cake— and bread pudding
stuffing), cigarette pack petit-fours.
Does your soup making follow recipes? Are there painting experiences which have influenced your soup making?
I’m actually not a great cook and have to follow recipes exactly— cooking and baking probably
influence painting more than painting influences cooking and baking. There’s a freedom in painting
that isn’t in my kitchen, even though I still greatly enjoy making food.
Why do you think these 2001 paintings have a differing tone from those of prior years?
The newer paintings feel lighter, looser and not so pinned down. They are less defined spaces with less
recognizable objects. Partly, they happened faster than the other paintings, so there wasn’t so much
time spent obsessing over them. Also, they happened in a much larger studio— I think the distance
from them allowed the abstraction to have a bigger part in the compositions.
Do you think your paintings contain as much landscape info as still life?
Even though the objects are plates and food, the large scale of these paintings makes being in them
more of a landscape experience. Hopefully, it’s possible to walk into them and move around.
In our last q & a, you spoke of your love of making soup; do you approach a painting as making a soup, especially in terms of space and ground?
I think it depends on how you see soup--if it’s a clear broth with objects floating in it, that’s an easy way
to imagine how the paintings begin. Ingredients are added until the soup is complete— but cooking
soup well requires an exact timing I don’t have. Painting always looks fresh and new and can’t be
boiled until the color and taste are gone. There is room to fix paintings— to paint over and over and to
mess up again and again. That’s not so possible in cooking— or in real life.
Regardless of artist, value, size, etc, which four or five paintings would you like to have hanging in your home?
I love this question. 1) Florrine Stettheimer’s "Sale at Bendels"; 2) a van Gogh sunflower painting with
a background that hops off the wall and runs across the room; 3) an early Peter Saul; 4) a Goya pile of
fish; 5) a Neo Rauch painting or a Fairfield Porter landscape or a tiny Cezanne with apples and oranges.
Is your universe a big, simmering soup?
Oh dear. No, unfortunately, my real universe is more of a meaty stew in need of reheating. But my
imaginary universe is a springtime bakery full of cakes and pies piled high with gorgeous dishes,
antique linens, and a river of chocolate running through it all.
12.7.00
Do you work from set-ups; do you begin with a specific image in mind?
I don’t set up still-lifes but do paint some objects from observation. I’m always pulling images from old
cookbooks and magazines but feel like the images come more from music or memory. The paintings
start out abstract and gradually become specific places. I’m never sure where they will end up - the
places they turn into feel more like someplace that couldn’t exist - sort of what it would look like to be
in a Hank Williams song.
What is your thought on the abstraction/representation relationship?
The abstraction/representation relationship sets up a problem or puzzle that I am continually trying to
balance and “fix.” I’m excited about the gaps in the paintings - between abstraction and representation,
between recognizable objects, between paint colors and surfaces, between shallow and deep space,
between what I’m trying to do and what I do.
And how about between cooking and painting; do you cook a lot?
I don’t cook as much as I’d like to but love being in the kitchen in the same way I love being in the studio. The process of baking and cooking and the physicality of making, seeing and eating food feels
just like painting for me. Conversely, painting feels like a daily elementary function like eating and
sleeping. The perfect set-up is having the kitchen next to the studio and having a pot of soup on the
stove while I’m painting. Is it true that van Gogh ate his paint? It makes sense, doesn’t it?
You sometimes spend over a year putting a big painting together; what keeps the process that slow; how do you maintain the painting’s momentum over that length of time; does a painting change drastically over that time; are there false endings; do you go back into works after you’ve thought them done?
I’m not sure why they take so much time to make. I think it takes me that long to see what’s going on and to decide what’s working. Painting on many canvases at a time and turning them upside down and looking at them on different days and different times of day changes them. The more layers of paint they get, the more focused they seem to get. Some fall into place easily and others change a lot over time. I
start out thinking everything will get painted over eventually so it isn’t precious, but things end up sticking around. I don’t erase or scrape off, but piling new layers on does that naturally. They continue
to get tweaked and fiddled with. In a way, I feel like I’m still trying to figure out how to finish them - and
that once I find this one missing piece, I could go back into them and fix them all.
How did you get to that subject matter? Over the past ten years or so still-life painting has not been much in discussion. Do you think of these paintings as having a feminist read? Is that an intention of your choice of subject matter? Which came first?
I don’t want to answer this one.