Tell us about the Golden Years series

It’s about fleeting moments, capturing the ephemeral, specifically with age and time. The paintings are sun soaked and very Florida; have these kind of vibrant characters living out their lives together, super active, in a really joyous way.

What was the process of working on these paintings like? You must have spent a chunk of time sketching and making photos at this retirement community - how did it come together in the series?

Before I started work on ‘Golden Years’ I was mostly painting vintage photographs. I got really into a vintage pop thing, I would collect old sports illustrated magazines, and old playboys, there was this magical combination of figure, pop, vintage. They’re cool paintings, I experimented with all kinds of materials, but they weren’t that personal, and they kind of were limited, because they weren’t, like, mine. What happened was I kept painting, exploring, I painted this photo I took of my dad on south beach in Miami, - my parents live in Florida - and there was just something deeper to that painting. It happened to be right around the time that my mum got diagnosed with Alzheimers, and I realised that through this painting I was touching on this nerve end in myself.

So I realised, this is the new direction and I need to go to Florida and I need to explore what this is, and I started building, it was almost like building fire. I was collecting things, sketches, taking photos, going to visit my parents a lot, studying like a journalist, researching. And through that, through these personal things, more universal pieces started to fall into place. Like their friends, or people by the pool.

LA has been terrible, serious lockdowns. The past 18 months it’s just - home. I think that was useful, in a sense, because I distracted myself a lot beforehand, and with all distractions being taken away it was just me and this canvas. The fire was already going, so I was able to really just build this fire, and also tap into the loneliness and the isolation that a lot of these subjects in my paintings I wanted to convey. They’re older, and they’re among the most vulnerable populations. In this time I thought a lot about them, the way that they’re being handled, or mishandled. It added a whole new perspective to the work.

With that view the context that the figures occupy becomes super interesting. The fact that they’re removed from anything else that we might have a frame of reference with, instead they sit against these patterned backdrops. They’re safe, but they’re also apart.

My parents are in this 55-and-older community, and it’s so fascinating to me because it’s exactly what you just said, contained, apart. It’s very disconnected from my world. Quarantine, it was like we were all in our own little bubble; downtown LA was post-apocalyptic. It still kind of is. You’re not going and hanging out in downtown LA right now, during covid, so you are kind of separated, in this haze; I do also kind of look at that pattern as a kind of memory thing. It’s dreamy, it brings up those feelings of isolation and containment.

Is that the driving force behind the decision to be at once figurative and also kind of abstract, to use these patterns, or is that something that you’ve worked with before as well?

That really came from this idea. It’s something that I think I found my voice through. It was directly influenced by this feeling of a figure plus their environment. Not a figure in their environment; the environment and the figure are both just as important in my pieces. So these intricate patterns, backgrounds, are at once a pool and a background to that but on the other hand, especially when you get up close to them, they’re my most gestural moments. They’re all brushwork play. The figure might be what stands out first but when you have a second with it you realise that this environment that they’re in is equally as important. It’s all to do with the memory of it; is this a dream, is this a memory?

I really wanted to capture through brushwork these really fleeting moments like light coming through on the blinds, or playing mahjong and there being one piece and the hand’s gripping it really tightly, and the colour of the fabric.

Tell us about the nuts and bolts; how you bring your reference points together, how you work out your composition, whether you’re sketching on the canvas first or going straight in in paint?

I learned how to oil paint when I was abroad in Florence, when I was in college, so I was trained in this very traditional Italian Renaissance way; it’s funny because my paintings are very not that style. But actually, if you x-ray’d them they have a very traditional underpainting to them, all of them. An underpainting is something where you can really lay out what you want to go where.

Sometimes I’ll have some sketches of a face, maybe I’ll have some photos, maybe I’ll see a colour palette that I love, just in the world. But it really comes down to this, you put some colour down - you wipe it away. You put some colour down, you wipe it away; and you’re building almost like a sculpture. You’re building up layers in this underpainting that create the dimension you can see. You wait for that to dry, you do a layer of paint, you wait for that to dry.

It’s this slow, very slow building process. With that space, and that time, between each layer, you’re thinking all new things. You could be one person on Monday, and then Friday when you go back to it you’ve had a really bad day. It comes out in a different way. So a piece that you think, oh they’re just playing mahjong, is made over a month, two months, and I’m in a different state every time I approach this canvas. I think when you really spend time with them you see different emotions, and different perspectives.

You describe yourself as a natural storyteller, which made us think about artists like Philip Guston, whose work was also celebrated for its narrative power. How do paintings tell a story differently from words, or a film; what does narrative in painting ask of the audience?

That makes me think of a lot of things; I think it’s most important to know, I didn’t chose to paint. If I could, I would be a writer. I look at writers and I’ve always dated writers, I’m married to a writer. The way that writers can take a story, or something that’s happening, and take you on this ride; I would do that, I just have severe blocks with writing. That’s not my gift. Because I feel things so deeply like a writer, or any artist, my skillset and tools have always been in creating with my hands. And drawing, and drafting, and later painting and colours. I just feel like I want to tell this story, and the way that I know how to, and the tools that I have, happen to be in these large-scale canvases. And that’s the purest form of me getting what’s inside, out.

What I hope for the viewer is just a heightened sense of that, because now it’s not just a story, it’s a universal thing, and I want so badly for them to attach their own story to it. I don’t want to be, like, this is me, this is my story and that’s the end of it. Rather, it’s: this is what influenced this creation, and now this is an object, and you’re looking at this object and now what is the thing that it’s bringing up in you? That’s the journey that I see. v
Shadows are important in your paintings; are there any other cues or symbols that you’ve worked at building up as you’ve developed your visual language?

Colours are a whole universe to me. I could talk about colours forever. My sister lived in Saint Kitts for a while and I went to visit at a young age. I remember seeing a lot of faded greens and corals, things that were formerly bright, you could tell, that were just sun drenched and sand rubbed and now had this kind of faded pastel look. And I think that there’s something that that struck really hard for me, because that also brings back in that memory thing, and nostalgia, and the fact that a colour can tell you a story, something that’s a lime green or a dusty pink, kind of feels like it used to be something else.

So I think that maybe I’m drawn to that colour palette because of what it could have formerly been. And by the same token it’s so satisfying to your eyes to look at a really bright colour. Every colour I make is a mixed colour, I don’t use things out of the tube, everything is a constructed colour, but they still give you that same feeling as a viewer. And I want the viewer to feel sun soaked; and I want them to feel happiness, even if my subject matter isn’t always happy.

I think a lot of times my work appears fun, but actually there’s a deeper story to it all. It really has to do with my mum’s memory loss, and the family’s loss of her, and people around her, and everybody at that age going through end of life things. And losing their friends, and being isolated from society. So even though it appears to be a really happy thing with this colour palette I’m able to work in some deeper personal things.

What are you hoping for from your release with TCP?

I’m excited about this collaboration. It’s a shame that art is so rare that one person buys it and doesn’t show it to anybody and it stays locked away, and the fact that you guys are making it accessible to people, and to have, and spend time with. I think that is the true gift of art, that you get to know it, and you live with it, and it becomes a part of you. It’s amazing to make that accessible to people to have in their homes.

Are you interested in trading your work, as a painter?

I’m working on a collection. I love collecting photography. I don’t love to trade, if I can afford something even at a discount I try to give them something financial, because every artist I know is struggling, but I really love having art photography around my house. And I do have some other little paintings. The goal is, one day, to have an epic collection.

Do you recognise things in those photos that you respond to in your own work or would I be shocked to see your photography collection?

It has nothing to do with my own work. And that’s what I maybe like about it. I’m seeing some amazing photographers that are storytellers. One friend, Stefano Galli, goes around LA or the desert and takes photos of very strange people. It’s interesting to me who he selects, the story their clothes tell. There are so many details with photography, I just love it.

Photography for me is so intimate, and really catches that fleeting moment, and I think it’s amazing to live with.