“I put on an image and I sand it lightly off to sort of
push it back into nothingness and I paint it again. This is
a history of my working on this surface.”
“...I’m re-describing the image, you know, through
my body and through my sensibility, through everything I know
really...”
“Some artists now, the street is their subject, they love
it. I love the street too, but my whole work is really very
studio oriented. This is the place where everything is allowed
to happen.”
“I make a sort of a distant-and-close object that is a
painting. That’s how I think of it. And sometimes a very
strange looking painting.”
Is there a way to
describe how your work led from one way of working into the
next?
CELMINS:
Most of the changes
in the work occur when I have had some kind of an experience
that has been like a little awakening experience. Usually
out in life and I’ve forgotten all about it and then
somehow it creeps into the work. I don’t know how to
say that. You know I think actually the night skies came out
of the pencil, pushing the pencil so hard and getting in love
with the black. The ocean came from maybe walking my dog on
the beach all the time and beginning to think of this giant
surface. And thinking about my own surfaces on the work. The
desert... I used to roam around.
They come out of life, you know, they come out of poking around
my own life. Like when I picked those set of rocks in New
Mexico, it never even occurred to me... I had them in the
back of the car and I put them out on the table and I just
had this instinctive desire to make them myself as if I was
maybe a creator myself. To make them myself, to see how close
I could get, like a test or something, like a discipline.
And then they became other things as I worked on them. So
I don’t know, but obviously always picking up stuff so,
it’s very sculptural stuff. Look at this. That’s
enough for goodness sake. You’re making me now very self-conscious.
ART:21:
Explain why you’re
preparing the surface this way? What is it about this preparation?
CELMINS:
I start putting coats
on the canvas. Just to get to know it and to begin to fill
the canvas. Building a relationship with it. I kind of like
the idea of laying a field out. Then many times I begin working
with an image already on it. This time I thought I would build
more of a feel, a feel that begins to fill up some of the
grain of the canvas itself so that there’s a kind of
a semi-smooth, semi-rough surface. So I put on a coat and
each coat I try a slightly different color. Another layer.
And I take it off because I don’t really like strokes
at this time. I can’t really tell you why, but I'm not
into strokes at this time. I have been into strokes in the
past.
I put on an image and I sand it lightly off to sort of push
it back into nothingness and I paint it again. This is a history
of my working on this surface. It’s very sort of childlike
maybe or a little dopey maybe. But it’s a kind of a way
of making the work dense by having many, many little layers
on it. So this is nothing, I’m just wiping this off,
letting see what’s coming out, knocking down the top
ridges. Making a mess in my studio.
Getting a little work out.
ART:21:
Is part of this that
the paint will sit differently?
CELMINS:
Well, I mean what
happens is that the first layers of paint soak in and kind
of become one with the material and now they’re beginning
to sit on top like little ice forming on the surface. It’s
really bumpy. It makes a very frontal, flat kind of a field
on which events can happen. And I tend to leave the edges
kind of rough so you have a feeling, so you really see the
structure. You see the stretcher, the side of the stretcher,
the work on the stretcher, the graininess of the material.
And you see that it’s been patted out and considered
already from the beginning. Like there’s a little field
that’s been built up that’s quite smooth, not totally
smooth but quite smooth. That’s what I’ve been doing.
That’s what I’m doing on this one.
For me this part is interesting cause this is the part where
I’m like building, you know? I’m building the work
from the get-go, like from the beginning. You know I’m
building a surface, building a kind of a mass that’s
gonna sit there. I don’t know, it does sound a little
strange when you say it right out but this is all part of
the work. In fact I often now talk about building a painting
instead of painting a painting. Like I’m building a painting,
I’m making a structure that’s a painting cause it’s
a two dimensional object—it relates to the wall—but
that it also projects out. So this is part of the beginning
of the work.
ART:21:
Could you explain
how you work with your source images. That the photograph
is not an image that you’re copying, but rather it’s
an image that you’re using in some way to create the
painting.
CELMINS:
Well, I don’t
really say 'using' either. I was trying to think of the word...
I usually talk about it like I’m re-describing the image,
you know, through my body and through my sensibility, through
everything I know really, about how to make a painting. I’m
making a painting. I’m not really copying an image. You
know when I did all the early still-lifes: I looked at the
lamp, I copied the image. But when you’re working with
an image it comes from another world, you know? It comes from
three-dimensional worlds. So this is an image in a three-dimensional
world but actually the work does not look...I don’t know
how I could say it.
For me it sort of focuses my activity but frees up something
else. I was trying to say maybe it’s a touch that is
then allowed to be. I was gonna say gesture, but I’ve
kind of removed the gesture from the painting. But I still
have a touch through which you sort of can experience the
work. It’s hard to talk about painting. I mean, it’s
hard for me to talk about the painting because I don’t
know a lot about it. You know, in a way I don’t know
that much about it. It isn’t like I’m totally in
control of everything. But I have this little area now that’s
beginning to work better on the painting which makes me happier.
But I still don’t know whether I’m gonna be able
to continue with these, this little color thing here. It’s
a little dull maybe.
ART:21:
Something in what
you’re saying reminds me of Cézanne and what he
was trying to do.
CELMINS:
Well Cézanne,
you know, Cézanne has inspired so many painters. I
mean when you look at this I don’t think you would probably
think of Cézanne. Believe me. I mean the thing that
I think I got from Cézanne and looking at Cézanne—which
took me years—is sort of a really gutsy relationship
between the image and the plain flat object. He has such a
wonderful way of pointing that out to you in every stroke.
And also the fact—which I think was a great part of the
twentieth century—that this is an invented thing, you
know? That it’s not like a copy of nature, or a copy
of photograph. It’s an invented thing that you have in
front of you, you know? So I think I kind of have that in
me somewhere, this relationship.
I think it sort of shows up in different parts of my work
and sometimes I lose it a little bit and sometimes it’s
more apparent. I mean Cézanne lived in France. He had
this fabulous country and light. I’m a very studio oriented
artist, you know? Some artists now, the street is their subject,
they love it. I love the street too, but my whole work is
really very studio oriented. This is the place where everything
is allowed to happen. I bring in things like my shells and
rocks from the outside, always thinking that maybe I could
somehow use some part of them, but it’s very hard for
me to work directly now. It’s like I work directly here,
but it’s very hard for me to look at something. Not hard
in terms of that I can’t do it, but intellectually it’s
hard for me to do. I see no reason for it. There are a lot
of things that I don’t think I can do.
I make a sort of a distant-and-close object that is a painting.
That’s how I think of it. And sometimes a very strange
looking painting. Like I think for instance, that’s a
pretty strange looking painting, over there [“The River’s
Galaxy”]. It’s kind of an enigmatic spatial painting
I’ve been more interested in lately, meaning maybe the
last two or three years. A more ambiguous space, flat, a space
that’s harder to place yourself in.
ART:21:
Is the darkness of
the image an inherent quality of the flatness?
CELMINS:
These dark paintings
came out of me making those graphite drawings darker and darker.
Those drawings that I did in the late eighties. And I thought,
this pencil, which is graphite—they just can’t hold
anymore. I wanted more out of them and I didn’t think
they carry more so I just sort of slipped into this image.
I do like kind of impossible images. I mean images that are
hard to pin down. That aren’t like a tabletop and an
apple, but images that are really almost like mind images.
Images that are space but they’re hard to grasp. But
then they’re very graspable here, I mean, I make them
accessible through another way, through manipulating the paint.
I did a whole series of black works, I don’t know now,
twenty, thirty works. I thought it was quite difficult to
make a black painting work because it has such an incredibly
strong silhouette,
you know? But it did a series of things. It invited you closer
and closer to the work. I don’t know what I think about
that yet, but I thought it was sort of an interesting phenomena
that happened and I think at a certain point I thought I didn’t
want to do it. I’d actually done a reverse galaxy a long
time ago, maybe twenty years ago in a print. And I thought
I would turn the tables on the image and have the reverse
image and lighten up the painting. Kind of a totally different
kind of space. So I did it and I’m interested in it.
I think this painting looks so strange and it looks like a
piece of concrete and when you get very close to it you begin
to think you’re hallucinating a little bit. It changes
color and tone depending on where it is. I began to think
that those are interesting qualities that I wanted to try.
So I kept this painting. But I’ve been working on this
thing for a year. I have to try to come to terms with it.
I’ve had it a year off where I was doing all kinds of
other things. But I like being back in the studio, you know,
working with this strange tedious surface.
ART:21:
What causes you to
take a little of that dark turquoise or that ochre? What’s
behind that?
CELMINS:
I don’t know,
intuition? This needs a little this, this needs a little this,
this needs a little this. I don’t question it, I follow
my intuition. That’s what I do. I have been putting quite
a lot of cerulean in the black. It makes the black have a
tiny bit more atmosphere. Makes it a little bit cooler, makes
it a little bit chalkier. I kind of wanted to do that.
Each one is a little bit different. Even though I’ve
been sort of obsessed with this image that describes a space,
I don’t really have an agenda here where I line them
up and do it one way. Each one develops how it wants to develop.
Ugh. I just did the wrong thing. I just put in this little
thing and it makes this little pattern. This talking is too
much. Now look. I’ve ruined my painting. Or maybe not.
Eeek..
