It's a Process

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with painter Stephen Maine, who lives and works in West Cornwall, Connecticut, and whom I recently visited in his studio (though we spoke remotely for this interview). We explore his idea of the “color chord,” how he made peace with colors he once avoided, and his use of plates—a method he invented that is as much about streamlining as it is about su...

Rufus Tureen is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, performance, and time-based media. Drawing from experimental theater, trance practices, and visual art, he creates psychologically charged works that explore altered states, symbolic systems, and perception. Tureen’s work has been exhibited and performed internationally, including with Essex Flowers Gallery in New...

Raymie Iadevaia is a painter based in Los Angeles, CA. We had a long, rollicking conversation, much like the saturated hills of Raymie’s paintings. We discussed his recent solo exhibition, Hearafter , at The Pit in Palm Springs, CA, his creative process, and various other aspects of his work, including: The balance between serious play and solemnity in making art How the work often unlocks more qu...

Raychael Stine is a painter who lives and works in Albuquerque, NM. She received her BFA at UT Dallas in 2003, and her MFA at UIC in Chicago in 2010. Raychael is currently an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of New Mexico, where she has taught since 2013. Raychael and I are currently showing alongside each other in a 2-person show titled The Tenderness at Emma Gray HQ...

Sean Cairns is a painter, living in Dallas, Texas. He just closed a solo show at 12.26 Gallery in Dallas, titled Wearing Away The Mountain. We had a really great conversation about many things including why landscape may be the hardest genre of painting, using the element of surprise, not working from a formula, the freedom to be yourself in your work, spirituality as a process, nature as inspirat...

I catch up with Zuriel Waters for a second time on location from his Spring solo exhibition Jitterbug Waltz at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, and later we chat a bit more from a really good taco spot in Chelsea. Conversation topics include color theory, musical inspirations, the speed and rhythm of painting, what motivates Zuri's forms, spirituality and wanting to be a cult lead, and even touch on Quen...

New logo, new theme song, new attitude! We’re returning to the world of podcasting after a very long absence! I share my thoughts on the future of the pod and also do my first solo episode discussing my love of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) and the wonderful and moving survey of her work currently on view at the Neue Galerie in NYC. Also, special thanks for the cool new re-...

For the season 2 premiere of It’s a Process, I talk to artist Whitney Hubbs! We talk about the release of her new book Say So, her 2020 solo show Animal, Hole, Selfie, and her performative process. We also talk about influences, working with vulnerability, relationships to the audience and vanity, having fun in the studio, Polanski’s Bitter Moon, sorting and editing, the intimacy of making a book,...

Zuriel Waters is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. We talk about his current solo show Bug City at Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, CA. We also talk about going from all face to all feelers, jazz as a metaphor, figures without a ground, painting as problem solving, giving himself a deadline, escaping narrative, creating a progression, playing the saxophone, sewing paintings, from the p...

Susumu Kamijo is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He currently has a solo show on view in Tokyo, Japan at Maki Gallery titled Beyond The Hills, and is also in a group show at Venus over Manhattan in NYC. We discuss his moving to the US at age 16, why talking to writers is better than painters, how poodles entered the work and how they have changed, mixing opposites, the poodle as an...

Clinton King is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. We talk about his recent solo show Free Radical at Allouche Benias Gallery in Greece, and a residency at Fores Project in London over a bottle of rosé. Other topics include Jungian analysis, alchemy, working with shadow, introversion vs extroversion, abstraction as a universal and a way to communicate the unknowable, having breakthrough...

Cheryl Donegan is an artist who lives and works in NYC. We talk about work/life balance, taking it to the next level, the pain of transitions, the relationship between painting and video, the ongoing influence of indirect methods of childhood picture making, mediated and temporary, finding your native experiences and attractions, asking questions about painting through video, Alice Neel and morbid...

Amanda Friedman is an artist living in Brooklyn, NY. We met for the first in person interview at her studio and talked about current and recent work, and her solo show Everyday Drawings and Pyramids at Grifter. We also talk about her studio check in forms, “tending the garden”, everyday drawings, the slippage of mark making, going towards color and beauty, making plays (which are also paintings),...

Paul Mpagi Sepuya is an artist who makes photographs. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. We spoke about his solo show Stage at Document in Chicago, which is on view through May 29, 2021. We also spoke about the studio as a stage, creating the conditions for a photo, using play and pleasure but not getting stuck in it, finding ways to complicate portraiture, the breakthrough of using a mirror,...

Jonathan Allmaier is a painter who lives in the Bronx. We talk about the work in his solo show The Howling Wind at James Fuentes Essex (on view through May 2, 2021). We also talk about the writing he does about his process, paintings as personhood, being a student of your work, starting over after moving to NYC, seeing the painting as a space or an object, dissolving the mind-body problem, Pearl B...

Clare Grill is a painter who lives and works in Queens, NY. We talk about her beautiful solo show There’s the Air at Derek Eller Gallery, currently on view through April 24, 2021. The conversation also covers her way of collaborating with studio light, “changing the choreography”, the differing speeds of painting and drawing, making work that feels urgent, learning to look at the painting itself,...

Fabienne Lasserre is an artist who makes work that is both painterly and sculptural. We discuss her solo show Eye Contact which is currently on view at Turn Gallery in NYC, and a range of other topics including the relationship between material and the immaterial, accepting imperfection, sacredness and playfulness, art as transformation, using transparency to dissolve boundaries, the need for more...

Vlad Smolkin is a painter who lives and works in Baltimore, MD. He also runs CPM, a multifaceted exhibition space. We talk about making art as psycho-spiritual alien shit, taking the long view, the language of abstraction and the synchronicity of found objects, the exhibition as a collaboration, running a gallery as an artist, and the underestimated culture value and power of artists. https://www....

Glenn Goldberg is a painter who lives and works in NYC. We had a very beautiful and deep conversation about being committed to growth, learning not to hide, art and teaching as a spiritual practice and the influence of his Jewish upbringing, art as a way of enlarging your awareness, making work that is really alive, the awakenings of early success, considering what effect your work will have...

Caitlin Keogh is a painter who lives and works in New York. We talk about her current solo show Waxing Year which is currently on view through April 3rd at Overduin and Co in Los Angeles, CA. We also discuss a book called The White Goddess about ancient pagan poetry, Sylvia Plath, collaborating with poet Charity Coleman, making relationships between text and image, ideas about edges, collage as a...

Seung-Min Lee is a NY-based interdisciplinary artist. We talk about her recent solo show Light White at International Waters in NYC, as well as her early years in Maspeth, Queens, beatnik poetry, NFTs, Morandi, the original season of the Real World, technological fascism, fear of being cancelled, political correctness as a rapidly shifting horizon, and the power of being able to change your mind....

Vanessa Conte makes paintings, drawings, and stories that involve erotic images of fleshy women’s bodies being being punished and pounded. We had a very deep and sexy conversation about kink, Italo Calvino, obliteration fantasies, submission and domination, origins in erotic writing, playing with and denying narrative, fantasy vs reality, making art that people jerk off to, vulnerability, being ar...

Jared Buckhiester is an artist who makes works in sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and photography. We talk about psychoanalysis, pocketknives, early work in fashion photography and NYC in the 90s, putting a little disco into everything, wrestling magazines and jail reports, broken narratives, editing and collage, creating games for one’s self to generate work, and the importance of relaxing in th...

Kimia Ferdowsi Kline is a painter and sculptor who splits her time between Nashville and New York. She also curates the private collection at Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn. We talk about the challenge of not trying too hard, how pregnancy and motherhood has changed the work, the genius of Ali Wong, the metaphoric potential of her new materials, resisting the pressure to make work solely about identity p...

Acacia Marable is a painter and drawer with a background in photo, performance and video. We spoke about their daily drawing and meditation practice, Animal Crossing, working without a plan, the allure of cowboys, making work that is both political and personal, Robert Colescott vs Peter Saul, caterpillar as spirit animal, the pleasures of slowing down, and copying other artists as a way of learni...