A brush with...

Ben Luke talks to the Seoul-born, London-based artist Do Ho Suh about his influences and life-changing cultural experiences. They discuss his recreations of his various homes in coloured fabric and how his early work in South Korea has been ignored by curators and critics. Do Ho reveals that, influenced by a painting of fish and shellfish in his family home, he wanted to be a marine biologist, and...

Ben Luke talks to Doris Salcedo about her life and work through the artists she most admires, the writers she returns to and the music she listens to. She recalls her epiphany when confronted with the works of Francisco de Goya, and how his empathy with the victims of war and violence prompted her own aim to give voice to the voiceless in the Colombian civil war and beyond. She talks about the inf...

As he prepares for a two-part exhibition in Florence, the Tehran-born, Brooklyn-based artist discusses his life and work through the cultural epiphanies and influences that have shaped him. He talks about drawing in the basement of his family home as the Iran-Iraq war raged around him as a child and how visiting the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy prompted a turning point in his work. He talks a...

As her retrospective opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Ethiopian-born, New York-based artist Julie Mehretu talks in depth about her life and work. She discusses the rich language she uses in her paintings, drawing on geopolitical subject matter but pushing towards abstraction. She talks about the influence of contemporary artists like David Hammons, Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon, her...

In the last of the present series, Ben Luke talks to Tala Madani, the Tehran-born, Los Angeles-based artist, about the influences and cultural experiences behind her remarkable paintings and animations. She talks about art's role in shaping her experience in the US after she had moved to Oregon from Tehran as a teenager, about the early influence of Francis Bacon, and about a range of artists she...

Ben Luke talks to Charles Gaines, one of the key figures in American conceptual art, about his influences and cultural experiences and how they have affected his life and work. Gaines discusses the impact of visiting the Metropolitan Museum's collection of African art during a period in which he "completely rethought who I was, not only as a person but as a Black person in America". He talks about...

This week, Ben Luke interviews the Danish artist Tal R about his influences and cultural experiences. In this in-depth conversation, the painter and sculptor discusses his early love of art and frustration with art school, the unlikely ritual that keeps his art fresh, and why pursuing mystery is perilous for an artist. He talks about the writers and music that he returns to, and discusses painters...

Ben Luke talks to Tracey Rose about how her influences and cultural experiences have affected her life and work. Among other things, she talks about her education as the only Black child in a catholic school in South Africa and her performances in which she explored gender and race, pushing her body to extremes. She talks about the seismic effect of seeing international contemporary art after the...

Ben Luke talks to Rachel Whiteread about how her influences and cultural experiences have affected her life and work. Among other things, she talks about the influence of her parents on her work; the enduring power of Piero della Francesca; the seismic effect of seeing Bruce Nauman's art; how poetry informs her sculpture; and she recalls memorable trips to Egypt and the Soviet Union. Plus, she ans...

Ben Luke talks to the US artist Roni Horn about her life and work, with reference to the art, music and literature that are her influences and touchstones. Among much else, they discuss Horn's enduring engagement with the poems of Emily Dickinson, and the sculptures and installations that she has made as a result; her unique friendship with Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the works it inspired; the jazz...

Ben Luke talks to the Los Angeles-based painter Christina Quarles about her life and work through her influences and cultural experiences. Quarles discusses her powerful figurative paintings. "I see them," she says, "as being portraits not of looking at a body, but portraits of being within your own body." She discusses the effect of living in Los Angeles and arriving there as a child at the point...

Ben Luke talks to the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson in depth about his influences and cultural experiences. Among much else, they discuss Kjartansson's love of 18th-century art and him being "horny in Rococo class" in school; his admiration for the painter Elizabeth Peyton; how reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray changed his life; and the collaborative ethos behind his video-ins...

Ben Luke talks to Rashid Johnson about the cultural experiences that have had an impact on his life and work. They discuss his beginnings as a photographer, but how he quickly occupied a "post-medium space", working in everything from film to sculpture, installation and, as with the other artists in the first series, in painting. Rashid talks about his use of materials like black soap and shea but...

Ben Luke talks to Chantal Joffe about the cultural experiences that have had an impact on her life and work. They discuss the shift in her work from early paintings based on pornography to recent depictions of herself and her daughter; they explore the writers and music that she returns to for inspiration, the museums she regularly visits and the daily rituals of her studio life. Above all, they t...

Ben Luke talks to Jenny Saville about her cultural experiences and their effect on her work and life. We learn about how her uncle inspired her to explore the Old Masters and match their ambition, how having children hugely affected the way she works, the visit to an artist’s studio that changed her life, the epic poetry that drives her painting into new territories, the strange rituals in her dai...

In the inaugural episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast series of conversations with artists, host Ben Luke talks to Michael Armitage about his life and work through his cultural experiences: the artists, living and long gone, who he most admires; the art he has pinned to his studio wall; the museum that holds endless inspiration; the writers he returns to; the music he plays as he paints in the s...

Introducing A brush with... a podcast by The Art Newspaper. In each episode, the host Ben Luke has a conversation with a leading artist, exploring their life and work through their cultural experiences, asking the questions you've always wanted to: who are the artists, historical and contemporary, they most admire? Which are the museums they return to? What are the books, music and other media tha...