Deep Color

Catherine Haggarty is an educator and artist that makes paintings and drawings that often feature wood grains, objects that look like toys or seashells, and mysterious tableaus of folded paper, tiles, and gestural linework. She is the co-founder of the NYC Crit Club and founder of The Canopy Program —both of which are low-cost educational programs that offer community, connection, and critique to...

Christopher Robin Duncan makes sculpture, ambient sound-based work, and exposure paintings that rely on factory dyed fabrics faded by the power of the sun. Chris talks about how punk and hardcore music shaped his worldview, his belief system and visual language as equivalent, celestial cycles as a tool in his process, making rules only to break them and learning how to get out of his own way, time...

Deep Color (the exhibition) opened at Halsey McKay Gallery on May 24 and will be on view through June 30th, 2025. The exhibit features drawing, painting, sculpture, writing, editioned prints, and photography by over 60 Deep Color alumni artists. In this special episode, artist and HMG founder/owner, Ryan Wallace , t alks with ar tist and Deep Color host Joseph Hart ab out how the show blossomed fr...

Tony Lewis makes drawings using a range of materials and methods that are centered around mark-making and language. Tony talks about athletics, psychology, and art history as frameworks for his world view, drawing as a type of behavior, Calvin & Hobbes comics as a muse, how drawing exists outside of the “art world”, expanding his practice into site-specific installations, not being able to hid...

Sean Sullivan makes paintings and drawings that hum and weave through abstraction, representation, and systems of visual organization. He is also the co-owner of R&F Paints—an artist owned company that manufactures handmade oil and encaustic paints for artists. Sean talks about how music and poetry served as gateways into visual art, the farmer and the fisherman as a type of ethos, using print...

Sara Maria Salamone is a photographer and co-founder of Mrs. Gallery--a contemporary art gallery located in Maspeth, Queens. Sara talks about the gallery ‘s history and roots as a beer and dance hall, the series of professional experiences that lead to opening her own gallery, the curatorial vision that informs Mrs.’s programming, how she scouts and finds artists, expectations within the gallery/a...

Jordan Nassar makes elaborate and intricate embroideries alongside impressive wood-inlay works, tile mosaics, and expansive installations, all inspired by the examination of his Palestinian American identity, diaspora and cultural participation. Jordan talks about the clunkiness of language, wanting viewers to feel just as much energy from his work as he puts into it, the exchanges between decorat...

Samuel Levi Jones is a multidisciplinary artist that utilizes law books, history books, medical books, and sometimes flags, as materials to create abstract assemblages that critique ideas around history and systems of power and control. Sam talks about the relationship between deconstruction and repair, how artistic growth can lead to authenticity, books as gestures, abstraction as a vehicle for c...

Daniel Gibson makes oil paintings that depict desert landscapes full of flowers and butterflies, plant life, and big open skies. Some works also include figures hiding within the flora or in shamanic poses. Danny talks about deserts and horizon lines, little brother drawing magic, being locked into a painting and chasing the next image, memories and visceral emotional responses in painting, beauty...

Kennedy Yanko makes abstract three-dimensional work that combines large twisted and crunched metal forms scavenged from scrap yards and thick sheets of malleable acrylic paint that she refers to as “skins”. Kennedy talks about allowing herself and her work to develop and change over time, paint as a sculptural material, looking for the “ugly”, her sculptures having their own ideology, the advantag...

Jesse Wine makes ceramic sculptures that combine body parts like arms, legs, hands, and feet, along with abstract shapes that are deflated, pulled, and stacked. Jesse talks about making sculptures that are self-aware, the expressiveness in our hands, empathy as a gesture, being illusionistic with his surfaces, knowing when to destroy a sculpture, peacefulness as an important ingredient in his stud...

Celia Pym makes textile-based artwork by repairing items like tattered sweaters, worn out socks, or torn paper pastry bags. Celia talks about the exchanges between making functional and non-functional art objects, finding pleasure in the tactility of her materials, different types of art transactions and preferring to return work to their original owners, damage and repair as driving concepts, how...

Alvaro Barrington makes mixed-media paintings that underscore a reverence for art history and hip-hop culture, craft and handwork, and how and where his own lived experience weaves into the work he is making. Alvaro talks about self-evaluation and how one can be a great painter but a bad artist, innovation and social impact as barometers for successful art, stealing from other artists, paintings a...

Matt Rich makes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and installations that center themselves around form and shape, color relationships, and different systems for mark making. Matt talks about time as a resource and the safety of a studio space, the importance of procedure in his practice, colliding intentional and accidental gestures, wanting his work to be unpretentious and light, the influences of...

Andrew Schoultz makes drawings, paintings, prints, installations, and large-scale murals that reference how history and turmoil follow patterns, and how power dynamics, spirituality, and environment can shape our experience of the world. Andrew talks about comic books and graffiti as early influences, obsessive compulsiveness as a creative asset, handwork and the beauty of imperfection, the connec...

Ashley Bickerton makes sculpture, assemblages and painting-like objects that reference the grotesqueness of commodification and consumerism. Ashley talks about how a work of art can hold contrasting meanings, avoiding typecasting and being fluid with his artistic language, pacing an art career and gallery relationships as business arrangements—not friendships, operating on the edge of the contempo...

Spencer Lewis makes abstract paintings that are an explosion of mark-making, smears, caked up textures, and tangles of color. Spencer talks about using raw and low-pressure materials, being spastic and aggressive with his first set of gestures, the exchanges between art and sports, working intuitively and “no move” painting, artists as opportunists, pictorial organization and disorganization, stud...

Leslie Diuguid is a printmaker and the founder, owner and operator of DuGood Press—the first and only Black Female owned fine-art screen printing business in New York City. Leslie talks about how her family’s history is embedded into her work and outlook, pivoting from printing business cards and apparel to fine-art editions, amplifying an artist’s voice and ideas through printmaking, the process...

Jim Drain is a multi-disciplinary artist that makes other-worldly sculpture, furniture, and installation-based works. He is also one of the original founders of Fort Thunder--the influential live/work/performance space in Providence, Rhode Island during the 90’s, and a member of Forcefield—the celebrated noise band and artist collective. Jim talks about the stories that can surround a work of art,...

Rodrigo Valenzuela makes photographs, video and installation-based works that consider the value of labor, the language of modernist architecture, and the inefficiency of bureaucracy. Rodrigo talks about how ideas are born out of his process and making, poetic formalism as a layer in his work, getting out of his own way and second guessing as a healthy thought exercise, reading as a key part of hi...

Phil Sanders is a master printer, educator, author and artist, and is the founder and director of PS Marlow —a fine art publisher and creative services consultancy based in Asheville, North Carolina. Phil has worked with celebrated artists like Elizabeth Murray, Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler and Chakaia Booker among many others. Phil talks about his new book Prints and Their Makers, learning a...

Nikita Gale makes sculpture and installation-based work that explores the exchanges and barriers between audience and performer. Nikita talks about how artwork can influence group behavior, protest and dissent as performance, research as a way to pull out ideas, noise and silence as social and political positions, the similarities between studio visits and dating, maintenance and mind-body awarene...

Curtis Talwst Santiago is a multi-disciplinary artist that makes sculpture, drawings and paintings, performance and video. Curtis talks about pivoting from music to visual art, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, his recent show Can’t I Alter at The Drawing Center in New York, genetic trauma and ancestry as concepts, intuition as an important tool, the complexities of Kanye West, honesty during stud...

Susan Bee makes energetic oil paintings that feature a mix of female figures in fantastical landscapes, art historical references, geometric abstraction and pictorial invention—all serving as iconic flashpoints for current social and personal struggles. Susan talks about symbolism and being inspired by romance and poetry, inserting herself into someone else’s narrative, how images can represent so...

Libby Rothfeld makes conceptually driven sculpture that combines found objects, photography and drawing, and built wood structures that are often covered with banal hardware store tiles and kitchen counter laminate. Libby talks about the varied ingredients in her studio practice, subdued and faded color palettes as suggestions of time, an interest in the peripheral of our world, formality as feeli...