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IN
CONVERSATION:
MARY HAMBLETON and RON JANOWICH |
| Originally
published in the March 2004 issue of the Brooklyn Rail. |
| Ron |
Mary,
I'd like to talk to you about your current body of work. Maybe
we could begin with the time frame it embodies. Like many artist
in the 1980's you exhibited your work rather frequently, having
a show every year or eighteen months. Today, I'm struck with the
longer time frame that this work reflects and how the depth of
the work seems contingent on that time frame. Specifically, how
do you visualize your ideas of mind and spirit into the complexity
of these paintings. |
| Mary |
This
body of work began around 1999. I've always been a slow painter,
lots of layers, lots of considering. It was trying to produce for
a show every year and a half. I had my first solo show in 1988 at
Pamela Auchincloss Gallery. I felt as if I'd had thirty years to
paint the work for that show. It was a stRong show. I was lucky,
due both to the work and it being the late eighties, the show was
successful. Then based on that success opportunities and pressure
came. I was never an art star, but I often couldn't keep up and missed
a number of possible shows. Yet, I did push myself to produce and
often wasn't able to reflect or allow the work to develop, to simmer.
In February I'll be showing new works at Littlejohn Contemporary.
There is a great range in the scale and form of the paintings. I'll
be showing over forty pieces, some are quite small and some are works
on paper. I've had a long time to develop this body of work; I'm
pushing it both imagistically and materially. It is labor intensive.
A lot has happened in the last years and I hope that the richness
of experience of mind and spirit is embodied in the work. |
| Ron |
To
go a little further on this: I assume that the theoretical ground
of the work is similar to what you were working with in the 1980's,
however those paintings were probably done in a shorter time frame.
I'm curious about what working method you prefer. Is it that your
work now is more about the natural rhythm of your life? By that
I mean that your work evolves in it's own time and for this body
of work it seems somewhat long by today's standards. |
| Mary |
In
many ways my concerns have remained the same through the years. I'm
attempting to fuse into an abstract painting emotion and sensation,
the simultaneity of our experiences in life and ultimately a quality
of wonder. Looking at the world is the mind's eye connected to the
spirit. I'm not sure what the natural rhythm of my life is anymore.
Like everyone, my life is extremely complex and busy. The advantage
of being left alone in the last few years is that it allowed me space
to experiment and for my work to evolve. I'd always been a very serious,
often too serious, "ABSTRACT" painter. Having time away from the
public eye allowed me to break some of my own rules, to connect to
my own pulse; it allowed a sense of humor to emerge, and much more
color to enter my palette. |
| Ron |
How
does this longer time frame embrace the possibility of profundity
in the work? |
| Mary |
Much
of the work I see today can be absorbed almost instantly. My work
by contrast is slow to emerge, although I aim for an immediate and
fresh read. I want it to open up more gradually. |
| Ron |
I
feel that this body of work reaches for an emotional and spiritual
complexity within its visual language that parallels a life fully
awake. |
| Mary |
That's
my goal. |
| Ron |
In
your press release you mention that science is important to how
you develop and understand your work. I'd like to know just how
specific you get. Through the centuries painters have had a relation
to science to one degree or another. For instance, in the Renaissance
a painter might use the mathematical principles of perspective
to articulate space in their work. Even today an artist like Turell
uses sophisticated computer programs to help him find the appropriate
dimensions of a room. Up until the 20th century it's conceivable
that an artist might have been able to have a good understanding
of the science known in his time. Today very few individuals really
know and understand the science of our time. It therefore seems
like the use of science in your work is intuitive. |
| Mary |
I've
always been fascinated by science and the aesthetics of science,
how everything breaks down into beautiful parts - cells, molecules,
genetic mapping. There has always been a grappling in my work with
the philosophies of life - of living and dying, presence and non
presence, being and non-being. Where did we come from and where do
we go from here? The theory of quantum physics has fascinated me
for years and it enters my work subtly, not in any formal way. It's
amazing that every part of our world and us can be broken down into
nothingness. We are nothing more than particles and waves. The act
of observation transforms the observed. The forces of nature bind
us. You can never loose energy; it can only be transformed from one
state into another. We constantly reflect the chaos and order that
exists in nature. It's just the rules of the universe that astound
me and feed me. Science really is simply the nature of looking at
things |
| Ron |
You've
often talked about how nature informs your work. When I look at
your work I feel as though I'm looking at a landscape where the
veil has been lifted. So even though I'm not looking at recognizable
imagery, it seems more truthful to the way I understand the world. |
| Mary |
Observation
is no longer simple, we can't trust what we see. Everything exists
in relationship to everything else. I mean hundreds of years ago
people began to understand how things had evolved. The world seemed
permanent and stable. Seeing any aspect of nature, any living thing
now, we know how fragile it is, often how tainted it is. How much
of our world is being destroyed and polluted? You might be looking
at an amazing sunset, but the truth is that the beautiful is because
of chemical pollution. It's savagely awful. Things aren't as simple
and direct in the world just as they once were. One aspect that is
new is that some of my works have dimensions or added elements. They
are there to make you look again, to consider the other side. A painting
isn't just a rectangle to peer inside. Nothing is so simple. Look
out at landscape, what do you see? How far is an electric cable or
cell phone tower? Or you see water; do you dare drink it? Swim in
it? What is in that water, where does it come from? Will there always
be water there? There is part of me that sees the world and experiences
it as wonderful and in wonder. There is a root word, Mirus, which
I have used to title a series of drawings. It comes from the Latin
word for wonder. Then there's a lot that I find horrific. We terrify
me as human beings. It is so black and white on some level. Sometimes
I see my work as providing me a way to celebrate the world and hide
from it at the same time. |
| Ron |
Another
thing that comes up is the idea of transience and how it relates
to this body of work. It seems as though transience has become
part of the very fabric of your work. The paintings seem never
to be fixed but are always evolving in one way or another. They
seem open for long periods of time. Is transience something that
came into your work as a result of your battle with cancer or is
it something that was always in it? By that I mean is there an
eastern or Zen Buddhist component to how you understand the world
that gets reflected in your work. |
| Mary |
I
think a concept of transience came to me very early. There were many
deaths that touched my young life. In some ways I've always lived
it and it's always fed me. I was born in Baltimore and grew up in
this regional farm area of Maryland. When I was a month old I first
came to New York City and forever after as a kid lived in both places
and moved back and forth on a regular basis. It allowed me to see,
to really focus on the differences and changes. It is often when
you leave something and then return that you can see where you were.
Sometimes you can see it then as if for the first time. Each time
going back and forth from this urban enviRonment to a rural environment
I would appreciate one to the other. That part is in some ways woven
in to my paintings - field into the architecture |
| Ron |
Yours
seems closer to the western idea of permanence or the world being
a fixed place that goes through changes over time. That's different
than the idea that you are in the world, yet the world is disappearing
the moment you have the awareness that you are present. The world
is constantly dissolving. It seems that there has been a shift
toward an awareness that the world is constantly dissolving. It
makes the present also more potent and awake. |
| Mary |
I
think I really experienced that when I was diagnosed with cancer.
I experienced a paradigm shift. I was into some major denial but
it also made me acutely aware of the present. Life was so normal
and fine the day before, but it wasn't - I just didn't know. Now
each day exists somewhat the same but my awareness is permanently
altered. It makes things very complicated and very simple all at
once. I've been given a new reality. One that I kept waiting to go
away, but it doesn't. It's now part of who I am. As dire and intense
as it is to have an illness, there is also an absurdity, senselessness
to it. Some of the playfulness in my work is becoming more exaggerated
and enhanced because of it too. It is about survival. You have to
have that element of hope and lightness and humor and belief in things
that at times don't make sense. |
| Ron |
Yeah,
because the alternative is to sink into a depressive black hole of
hopelessness. |
| laughter |
|
| Mary |
Painting
for me... allows all these difficult and wondrous things to exist
at one time. |
| Ron |
Metaphorically
that's what painting is. You're making an object that you want
to have a permanent impact on the world, or at least convey something
of the human condition. When I think of great paintings and how
they communicate I often think that they communicate so well, not
because their makers had an awareness of their future viewers,
but because they were absolutely aware in their present. The future
being enfolded in the present. |
| Mary |
I
think that's true. |
| Ron |
The
other thing that I'd like to touch on is experimentation and risk
in your work. Up until recently a painter's work was expected to
develop and deepen over a lifetime. It was through this search
and self-criticism that mature work evolved. An example would be
the abstract expressionist. If we look at work from the 1940's
it's apparent that risk and discovery as well as a refusal to settle
into known models of acceptability allowed them to evolve highly
original manifestations of their aesthetic beliefs. There seemed
to be an authentic discovery going on in the studio that had the
ability to communicate to a larger audience. Today, with the explosion
of art market, the painter finds himself/herself in a radically
different context. If you're successful early in your career you're
encouraged to repeat that and forge an image that becomes your
signature. The odds of this being in any way original are very
slim. More likely is the possibility that you will be doing a type
of genre painting. When this happens there is a shift from the
painter's development growing out of dialogue with other artists
to its being determined by market and career forces. The success
of abstract painting in our culture has a double-edged sword. On
one hand the success allows for more opportunities and on the other
hand it exerts a very real pressure to deaden and minimize experimentation
and risk. In your work I feel that experimentation and risk as
well as peer dialogues are important factors in how you develop. |
| Mary |
It's
very important. Although I feel I often take baby steps. As I said
I had my first show 1988. I had always been a very serious abstract
painter. After I left the gallery in 1996 I realized I had been very
constrained by my idea of what I was meant to do. I hadn't let my
spirit take off. Other important things had happened. I had a child.
Suddenly there was intense color in my life and it gradually entered
into my work. It's been progressively important to allow myself to
do what comes into my head. There have always been subtly figurative
lines or forms that alluded to a figure. It was very important to
me to have the allusion, but not to cross the line into actual figuration.
The line was intentionally mercurial. It is just a line, it is just
a stroke of paint, but it could be a figure, a female form. There
is also a lot of obvious allusion to the cosmic realms. A circle
is a circle, but it is also a moon, a planet, and the world.
A few years ago my paintings shifted from a singular fRontal plane to having
additional side views. Then also there are attachments to some of the paintings.
Mostly now it's colored cubes of varying sizes, but other shapes are coming
in and images as ways of shifting the plane, shifting the dialogue, catching
the eye and getting the viewer to look again, shifting the idea of the
rectangle. Many of the paintings are on a square, which to me is like beginning
with perfection and then screwing it up, so that gradually I can seek out
perfection again. The painting travels through a complete transformation,
from a perfect beginning to varied forms of chaos, to some kind of resolved
experienced end.
In
many paintings there is an underlying rhythm of striping. I see in
some of these paintings that Agnes Martin is my mother. I begin with
her sense of quietude, but I can't stay there and then have to go off
in my own way. |
|
Ron
|
I
walked into the studio and I was immediately drawn to the painting "Query".
I feel that there is shift going on in this painting; it's a risky
painting because of the emotional range going on in the painting.
I'm feeling things like anger, aggression, as well as gentleness.
They all seem to be co-existing and they've all been given their
own space. The formal level of the painting also has a broad plastic
range. You have areas that are dense and opaque as well as areas
that are thin and transparent. The graphic articulation of geometric
forms like a circle defines a space that is both dynamic and expansive.
Again, I feel this is all in the service of the emotional content
of the painting. You talked before about Agnes Martin. She explored
a very narrow range of human experience and within that was able
to find an infinity of possibilities. That is reflected in how
and where she lived. Your life is very different. You're living
in Brooklyn, married with a small child and battling cancer. I
can imagine that you're constantly challenged by a broad range
of emotional and intellectual factors that are rather intense.
"Dot
Calm" is much more about a gentle Agnes Martin type of space, but
this painting "Query" seems more about where your life
is now.
|
| Mary |
"Dot
Calm" was finished almost 4 years ago, "Query" only recently, although
I've been working on it on and off for at least 3 years. It's gone
through all the recent experiences with me; so they are different. |
| Ron |
I
can understand the appeal of wanting to express a meditative calm
like "Dot Calm", but I also feel that it's possible to express
a meditative present that allows for a dynamic range of emotional
and spiritual possibilities. "QUERY" does that for me;
I perceive that dynamic within the painting. It's calm and edgy
at the same time and doesn't necessarily differentiate, but rather
allows them all their own existence. |
| Mary |
This
is a painting that has been worked on for a very long time and therefore
reflects a lot of the intensity I've experienced recently. The other
aspect to "Query " is that it has hundreds of tiny colored dots;
I can't bear to imagine how many. They are only perceptible within
an intimate viewing, from just inches away. When you break away from
it and get back to the whole, the larger moves. I've always been
interested in having a painting that would pull you in, seduce you.
That too is why I love tiny paintings - the intimate gaze. |
| Ron |
It's
apparent just by looking around the studio that drawing is very
important to you. Could you talk a little about how and why you
do drawings. Is it a daily practice? How consistent are you? Are
there phases when you draw and ones that you don't? |
| Mary |
I've
always done works on paper. I do them quite regularly - not daily.
There are phases. I find that drawing often calms me, balances me.
It gets me into a kind of zone in which I can get lost. Painting
can do it similarly in moments, but there is the scale and the stuff
of the paint whereas in drawing, which is done with some water media,
occasionally some oils, there is this point where I lose myself.
I am lost I am not making the drawing, but the drawing is making
itself and making me make it. There is an obsessive element in many
of them - the dots, the rhythms and the build up. The series you're
looking at now really began in the summer of 2000. I started them
in the country. There was this quietude. I was in my studio with
the barn doors open, no music, just listening to the sounds of the
trees, of wind and making these very meditative drawings. |
| Ron |
The
painter Bradley William Tomblin is interesting in that he painted
many ambitious large scale paintings, however in the later part
of his life he developed a body of small-scale intimate drawings.
I've always felt that somehow these small drawings speak to me
in a way that was more humble and direct than the paintings. Sometimes
the smaller statement is in fact the larger statement. Your drawings
have the intimacy of a journal. If you were to live with them I'm
sure that the experience would be a kind of private one on one
conversation. The paintings on the other hand seem more like public
statements. I was wondering how you felt about how each medium
communicates. Can you articulate how you feel your paintings and
drawings differ? |
| Mary |
Its
difficult to be objective about my work. My paintings and drawings
both come from the conscious and unconscious stew of my mind, the
touch of my hand. I want them to in some small way to help tip the
scale towards our sense of survival. But I understand what you mean;
my painting and drawings are very different. They each allow for
a different kind of search and exploration. The drawings are quite
pleasurable. All my small works have a great intimacy and directness.
The critic, Bill Zimmer, once said to me "small painting are seen
directly by the soul". I think he's right and I think that's why
I have such a commitment to my small-scale work. I also think small
work often speaks directly from the soul. My drawings, although often
ornate and obsessive are extremely pared down and the gaze required
is more focused and direct, more personal. My drawings allow the
mind's eye to travel and yet hold the gaze in a concentrated place.
It's a bit like to how you might pick up a shell or a rock on a beach and
experience it as a thing of beauty, its color, pattern, and simply natural
form. You take a breath, hold the shell and in a moment's experience in
the hand with your feet on the sand listening to the sea you breathe in
the ocean's air. It's very small and very large all at once.
The paintings are more complex, speak more of accumulated time - hours
days, weeks, months, and years, lifetimes. They hold you at a distance
and are more public. They ask, perhaps, more of your vision. There is usually
a lot to look at, swirls and dots, divisions and shifts; but I ask that
they give something, that they be generous and beautiful. Most of them
have much intricate painting. I love how I can move from a small mark to
the grand sweep, how varied the touch can be, how endless. They are mirrors
and windows and worlds to get lost and found in; I want to hold you as
long I can. They ask you to engage, take their time and allow them to open
up. They can be seen from afar, but I aim to catch an intimate gaze unaware
through your peripheral vision with devices such as dimensional elements
and painting the sides of paintings. In the paintings I allow myself to
play with some of the ideas of painting, with abstract formalism or the
idea of painting as an object. The drawings are playful too, but without
a kind of intellect, decision making bravado or ego that sometimes needs
to come to the paintings. I love when I have the opportunity to show both
kinds of work together. They feel very connected; I think they speak to
each other. |
| the
closing |
|
| Ron |
Mary, how would you sum up this body of work. Do you see it as a summation
of a specific body of work or is it more of an arbitrary bracketing
do to with the fact that you will be having a show. |
| Mary |
I'm
really pleased to be showing this body of work right now. It couldn't
be clearer to me that it represents a transformed period of my life
and work. I'm also thrilled to have the work out of my studio. I
have so many ideas, and now feel I can think again. The title for
the show, "Nothing By Mouth", has a medical reference, but ultimately
reflects that this show, which aims to reach mind, body, and soul,
is first of all a retinal experience, a visual feast and must be
entered through the eyes. |
| |
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