Beer with a Painter: Julie Heffernan

originally published on Hyperallergic Weekend Edition, June 15, 2013

Julie Heffernan, “Self Portrait Dressing Wounds” (2012), oil on canvas, 67 x 70 in (all images courtesy the artist and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York)

I met Julie Heffernan this past fall at a party she hosted celebrating the wedding of another painter, and was taken by her, the community of (women) artists who were gathered, and her painting over the dining table. It was the fierceness of the vision that attracted me, and the individuality of her work, which extended into the way she spoke and lived.

In Heffernan’s paintings, more is more: their complexity draws us into a convincing otherworldly world: female figures with vast skirts constructed of fruits and flowers, intricate magical landscapes interwoven with road signs, branches, foliage, and animals. She explores the macro (the lives of women, the environment) by way of the micro.

Beer with a Painter: John Walker

Originally published on Hyperallergic Weekend, May 18, 2013

John Walker, “Red Yellow Coastal Cross North Branch” (2011), oil on canvas, 84 x 66 inches (all images courtesy Kayla Mohammadi Gallery)

I have long admired John Walker’s work for its unique combination of tough materialism and romantic lyricism. I recently met him in his studio at Boston University, where he is the head of the MFA program. My visit with Walker happened to take place on the Thursday after the Boston Marathon tragedy, and I spent Friday’s citywide lockdown with painters Gideon Bok and Meghan Brady.

In retrospect, my time with Walker feels like a complete experience, not exactly separate from the events, but certainly a place where painting can encapsulate and transmit the range of human drama and emotion. Walker’s painting is about this faith, in the mark, in the hand, and in abstract form.

Beer with a Painter: Jane Dickson

Originally published on Hyperallergic Weekend, April 6, 2013

Jane Dickson, “LV63 (Pink Video Poker).” Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches.

Jane Dickson is best known for her nocturnal cityscapes of the old Times Square — peep shows and porn parlors — but she has also mined subjects such as Las Vegas, Coney Island, American highways, demolition derbies, and suburban homes. She often paints on alternative supports like carpets, vinyl, sandpaper, and Astroturf.

The pixelation of the image she achieves with these surfaces, and the implied feeling of distance, could be mistaken as a commentary on modern detachment. However, it is more reflective of Dickson’s attitude, a non-judgmental form of observation that creates space for projection and reflection. Being with Dickson is similar: I distinctly remember feeling like a tourist in my own city during a studio visit and midtown Korean barbecue dinner when we first met in 2000. During our recent conversation, I felt compelled to share my own stories of Times Square, then to see it anew after our time together.

Beer with a Painter: Jesse McCloskey

Originally published on Hyperallergic Weekend Edition

Jennifer Samet and Jesse McCloskey

I’ve known Jesse McCloskey for years, but his work and words are always surprising me. They get to the heart of the matter quickly. In one of the early days after I had my first child, I wanted nothing more than to go out and see some shows in Chelsea. It still makes me laugh that this childless dude was the one who told me it was okay to bring the baby along, head into a café, and feed him when he got hungry. But that’s what McCloskey is about: keep working, no matter what it takes, or the devil’s gonna get you, and, whatever … birth, sex, and death are as natural as rock and roll.

Beer with a Painter: Kyle Staver

Originally published on Hyperallergic Weekend, February 9, 2013

Kyle Staver (left) and Jennifer Samet (right) (photograph by Janice Nowinski)

A couple of years ago, when I was still resisting Facebook, I heard about the debates Kyle Staver was spearheading there on the topic of Renoir’s late paintings. I set up a profile because I had to know more about this independent-minded female painter who likes Renoir’s work as much as I do. Since then, I’ve gotten to know Staver and her painting “in real life.” She’s dynamic on the canvas and off, a true cheerleader for her aesthetic causes, other artists, and friends.

Kyle Staver, “3 panels of Acteon /Diana,” (2012), oil on canvas, 68″x154″

It was Staver who, in part, suggested my interviews with artists take the form of “beer with a painter.” But when it came time for us to talk, I was invited to “the fort,” the corner table at Santa Fe Bar and Grill in Park Slope, where she and Janice Nowinski meet weekly for girls’ night over frozen margaritas.

Beer with a Painter: Susanna Coffey

Originally published on Hyperallergic Weekend Edition, January 26, 2013

Susanna Coffey, “Moss Glen Falls” (2008). Monoprint, 15 x 12 inches. (All images courtesy the artist unless otherwise noted)

Susanna Coffey, who was born in New London, Connecticut, studied at Yale, teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago, and lives and works in New York, is best known for her self-portraits. These frontal heads set against backdrops of world locales and events are rigorous, unrelenting penetrations of the meeting-point of humanity and violence.

Over the last year, I got to know her, and another part of her painting practice. She works outdoors at night, making pulsating, loose landscapes and cityscapes on tiny canvases and boards. The differences between her practices are a reminder of how compelling the range of one’s humanness can be.

The sternness that her self-portraits suggest is undone by her personality, the way she connects with people, her love of dance and her spirituality. The focus on symmetry in Coffey’s work is not, in the end, about evenness, but rather a reminder of balance.

Beer with a Painter: Mary Heilmann

Mary Heilmann, “Renny’s Right Geometry of a Wave” (2011). Oil on wood panel, 31.5 x 39.75 inches (all images © Mary Heilmann, courtesy the artist, 303 Gallery, and Hauser & Wirth, unless otherwise noted)

I visited Mary Heilmann recently in her Bridgehampton studio. At the end of our time together, she took a small painting of a wave, and turned it upside-down. It was the perfect gesture to sum up our conversation and the themes of her work — an offhand reminder of its yin-yang quality. Heilmann’s work plays with big ideas, but it does so playfully.

Heilmann, born in 1940, spent her childhood years in Southern California amidst beach and surf culture. She studied ceramics and sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her MA in 1967. She moved to New York the next year, hanging at Max’s Kansas City with her friend Richard Serra, and gravitating toward the world of minimalist sculpture.