Painter's Bread
Ewelina Bochenska: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Ewelina Bochenska. Bochenska remarks: “Painting is the most difficult thing there is, yet it is so magical and mysterious, almost miraculous. It is about liberation, freedom. Freedom from oneself and freedom from the known. It reminds me of a book by Jiddu Krishnamurti of the same title ‘Freedom from the Known’. […]
Sarah Faux: Merging Sensibilities
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford blogs about paintings by Sarah Faux. Rutherford writes: “There’s been much said about how abstraction is very prevalent in contemporary painting these days, but there are those who are producing some wonderful work in a unique figurative vein as well, with precedence found in artists such as George McNeil and Amy Sillman. The […]
Ken Weathersby: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Ken Weathersby about his work. Weathersby comments: "There is a certain territory that I’ve been involved in for eight or nine years, to do with reshuffling the given parts of painting. By 'given parts' I mean the wooden stretcher, the canvas or linen, the paint film, staples or hardware—the things paintings […]
Brian Cypher: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Brian Cypher. Cypher comments that the work "starts with being open to the observation of everything at all times. It's important for me to have lots of different work happening all at once. I start with unknown marks and it goes on from there; it all begins with an idea that […]
Joseph Montgomery: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews artist Joseph Montgomery about his work. Montgomery comments: "I have since developed a studio practice that facilitates the building of objects that look and act as paintings while I publicly call myself a painter. I assemble the image of a painting from a variety of materials that achieve the component elements of […]
Anna Kunz: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Anna Kunz about her work. Asked about the "supplemental appendages" that extend from her paintings, Kunz remarks: "They gesture out to the viewer. The space around the painting is included, and the painting breaks a little free of its format. The shadows that are created by the work are implicated. I […]
Leslie Bell: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Leslie Bell about his work and process. Bell remarks: "The history of painterly expression goes back to the caves but skips generations along the way. The pendulum swings…loose; tight; loose; tight. What excites me most is a dynamic combination of description and expression. I remember as a little kid marveling at […]
Steven Cox: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Steven Cox about his work and process. Cox remarks: "At base, I am influenced by the notion of temporality, where the inevitability of change unpredictably alters the appearance and formation of an item. I tend to apply this understanding of temporality to how I approach the making of my work whilst […]
Guy Corriero: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews artist Guy Corriero about his work. Corriero, who makes both painting and sculpture, says of his paintings: "I have been building my paintings the same way for a long time; hand-made, irregular rectangles cut from 1/8" poplar sheets with a frame-type edge glued on, then layering them with many coats traditional gesso […]
Robert Janitz: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Robert Janitz about his work. Rutherford's introduction begins: "Paint on canvas and their combined affect on a viewer are what painting is all about. I can’t help but admire an artist who uses those materials in a bold matter-of-fact way, and the paintings of Robert Janitz are exactly what I mean. […]
Amanda Friedman: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Amanda Friedman about her work and studio practice. Friedman's work was recently on view at Eli Ping, New York. Rutherford writes that "the expansive, sprawling swaths of paper that Amanda Friedman refers to as Thought-forms have pulled me into their orbit and provided plenty to think about. The painted surfaces, existing […]
Jonathan Allmaier: Painting-Culture
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford talks to painter Jonathan Allmaier about his work. Allmaier comments: "I think the key to letting the paintings make themselves is to regard the materials, along with their contingent circumstances (and it’s silly to think of circumstances as separable from an object anyway) as mental states, without distinction from a particular physical state. […]
Farrell Brickhouse: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Farrell Brickhouse about his work and process. Brickhouse comments: "One question I ask when entering the studio is, 'what needs to be said, what can my art contain?' My studio time is not unique, it runs the whole gamut: from the workman-like strokes that one makes until something more significant can […]
Jim Lee: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Jim Lee about his work and process. Lee comments: "For me, it’s just about working with my materials and trying to understand how to transition from one to the next, incorporating the physical vs. the visual. Whether its pieces of wood, a slice of linen, graphite marks, oil, latex paints, rubber, […]
Maria Walker: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford talks to artist Maria Walker about her work. Rutherford writes: "Altered stretcher bars, torqued and triangulated planes, backs as fronts – the work of Maria Walker is a lesson in harmonizing tradition and experimentation… She has pushed her materials and flowed with them in order to elicit a distinctive sense of aesthetic truth. […]
Painting How You Feel, Not How You Should
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford writes about a selection of painters whose instincts are leading them to make work beyond the limits of "the plane." Rutherford writes: "Professional skateboarders have a saying, 'skate how you feel, not how you should,' and the most experimental and engaging artists have always operated just like that – working how they feel, […]
Page Whitmore: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews painter Page Whitmore. Whitmore remarks: "I derive immense tactile pleasure from making and materiality. In alignment with some of the tensions in my work, achieving a high level of craft is important to me with the minimalist painting-esque objects, whereas some works I show are industrially manufactured; almost artless. My work has […]
Clinton King: Interview
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford interviews artist Clinton King about his work and making a shift from sculpture to painting. In the sculptures, King remarks, "I often worked with a material in a 'natural way' letting the object and material 'just be.' Working in this way I developed sensitivity and a lightness of touch. This later grew into […]
Sean Scully’s Physical Spirituality
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford discovers a great trailer for the documentary film Sean Scully: The Bloody Canvas, produced by Yellow Asylum Films for RTE, directed by Alan Gilsenan with photography direction by Richard Kendrick. The film mixes audio interview with footage of Scully working in his studio. As the film begins, Scully remarks: "In my kind of […]
Squeak Carnwath in Studio
Painter's Bread
Michael Rutherford posts a video of painter Squeak Carnwath working in her studio and discussing the process of painting. Carnwath says: "I never know what I'm going to do… I like not knowing because then I'm going to find something out instead of it being a set product where it has an end goal. I […]