Robert Stuart and Charles Goolsby:  A Dialogue in Paint

 

Published by the William King Regional Arts Center (Abingdon, Virginia) in conjunction with the exhibition "Robert Stuart and Charles Goolsby:  A Dialogue in Paint" September 24, 2004 thru February 6, 2005

 

Interview With The Artists

The following are responses to questions Charles Goolsby and Robert Stuart provided over the summer and fall of 2004.  Matthew Mangold, Curator of Fine Art conducted these interviews.

 

Matthew Mangold (MM):  Charles and Robert, this is a concept that always seems to be in flux - - but what can painting mean today?  Or a more accurate question might be why are both of you painters?

 

Charles Goolsby (CG):  What do you mean by "Meaning"? I think all work begins with intent and ultimately communicates content.  The intent and content are two separate entitities.  Artistic content operates within contextual aspects of the time in which works are created.  My art is a personal investment of my life's experience.  It often operates metaphorically.  It represents a transfer of my experience onto a two-dimensional surface of expression.  So yes, in my opinion meaning is important in my work.  The meaning operates primarily as a visceral response.  In my best work, layers of implied narrative should gradually unfold for the viewer.

 

Robert Stuart (RS):  I think painting, like music, poetry, the other arts, can provide transcendental experience, can "soothe the soul", can inspire, can awaken us to new feelings, can link us to other beings and their experience of the world--both inner and outer. It can provide calm and quietness, a place for contemplation in our busy world.  Painting can reach areas of the self, emotions that we don't know about, that are not included in our language of words.  It can reach us directly; get under our "cover" and into us.  It can provide a glimpse of wholeness in a fragmented world.

 

MM: Charles and Robert, There was a big trend of the Abstract Expressionists looking towards writers such as James Joyce as a stronger influence than any painter.  Who do you recognize as an influence in your work?  Are they painters, sculptors or visual artists in general?

 

RS:  Yes, they are painters and visual artists.  Agnes Martin, Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin, come quickly to mind.  So, too, does the writing of certain artists like Agnes Martin and Matisse, or the aphorisms of Brancusi.  Also, in my formative experience I count being around Philip Guston at Boston University as a big influence.  Recently, also the contemporary German painter Gerhard Richter.  And, earlier, particularly when I was doing landscape and still-life work, Cezanne.

 

The painting Red Souls I titled from a phrase in a John Donne poem.  This poem was included in the play "Wit", by Margaret Edson, which I saw a few years back in New York.  I was fascinated by the imagery of the phrase:

                                                "Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,

                                                        That being red, it dyes red souls to white."

 

As to writers I would admit some influence, in my earlier landscapes, by the travel writer Bruce Chatwin, (Black Hills, which he published in the 70s or 80s), for his evocation of a lonely, isolated land.  I feel like there have been different influences at different stages of my nearly twenty years of painting.  To state any more, I would also say the early Italian Renaissance painters, especially the Siense.

 

MM:  What about you Charles, do you recognize the influence of a specific artists or types of artists in your work?

 

CG:  There are so many, Caravaggio for the tenebrism.  Early on I was intrigued with the 19th Century Landscape Painters such as Bierstadt and Cole.  I think Edward Hopper for the sense of isolation.  In the 1980s I was excited about Eric Fischl's work.  Jim Dine's painterly paintings and drawings made a huge impression on me as a younger artist.  I also enjoy Bay Area work - James Weeks, and Richard Diebenkorn.  Anselm Kiefer is another neo-expressionist who seldom fails to get my gut going.  I like ambition in painting.  I really do think TV, photography, and movies are laying around in my visual subconscious as well.  The two most memorable movies I saw as a kid were Night to Remember (1958) and Spartacus (1960).  My family did not get a color TV until I was a teenager.  So a lot of my strongest visual memories are black and white.  I think this ultimately influenced my ongoing interest in a limited palette.  I like strong rich things.  I like good coffee, cherry wood, garlic, basil, full-bodied rich beer and red wine.

 

MM:  Charles you rarely include the figure I your work, so what is the most useful aspect to the inclusion of the figure in regard to some of your recent work? The figure's inclusion fascinates me in this work because I think that it allows us to step into the painting as if we are at the spot watching the car get pulled onto the lift.  Is this a correct way to approach your work?

 

CG:  The subject gets me going as I contemplate its potential for metaphor.  A painting I am working on now that I am excited about is Abandonment.  It depicts a boy standing in front of a large American car being pulled up onto a tow truck.  In terms of meaning, for me as an artist, it is operating at several levels.  One, it was a real experience from a recent vacation of mine.  My nephew was standing there watching the event as I snapped the photo.  Second, from my perspective, the car was one of my Dad's last important personal possessions that he left me in his estate.  This car abandoned my family on our vacation by not starting.  Third, on yet another level, the car failing can represent my father's inability to support our family while I was growing up.  And lastly, the sense of abandonment works both was since I ultimately gave up on the car and purchased a new one.  When I use a figure, it is a single figure.  At least in my own mind, the figure in my compositions, generally represent me within the narratives.  I think it could be interpreted on a number of other levels as well.  Like Jim Dine, I see the subject as a starting point to hang paint on.  Going beyond Dine, I see the subject as having great relevance: you may call it a personal iconography if you wish.  Like Dine, I tend to choose subjects that have a familiarity to them.  I like to draw the viewer into the experience and then have them question why they feel the way they do.

 

MM:  Robert when I first saw the body of work that preceded your current paintings, I recognized immediately the influence of the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi (1890 - 1964).  How do either of you think this work has changed or evolved?

 

RS:  Morandi was a big influence on me earlier.  My work has changed, -- particularly a major change about 5 or 6 years ago.  I left off representation.  It was a change a long time coming and needed a rather dramatic, risky-feeling departure to actually effect.  I felt freer to get at what I wanted most.  Light was a large part of that.  I wanted light to be so strong and direct that you didn't need representational subject matter.  I wanted to get out what was the most important thing for me in the most direct, clearest manner.  The change was interiorly motivated, wasn't always a conscious effort; in fact, the one big triggering event was a dream of a painting!

 

CG:  When I first encountered Robert's work, I was immediately mesmerized by the incredible economy, the richness of color and the rigorous composition of his still life and landscape paintings.  It is rare for me to discover an artist's work that is so solid, beautiful to view and inspired.  Robert's work at that time was based upon his own direct observation combined with an influence of the Sienese approach to depicting pictorial space.  These works confronted the viewer with a reconciliation two-dimensional reality of pictorial space.  Was the visual research of Cezanne being re-opened in this investigation?  The strange synthetic of the solid and the spiritual within the painted surfaces of Robert's canvases described a world that was simultaneously conceptual and perceptual.

 

Robert is a skilled painter.  His mother a sculptor, initially inspired him.  Later he would attend Boston University where his education grounded him in a solid foundations program.  His draftsmanship is astounding.  On his own, he has worked steadily to advance his work into his latest investigation into complete abstraction.  In many circles, skilled may be a pejorative description.  Nevertheless, it is Robert's complete facility with oil paint that makes it possible for his ideas to manifest themselves in physical form.  His ideas are formed from an internal intensity combined with an undeniable understanding of the art historical record.  I extrapolate meaning from Robert's work in terms of its form. Everything about his work is subtle.  The impact of his work is very "felt" in a visceral way, even though when I look at it, I know that it is rational and deliberate in its construction.  It is interesting to me how his paintings are so intentionally constructed and also embody an intuitive component.  Robert's approach is very sophisticated.

 

MM:  Robert do you recognize the influence of specific artists in Charles work?

 

RS:  I see the influence of Eric Fischl, Richard Diebenkorn and the German Expressionists.

 

MM:  What about you, Charles, do you recognize the influence of specific artists in Robert's work?

 

CG:  I'm not sure I can answer this as honestly as a detached observer since I have visited so m any New York Galleries with Robert.  He is fascinated by Agnes Martin's work.  I noticed, too, that he gravitated toward Harvey Quaytman's spare but rich canvases.  In some ways, his recent abstract canvases still operate with similar space issues as his earlier works, but now there is a more mystical quality of light.  I get intrigued about the real space of his painted surface juxtaposed against perceived space of illusion.  An artist who works very differently from Robert comes to mind, James Turrell.  He works with very simple structures and actual light as his medium.

 

MM:  Robert how do you describe your formal language, do you call it a formal language, or do you have a mark-making vocabulary?

 

RS:  I don't think of it necessarily as a formal language, but perhaps it is.  To describe it:  straight lines or bands, regularly spaced, "bleeding", "seeping", vertical, or horizontal, on a textured surface or field.

 

MM:  What about your work Charles; do you have  "vocabulary," formal language or mark-making strategy?

 

CG:  I think all artists have mark-making strategies.  I will say that since the advent of conceptual art, a tremendous number of artists have tried to avoid having marks in their works.  But I think in painting, that is what makes the work ultimately singular in its physicality and expression.  Let's face it, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Delacroix, Monet, and so on --they all can be identified by their brushwork.  I do think that while I start with a subject, the works that I find successful are the ones where there is a tension between the paint as a physical substance and the image.  It is an edge that is difficult for me to achieve.  If the subject is described too carefully, the work loses it s emotive punch.  If the brushwork gets out of hand, it becomes too abstracted and any implied narrative is lost.  You asked me is this is metaphysical. I do attempt or at least shoot for transcendence.  I know many think this concept is outside of the rational and question how an artist knows when it is achieved or not.  And truthfully, I think that I may have achieved it in my work on very few occasions.  But, it is the part of the search that keeps me alive as a painter.  And frankly, it is something I think Robert has achieved--more in his still life paintings of bottles and his most recent abstractions.  It is a factor that intrigues me in his work.

 

MM:  Charles, you obviously use a referent within your work, we recognize the landscape, cityscape, the swimming pool and hedgerow within your works, but is the paint a subject that is primary or even secondary after the iconography?

 

MM:  Charles, how does the painting (as a substance) aid in conveyance of an iconographic subject?

 

CG:  I would say that paint as a material and the brushwork is important.  I would say it is an essential ingredient in the formal mix.  I would also say that the subject matters I have explored are something I do not want to abandon for paintings of pure paint at this point.  I may change on this point in the future because I have in the past.  Ironically, when I first met Robert in 1989, I was painting in an almost pure abstraction style and very committed to it. He was just back from painting a series of Italian landscapes.  As of this point in 2004, he is the pure abstractionist, and I am experimenting with landscape imagery.

 

MM:  Robert, I notice that your formal elements are always oriented along horizontal and vertical axes.  Am I recognizing rules that either of you impose upon your work?

 

RS:  Again, I don't think of them as "rules", but probably they are.  They provide structure for me to build the painting on.

 

MM:  What are the rules in your works?  I think that the viewer often sees your work metaphorically.  For myself when I look at your work, I impose some notions or recognize a simile.  My response to the image of your work would be seeing (or imagining) a radioactive pile glowing with energy (i.e. radiant energy or light).  Both of these approaches rely on a metaphysical aspect within your works.  The constant share by both of you is your reliance on the paint.  Am I correct?

 

RS:  yes, relying on the paint to replicate or evoke light and "surface"; yes, lines or bands should be evenly spaced, vertical or horizontal; should act like a sequence or series that can continue or does continue beyond the painting's boundaries.  The bands or lines are colored and act as light.

 

CG:  Of course there are rules.  It is one thing to think that the whole world is completely open to me as an artist, and that I can do anything I want when I am standing in front of the blank canvas.  It is another thing to stand in front of that blank canvas and continue a direction of investigation that builds from my own personal experience.  If an artist does the latter, there are selections and decisions that refine the process that one may call rules.  I think there is a place for both in artistic practice.  I think taking risks helps move an artist toward that next point.  I also think that if an artist is simply emoting and constantly fooling around, then that is not productive.  There are things I impose on my work, and they are all to some degree indefinable. One, there must be a sense of completeness.  There must be a balanced tension between concept and form.  There must also be an environment created that has a psychological discomfort.  These are things that currently interest me.

 

MM:  I am fascinated that, like myself, both of you travel frequently to Italy, but more importantly, both of you study art there.  What have you gained, or what do you find useful in your travels?

 

CG:  I like the separation it gives me from the real world, or at least the real world here in the States.  It offers me time to reflect and construct meaning.  The art in Italy is incredible.  It is the foundation that exists underneath the development of art in the US.  Nevertheless, I tend to be excited about all different kinds of art.  I've spent a great deal in China and very much am attracted to the landscape paintings of the Song Dynasty period.  They have tremendous drama and push similar agendas as 19th century American art.  Some of my paintings in the past have been inspired by my travels to China.

 

RS:  Inspiration from other art, especially older art:  early Renaissance art in Italy, art from earlier centuries than that in Japan as well as Edo Period (19th c.) screens.  Also, architecture and t he atmosphere of different, inspiring, perhaps exotic, places and areas: churches, cathedrals, Buddhist temples, Zen gardens, palazzos, etc.

 

MM:  Finally, does painting or the act of painting have meaning?

 

CG:  Yes, it means that as an artist you are changing the time frame of experience.  Photographers and videographers also change time.  In painting, it is a slower, reflective process.  It takes time.  The image, in my case, develops over a period of weeks or months.  It is not instant, but accumulative.  Strangely enough, one would think that the top or final layer of paint is what matters the most.  I agree that that is what is initially visible.  But there is also a history underneath that skin.  It forms a structure below that alters the outer appearance.  It can be textural.  It can seep through in smaller passages.  So the act of painting, the physical act of painting, does have meaning.  It is a conscious decision that involves physical manipulation of materials over time.  And that is meaningful.

 

RS:  I agree, painting's meaning, it's raison d'etre, can be in its producing a kind of resonance with one's feelings and experience, or as an instigator for feelings and response.  One can feel a kind of beauty that makes one feel whole and complete and joyful, that's meaningful, and important!

 

The act of painting has meaning for the artist in that he is moving toward a resolution that has the potential of reaching that state of beauty or fullness where you get resonance, you get something that does something for you, that moves you, and, hopefully moves others who share the human condition.