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| do you believe in life after love? Shelton Walsmith - 2014 oil on canvas |
Shelton Walsmith
THE PROVISIONAL vs. THE DUBIOUS
Shelton Walsmith is an Brooklyn artist working primarily in the mediums of painting and photography. His work has been published by The Paris Review, Knopf, Vintage, Rizzoli Books, Paris Vogue, Denver Quarterly, Unsaid Magazine and others. He has exhibited internationally, as well as widely in the United States.
Queens College Art Center, a nimble gallery anchored in Queens and open to the world, is a successor since 1987 of the Klapper Library Art Center that was based in the Queens College Art Library’s gallery founded in 1960. In more than 200 exhibitions to date, it has shown masters like Alice Neel, Joseph Cornell, and Elizabeth Catlett, and introduced scores of artists from around the globe and emerging artists who later went on to major careers. The Art Center focuses on modern and contemporary art, presenting the works of both emerging and established artists in diverse media, in programming expressive of the best of the art of our time.
Queens College Art Center. 65-30 Kissena Blvd. Flushing, NY11367. telephone: 718.997.3770
Please visit www.sheltonwalsmith.com
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| caravan Shelton Walsmith - 2014 oil on canvas |
A short series of inane questions and revelatory answers between myself and Shelton:
SC: Who, if anyone, do you look to as an aesthetic compass?
SW: You, Philip Guston, Giorgio Morandi, Francesca Woodman, Andre Tarkovski, Martin Mull, Alfred Stieglitz, Wes Anderson, John Coltrane, Louise Bourgeois
SC: What is your reaction when you compared to other artists?
SW: Righteous indignation. I'm often heard to say, "Well, I never!" Then I hide until they've gone away.
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| after velasquez and picasso Shelton Walsmith - 2014 oil on canvas |
SC: Is the originality of your work a conscious effort or a natural extension of your style?
SW: I never set out to re-invent the wheel. Ever. I'm more of a follower really. I work in traditional genres trying to slot myself into a wisdom tradition of mark making. Is that pathetic?
SC: Are you aware of any appropriations?
SW: I steal some from Massaccio and Giotto. Again I'm heavily influenced by Martin Mull, I've lifted entire passages from his paintings. When I lived in Barcelona I haunted the Picasso Museum. They have his variations on the masters. I recently repainted Velasquez Las Meninas being as true to the original while incorporating Picasso's charicatured take and adding a figure from the youngers Spaniards' Saltimbanques.
This is how I see painting from any source, be it anonymous or in popular consciousness, unless you're attempting forgery it's always going to be your appropriated interpretation.
SC: Do you believe you have a style, a cultivated aesthetic?
SW: No, unfortunately I am like a man without a country. Wandering.
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| if anyone gave a hoot she didn't notice Shelton Walsmith - 2014 oil on wood |
SC: What are your thoughts about the role art plays / has in this society - or in the culture at large?
SW: I feel the best art is simply escapism. All else is political pandering.
SC: Are you trying to make "a statement"?
SW: I like what Samuel Goldwyn said although I'm sure he was bloviating and crushing someone's sincere desire to express humanity's mission; "if you want to a send message use Western Union."
But, no, I'm trying to make pictures that tell the story of their process in their finished state. The relic should be haunted.
SC: To what extent does art "make a difference"?
SW: It provides mediation between what the empirical and the improbable; like an arbitrator between what's knowable and the magic we wish was true.
SC: What is the purpose of your work?
SW: To delight and confound.
SC: What are you trying to say?
SW: That my research proves that all that glitters is, indeed, gold. AND that not only is no news not good news; it's not even news!
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| her name was march Shelton Walsmith - 2014 acrylic on canvas |
SC: Who is the ideal spectator of your work?
SW: Good questions like this stop me cold. I'm glad you ask because I'm pondering this for the first time.
Someone receptive who neither wants nor expects things to make sense who would rather be led down the garden path to wilder shores of love. Okay now I know; it's me or Warren Buffet.
SC: What do you want the public to think about your work?
SW: Ideally, that the work is timeless. That it's a source of humor, light and sexy solace. That it should stay off the fridge, go in a gilded frame and be will lit and well hung prominently for all to see forever. And Ever.
SC: Do you think the ideal observer is relevant to your work?
SW: Observers are imperative because they complete the circuitry. It seems foolhardy to hope or expect the ideal observer will come along. I can't manage that end of production or perception.
SC: What is your works relationship to the observer?
SW: The fifth hand in a game of four handed poker.
SC: What are your thoughts on the current scene in New York, in the US, in the World?
SW: New York is obviously vibrant and exciting and always in flux. I cannot pretend to be a part of the art scene here. I might as well be one of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz in terms of anonymity I'll work for the witch but if she melts I'll also attend that party. Regarding the US and the world one thing is for certain New York is no longer "The Art Center". The global reality is that there is no longer a center it's dispersed into many strongholds Berlin, London, Tokyo, L.A., Bejing, Houston, Venice...
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| new soft op Shelton Walsmith - 2014 oil on canvas |
SC: Do you think the art world has relevancy?
SW: I think it's an economic gauge; auction prices are similar to the rise and fall of the NASDAQ.
Communities can gauge and conjecture the virility of gentrification and urban renewal by tracking artist enclaves i.e. the caribou effect. Beyond capitalistic or consumer metrics I think the real relevance is social philanthropy. Problematic probably but public museums are secular educating institutions to which kids of all backgrounds come and go daily. Exposure to cultural diversity through the art of the ages and varied social strata is relevant.
SC: What are your thoughts on the commodification of art via the galleries?
SW: Capitalism will eventually be replaced with a better system but for now it's a reality inseparable from goods and services in the western world. Whether it's a navaho blanket for $150 or a John Currin painting for $150,000 the value of art is only a commodity to those involved in the trade. For the rest of us it remains a resonant object. Art lasts longer than money. I can prove it.
SC: Is it possible for an artist to survive, for their work to attain relevancy, without participating in the social aspects of the art world?
SW: Not a living artist. It's like the lottery you've gotta be in it to win it. Unfortunately.
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| servants to illusion no.6; the clinicians Shelton Walsmith - 2013 watercolor on paper |
SC: What are your thoughts on those artists who create only to appeal to "investors / collectors"?
SW: My thoughts are I wish they would tell me how to do this because it's unicorn hunting as far as I can tell.
SC: Do you believe that the successful artist has been corrupted by capitalism?
SW: The whole world has. Successful artists seem to hire assistants to execute their designs.
Is that corrupt. Successful is relative term. The artist Wayne White is very successful but he claims not to have the Fuck You money that allows an elite group to do as they please. David Foster Wallace was successful but like Stephen King? Compare Jasper Johns success to John Cage; Amy Sillman to Amy Mahnick.
I guess market success and artistic achievement are not always equivalent...I'm rambling because success for me is like a rubics cube.
SC: How can an artist, an artist true to his vocation, survive in today's world?
SW: In the words of Charles Dickens his 'work must be it's own recompense.'
How can anyone survive their own desire to have more than they can make?
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| waiter Shelton Walsmith - 2014 digital file, giclee print on canvas |
SC: What is the relationship of photography to your painting?
SW: Like that of a crutch to an armpit.
SC: How do the non-representational aspects your work related to the representational?
SW: Like an effluvium- one thing is the flower the other is the scent of the flower.
SC: What is the role of symbolism in your work?
SW: This question is like not taking your eyes off the sun while recording what you see in White Out.
I think of Magritte's Ceci n'es pas une pipe. Sometimes paint is acting sculptural and playing itself instead of a trope or a character other times it's a painting of a pig and the pig is really me as a painting of solitary sentient figure. Symbolism plays a backstage role. It lifts or lowers the curtain for the drama to be revealed.
It's not a stagehand or the curtain itself and it certainly isn't a pipe.
SC: Aesthetically, can you speak to the artifactual qualities of your work - those elements that draw attention back to the medium: drip, smudges, tactile dollops?
SW: They call them the plastic arts for a reason. They are man made. The features you mention are for me like the skid marks you see on the road. My work is the stopping short of collision. Like what you said so long ago about the blues the player and the bottle falling off the table...the scumbles and the pentimenti are an xray into body of the process- they show it happening and it's suspended there- it happens every time you look at it.
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| smear camp Shelton Walsmith - 2014 digital file, giclee print on canvas |
SC: Are you trying to paint religiously or religiously paint?
SW: Yes and hell yes! Without a doubt.
SC: Is there a theological ground for your work?
SW: Yes. Because I was raised in church listening 3 times a week from Adam and Eve to the the parting of the Red Sea to Shadrach Meshach and Abednego to Job and his salty wife to immaculate conception to resurrection to the birth of christendom on down to revelations. Who could forget? Western art history re-indoctrinates and imbeds theology as a kind armature everything else goes on. I don't believe in the big guy in the sky. But as an artist dependent on suspension of disbelief there's no ignoring theology. It's actually quite a helpful bag of tricks,
SC: Is god dead?
SW: I just sent you a postcard with a quote from Tolstoy; paraphrasing- "The evil is not not knowing God but of making a god of lesser things."
Because God is a projection, like the Bat-signal they send up over Gotham when there is trouble, God will always be kept aloft. Unkillable.
SC: Is there any hope for hope? And how do you paint that.
SW: It's all unfathomable hope and irrational faith from where I'm sitting. Use puce.
SC: What role does music play in your work?
Sw: I try to make work the way classical music and jazz function; they are not describing or mimicking sounds in nature (like Flight of The Bumblebee) but rather creating an aural parallel independent of nature.
SC: What is your routine?
SW: Get up earlier than everyone else and read. Put on a classical record ( my current favorite is Haydn) Make breakfast and lunch for Giles and get him off to school. Walk 30 minutes to the studio. Make coffee. Draw until I'm ready to paint then paint until its time to meet Giles at home after school.
SC: How often do you paint?
SW: April through December I paint Monday through Friday from 8-3. January to the end of March I'm lucky if I paint at all.
SC: What is your favorite color?
SW: Merlot red, no, brownish pink, no, daquiri green...
SC: Do you like ponies?
SW: Yes, very much. I asked for one again for xmas this year and, for about the 40th time, nay, it was not to be.
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| Shelton Walsmith Photo by John Pack From Trickhouse #3 |
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