007 RYTHM
LIVE CONVERSATION: DANA PASILA INTERVIEWS JILL CHRISTIAN
recorded on
www.facebook.com/LOLWOWSOS/
December 10, 2019
Jill Christian makes beautiful and meditative abstract paintings inspired by the distances, sky, and rhythm of the landscapes surrounding Albuquerque, New Mexico where she lives and works. In the post below, she will be interviewed by Dana Pasila, who lives and works in Weston, Ontario, Canada. We look forward to learning more about Jill’s paintings, her artistic practice, and her thoughts on abstract painting today.
LOL/WOW/SOS: Hello Dana and Jill, thank you for allowing us to follow your conversation here on LOL/WOW/SOS. Looking forward to visiting New Mexico and learning more about Jill's work!
Jill Christian: Thank you LOL/WOW/SOS! Dana Pasila, I'm looking forward to our conversation!
Dana Pasila: Hello Jill! Happy to begin the conversation and looking forward to finding out more about your artistic process, your inspirations, and your thoughts on abstract painting. Could we start on the practical side with hearing a little about your studio space and your location in New Mexico, and perhaps also your routine or your approach to your studio painting sessions?
Jill Christian: Hi Dana! It’s so nice to have this time with you here. My studio is in a garage at my home in Albuquerque, NM. I live not far from a path along one of Albuquerque’s acequias. These are communal irrigation ditches with a centuries-old history in New Mexico’s arid landscape. The acequias are now used for both agriculture and recreation and they provide vibrant green space and walking trails through parts of the city near the Rio Grande river. Walking in these areas is an important source of my inspiration and renewal.
My studio time ebbs and flows with what else is happening in my life. Right now, I mostly work evenings and weekends. My paintings are frequently about the color and sensation or visual rhythm of something that has caught my eye, often out in the landscape. So, I often spend a lot of time mixing colors. This is also how I “warm-up” in the studio. I begin by painting (typically) monochromatic backgrounds until the color feels right to me. Then I can begin the painting.
Dana Pasila: Great to hear about the connection to landscape, the sense of growth, and renewal around you. I so appreciate the unique sense of motion in your work, as though the wind is forming patterns and waves in the brushstrokes. Your use of colour stands out also in unusual combinations and contrasts. I find in the meditative quality of your brushstrokes, there is an aliveness and ease at the same time. Do your paintings become something different from the idea you begin with, or do you hold a visual reference in mind while you’re working? I’m also curious to learn how long you have been painting, primarily in abstract imagery and how this has changed over time?
Jill Christian: I would say that there is a back and forth between my original intention and what happens while I’m painting. I use the visual reference as a starting point. But not infrequently the painting will go in another direction. With what I’ll call my field paintings, which have an overall tonality and brushstrokes are placed one after the other, I can’t really know what’s going to happen until I am quite far into it. It’s a series of intuitive decisions within a general parameter that I’ve set based on colour. I don’t want it to be overly controlled. And I just have to trust it and keep going to the end.
About two years ago, I felt a need to break away from using a gridded structure. I’ve always been interested in the repeated gesture and mark. And I created a series of paintings where the marks coalesced into organic shapes or units. I was interested in how these collections of marks and their proximities to each other created almost narratives about their relationship to each other. And most recently, I’ve been looking at and thinking about lace patterns and stitches. I’m not literally painting stitches, but the way the brush marks sit on the field of the support and create rhythms and organic references is something I find interesting and exciting and beautiful. I’m also interested in a macro-micro relationships and repeating units – one thing becoming something else.
I’ve been painting primarily abstract imagery for many years – at least since the mid-90s. But my way of working has become more abstract over time, though I still love to draw and paint from life and I keep a sketchbook.
Dana Pasila: Thank you Jill, it’s very interesting you use the word narrative when relating to your imagery; my first thought in looking at your work was that the individual marks create narratives that emerge precisely because the imagery is abstract. I love that!! I do find that abstract imagery speaks a language if we let it, or if the work captures our imagination.
There is such beauty arising from the field paintings due to your colour choices and the almost textile-like brushstrokes, and in learning your process, I think that quality of spontaneity and precision creates a dynamic contrast that scintillates across the surface. I see that the ground is very important in building the image, like demarcating a space that becomes a field of possibility. I’m also interested in your recent printmaking sessions, and how you worked out the transition from paint to print which I found to be really successful. How did you enjoy that process? Was this a new technique for you?
Jill Christian: The prints I shared are lithographs and this was completely new to me. I made these during a two-week student-printer collaborative residency at Tamarind Institute this past March. Tamarind Institute (https://tamarind.unm.edu) is a truly amazing facility that began in Los Angeles in 1960 with a mission to revitalize and preserve fine art lithography. It is now (since the ‘70s) part of the University of New Mexico, and each year trains future master lithographers in its printer training program. I worked with two students in the program, Arel Lisette Peckler (https://www.arellisettepeckler.com/) and Mike Feijen (https://www.instagram.com/mawrz/). I can’t say enough in praise of the staff and students, especially as an artist who was completely new to the collaborative printmaking process. I loved it, and it was also very challenging. Because I work intuitively – and alone – in the studio, I had to find a way to translate my way of working with paint into the lithographic process. And when I say “I” had to find a way, I must give credit to Arel and Mike who actually did the work of helping me find the right materials and plate process to make these prints happen. I was appreciative of the level of sensitivity and creative empathy that’s required of collaborative printers. One challenge was to think and work in layers with a temporal and material lag. Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I guessed in layers and hoped everything would work out! I did some preliminary work in paint on mylars so that I could start to imagine how the plates would print. Then, we moved on to working directly on plates. The lag is that I would work on the plates or mylar, and then they would disappear with the printers.
There were tests. At one point, a layer really didn’t work, so we redid the plate. On Blue Swerve, we switched the order of the printing of the plates when the original order didn’t have the result we wanted. Another challenge was that there are things that get locked in at a certain point. Because of the expense and labor involved, and of course the time constraints, there are decision points that happen. You make commitments, that at some point, you can't change as you move further into the process; like plate size and ink selection. It was also a new experience to not be able to adjust color spontaneously as I painted and have the paint mix on the surface. I worked in black tusche and flasche on the plates and mylar. I had to imagine the color. But that also allowed a lot of attention on the texture and quality of the mark.
I see potential for this experience influencing my painting. In particular, my desire to think about how to bring more space and air into my painting. I had to think differently on how I build my backgrounds, what you beautifully described as “a field of possibility.” Working with the white of the paper was wonderful. Since Tamarind, I’ve dipped my toes back into monoprint, and I see myself doing more printmaking in the future.
Dana Pasila: Wonderful description of your time at Tamarind and the process, Jill! I can imagine how unfamiliar it is to work with other people on your own images yet very rewarding. I love the variety of mark-making in the litho images that you achieved and the lightness they captured – they have a ‘dancing’ quality to them. They really complement the sensibility of your paintings too, almost like counterpoints in the narrative, but part of the continuum of your imagery.
I would like to explore a couple of questions that have come to mind regarding abstract art and your particular path to the work you are doing now. The first one is to find out about some of the artists that you hold close to your heart, so to speak. They could be direct or indirect influences/colleagues or friends. Would you share with us some of the people you find important to your work today? The other question has to do with your relationship to nature as an influence, guide, and inspiration. Expanding on this a little, seeing the effects of climate change and its prominence as a worldwide issue, I find that it is changing my relationship to my work in different ways. Knowing the connection to nature inspires and sustains your practice, has the reality of a changing environment affected you as an artist, your imagery, or your relationship to abstract imagery?
Jill Christian: My artist friends are incredibly important. I belong to a group of five women artists who live in Santa Fe and Galisteo and we meet monthly in each other’s studios. We call ourselves “The Lady Minimalists Tea Society.” The monthly ritual of getting together and showing each other what we’re working on gives me support and connection, and also keeps me engaged in ideas and questions about art-making. It’s so interesting to watch other artists make decisions about their work and follow their threads over time. I belong to another group in Albuquerque. We meet less frequently, but they have also enriched my life. I also have two artist-friends who live in California. We met at a workshop several years ago and decided to regularly connect for accountability and support. We email weekly, Skype monthly, and once a year get together over a long weekend for visioning, planning, and goal-setting.
There are so many more people and artists I could talk about that I’d need several pages! I resist pinning down influences, I think because I find there’s some fluidity there. There are particular aspects of many different artists that I feel a pull towards and that influence me. Sometimes individual paintings will stay with me or spark something in me. I’ll always feel my roots in gestural abstraction. I love de Kooning and Joan Mitchell. I’ve also been influenced by looking at painters like Louise Fishman and Joan Snyder. And then there is Agnes Martin. My own work moved from gestural abstraction into work based on repeated brushstrokes. There I feel some threads from Robert Ryman and Marcia Hafif. I also really love Alma Thomas. These artists helped free me up to explore brushstroke and colour in and of themselves. I love the facture of the painted surface and I’m drawn to surfaces that are sensual and show evidence of the hand in the materials.
You asked whether the climate crisis we are living through is affecting me as an artist. As an individual, it’s something I think about every single day and frankly feel quite overwhelmed and distressed about. I feel a deep unease – like nothing can be counted on continuing as before. When I feel particularly upset, I question whether I should be making paintings at all. I don’t have an answer. In my personal life, I have tried as best I can to raise my awareness and change how I consume goods and energy and handle my waste. I vote. I support groups that I feel are doing good work. That doesn’t change my distress.
I feel that the relationship between my artwork and climate crisis is evolving. And I’m not sure what the end result will be. But I keep coming back to knowing that interacting with the natural world is a source of solace and wonder to me. Back in the studio, it’s a bit like wanting to hold onto something, to remember it, to know it better, and return to it. Making art, and viewing art, isn’t going to solve any problems. But I do see art as a way to understand, interpret, think about, and connect with ourselves, other people, and the world around us. I do hope that aesthetic experiences – whether interacting with art or the environments around us – creates some kind of bond and connection to this beautiful and miraculous world we live in.
LOL/WOW/SOS: Jill, thank you for sharing your thoughts on your creative process and your art. Dana, thank you for your insightful questions. Both illuminating and poetic, your conversation has been a joy to read!
LOL/WOW/SOS:
For more information about Jill Christian’s art, please consult: www.jillchristian.com
To learn more about Dana Pasila’s art, please refer to: www.danapasila.com