002 LIGHT
LIVE CONVERSATION: DANA PASILA AND LISELOTT JOHNSSON
recorded on
www.facebook.com/LOLWOWSOS/
November 2, 2019
Liselott Johnsson: Hello Dana, thank you for inviting us to your studio! So glad to catch up with you! Would love to know more about your beautiful and bright studio, where it is located, and what you enjoy about working in this space. Do you find it different to be an artist in Canada versus the United States? Has your practice changed due to your change of location?
Dana Pasila: Welcome Liselott and everyone! Thank you for inviting me to the conversation about painting. l love your generous approach to the discussion around abstraction. I’ll take a bit to think about your questions, but to answer the first one – my studio is in Weston Ontario which is part of the Toronto area. I am really happy to have this affordable living/workspace ... OK, more soon!!
Apart from the studio space, the window light and very high ceilings have influenced my use of colour with a lighter palette, and a greater interest in the effects of light as an element of my abstract paintings. It is also a very quiet space with many other artists living nearby which helps me focus. Moving to Canada was a big change – in all ways; the physical environment and the light is a contrast to where I lived on Cape Cod. It is also what I would call a ‘quieter’ culture, but vibrant in unique ways, especially in Toronto where there is tremendous diversity. One difference I have noted is in Canada & in the province of Ontario, government support and funding for the arts tends to stand out as a framework for participation as an artist, and there are not as many independent galleries or spaces to exhibit work because the population/context is also that much smaller than the US.
My practice has changed a lot. It took a while to find work here and a place to paint, three years, and in that time I’ve noticed my approach to painting has its own pace where I just love to get the brushes and paint out and start the next one. For most painters, a consistent workspace is so important to have, and in big cities everywhere studio space is disappearing.
LJ: Thanks for telling us about your studio space and the influence of the light and culture of Canada on your painting practice. I can see this change of palette in your work. The color palette is refined, subtle, and consistent. It is as if these works were made to be experienced together, as if they are telling a story together as a group. I love the sheer subtlety of the pastels and they remind me of the palette found in the paintings by Agnes Martin and Hilma af Klint. There is a softness and joy present in the choice of colors that seems researched and planned out. I wish you could tell us a little more about your choice of colors and how you prepare your palette before you start painting.
In addition, the compositions feel calm and focused, and I experience a feeling of space and airiness that seems to extend beyond the limits of the picture planes. The gesture of the hand seems relaxed but controlled. Your paintings make me think of haiku poetry. Like such poems, your individual paintings read as short phrases describing glimpses of nature/sky/reflections that together create a whole. The meaning of the work isn't in one painting but rather in the conversational space between the works. (Makes me think of R. H. Quaytman's work). I would be curious to know how you perceive my reading of your work. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about the changes in your practice that generated these new compositions? What part of your works is pre-planned and what is intuitive? For instance, do you make preparatory sketches? Do you allow room for chance? Looking forward to learning more about your approach to painting ...
DP: What a wonderful description of my work, you are so tuned in! Yes, your reading is right on, and I’m so impressed with your recognition of the relaxation/control of the hand as that is new to my work. The fact that I have a place to work in that I won’t need to move from any time soon has allowed me not to feel pressured. I feel somewhat more ‘permanent’ here and it’s made a difference in my pace and the joy of just working on paintings. The precision in the work is balanced by self-awareness, and a sense of being at ease with how things turn out as they unfold. The colour palette has been inspired from the light in the studio and a desire to represent light at different times of day. I could just sit all day and watch the changing sunlight. Also, I work part-time at an art store and bought really good quality oil paint – it’s a delight to use, and colour is just a thrill (as I can see in your work) – I’m still just amazed at how beautiful paint colours are on their own. I work on arches oil paper a lot, and the paper lends itself to a feeling of a fresco work. It’s an absorbent surface and this process slows me down. The pastel colours and blues are a deliberate shift away from the heaviness of my previous work (as in two of the photos) and it has allowed access to what you mentioned – poetic phrasing, a non-verbal ‘conversation,’ and a feeling of listening to favourite songs when the paintings are displayed together. I’m thrilled you picked up on this. I consider Agnes Martin and Hilma Af Klint to be kindred spirits, I would be honoured to have my work resonate with their sensibilities. I do allow some room for chance, I begin with a form and let the colour unfold without planning it, so I plan only the pencil outlines and that’s it. I don’t sketch beforehand, the paintings feel like they just have to be painted. Intuition comes in throughout the painting process in choice and juxtaposition of colour and in the layered works that build on what came before.
Looking at your artwork, and also knowing about your recent move to France, I can see the joy you engage in through colour and light, and how your sense of humour and generosity is really an integral part of your work too. It is so unusual to see these combined forces together with the precision and definitive use of ‘modernist’ form as a visual language. The beautiful transparencies, with light acting as a material in your architectural installation in the hotel, for example, reveals how you work with space and volume too, to shape your paintings. A love of colour and light is something I think we share, especially in that sheer delight in colour itself and the impact it has on the mind. Would you agree? Do you see your installations as multi-sensory paintings? I really connect to the sense of crystalline brilliance in your work and yet there is also humanism, and the engagement with everyone who is willing to ponder what is before them and join in. In creating a high modernist alphabet, do you feel you are creating your work with the audience in mind as well as from your own life and experience?
LJ: Thank you for the posts and for further explaining your work. It seems like we have many elements in common in our practices! Like you, I could sit all day watching and getting lost in the changing color of light, reflections, transparencies, and shadows. I’ve always had a love for monochromes in simple geometric shapes; however, I’ve realized that most people today neither allow color nor geometry to speak to them. When I see a blue monochrome for instance, my mind takes off, I think of where the pigment is coming from, the layering and sheen of the surface, all the associations this color brings to me; how it relates to everything surrounding it in the room (people and the interior) and how the shape alters the space. I tend to read everything in multiple layers like this, but I have, through time, realized that most people don’t allow this experience to take place. Through the use of humour and other interactive means, I hope to open the door for the visitor to enjoy and experience my work on multiple sensorial and intellectual levels. This is one of the reasons why I created the High Modernist Color Bar Code. Through the use of this code and the process of decoding, I aim to stimulate a new relationship to geometric painting. I cherish that my art seems very simple and welcoming at first impression, and that the complexity reveals itself incrementally. I am convinced that if a viewer gives her or himself the time to think, see, and feel, it is possible for a meaningful encounter with art that may stimulate a shift in perception and a sense of wonder that does not exist in real life. For me, this is the essential reason for art to exist today.
The experience of an artwork always includes the surrounding space, so the design of an exhibition is very important to me, it is an integral part of my work. As you describe so well, I see my installations and exhibitions as paintings in space.. The quality of light is an obsession, so studies with pure transparent, pure pigment paints led me to search for a possibility to allow light to shine through the paint film. My goal being the ability to experience the pure pigment without the opaque support. This led me to industrial pigmented clear PVC film, which I usually use in the width of a paintbrush (to keep the connection to painting) on glass. This allows natural light to become visible as a material. Also, as one looks through the coloured glass, the surroundings are also altered. We haven’t yet touched upon this but I sense that we also share a love for geometry through the use of grids, geometric shapes, and crystalline forms. Could you please tell us more about your relationship to geometry? I am curious to learn more about the beautiful crystal-shaped volumes that I see in your work. What is the meaning of the crystal shape for you?
DP: I was thinking of your post about your grandfather’s shipbuilding and the beautiful craftsmanship and design of his sailboats moving through an ever-changing space of light and shadow, surrounded by blue water, and thought of this in relation to how your work has these qualities of changing motion, reflections, colour, and light. The engagement with the visitor and the interaction at different sites has a feeling of your painting ‘sailing’ to new locations and environments, and placing itself within natural elements and atmospheres of light and colour. I also appreciate the sense of layering that you speak of in how you view colour and space, and the active/meditative quality of letting colour effects shift and change. I think that we often don’t allow or have time to slow down to see, a lot of our focus is on screens, large and small, that get us through our day, which is removed from dimensional space and changing light. Really love that you mentioned the simplicity and complexity of your work, it’s so true, and inviting people into the shared project of decoding modernism via a sense of wonder. Just great!!
Your use of colour transparency and using the window as a way to experience light as a material is fascinating. So, rather than being a void, it is an active, changing part of the painting. This use of colour and volume connects with my aim to somehow obtaining a sense of floating or motion when viewing my two-dimensional paintings. And yes, like you I do love geometry. The crystalline form for me is a representation of the thinking process, and to the sense of a protected space. Like a suspended moment, when you are in the midst of a focused thought or a phrase of music, these painted geometric forms reflect the pace and processes of our inner life. These processes of thought need time and space to unfold, and my approach to painting them is deliberate but allows for change, focused but also light-hearted. The geometric forms change as you search for the edges of the shape defined by the colour relationships, the inner volume is redefined depending on your perspective/relationship to the colour as it builds the sense of a volume. What I especially appreciate about your description of your work is the hope that the visitor will give enough time to allow their perspective to shift and that the work can engage with the sense of wonder. My goal is to hopefully give room to a dimension of our experience that is untranslatable, where joy and wonder are part of it, that can be accessed through the visual language. Do you think that abstract painting is more difficult to engage with in general; is it more isolated within its own language and history? I do find most people connect much more easily with realism or even an abstract sense of landscape in a painting. When I view abstract paintings, I feel as though they speak my language, but for many it is an unfamiliar or intimidating code that they are unsure of.
LJ: Thank you so much for your thorough answer and also for taking the time to analyse my work. I truly appreciate your description of geometry as a thinking process, as a representation of inner life, and as processes that take time and space to unfold. I value that your working method involves time and that the painting is created incrementally, yet building towards a defined shape. It’s as if there is an inner intelligence to the intuitive creative process that manifests itself through the materials, your mind, your hand, and the finished form. It makes me think of shapes that are created like this in nature, like salt crystals that form through time, snowflakes, or beehives. In yoga, (and other schools of spiritual thought) there is this belief that a yoga practitioner sheds all these outer layers to find there is an inner core of pure conscience. In this vein, I find your work very meditative and spiritual. Another thought that comes to my mind are paintings (mandalas, sand paintings, etc.) that are painted as a form of ritual. On the other hand, I also sense a feeling of joy, weightlessness, and harmony, sentiments which are grounded in reality, materials, and the present moment, not in some other spiritual dimension. Music and improvisation come to mind. The balance of colour and shapes of these crystals is absolutely perfect; a phenomenon, which totally seduces my mind to believe that the crystals you paint actually exist as three-dimensional forms in real life, even though structurally and mathematically they probably can’t. This mystery and tension between the real and unreal are what makes your paintings so compelling; I have a hard time taking my eyes from them!
My fascination with geometry and systems also stems from the fact that there are systems and geometric structures in place everywhere around us; starting from the very tiny molecular level all the way up to how the government operates. Systems and grids are of cause, inseparable from the development of modern society. Because of their seductive utopian quality, geometry and systems are often seen and presented as undeniable and objective truths. Humans determine how to employ these and to what ends. So, my work celebrates the geometry and systems as necessary organizational tools for contemporary society; for instance, protecting human rights and democracy while attempting to see beyond these to reveal that humans consciously put these into place to fulfill their own ends (not always good).
Your crystals also fascinate me because, for a while, I have been constructing a project (in my mind and on paper) that includes an open crystal shape placed in an urban environment. I will post it on my page so that you can see it. While this large crystalline shape in coloured glass at first appears to be solid, the viewer will experience how the crystal volume opens up, allowing the visitor to visually and physically enter the structure (approximately 12’-0”x12’-0”), a protected space for creativity and free thought in an urban environment. In my dreams, this crystal looks very much like your painted crystals!
Your observation that my work is in constant movement is absolutely correct. I see painting as a way of life, as a way to experience the world around me and maybe transform it just a little, even if it is only temporary, to create a shift. In response to your comment on representational and abstract painting, I suppose for many people, realism allows them a sentimental and safe access to look at a painting. However, in reality, the experience of the real world is predominately abstract; we collect information with all of our senses. The peripheral vision is abstract, only a fraction of what we see is in focus as representational form. Due to the interactive nature of the Internet and overwhelming consumption of images, people have very little patience to experience art in general. My thought is that art can either go with the flow and manifest itself through these same interactive means; or it can create an escape from all of this; something that I find very successful in your paintings.
If you have the time and patience, I have a few final questions for you. Could you tell us a little more about the representational images in your recent work? Also, I am intrigued by the dialogue between your paintings and your weaving. How has weaving informed your paintings? As a final question, I would also cherish to know how you perceive the role abstract painting and art today? I am looking forward to your answer!
DP: Thank you so much for your very thoughtful response! I am really happy that you view my work in the ways you describe – I feel my aim and my hopes for the impact of my paintings has been met in your view and descriptions of the work and it is very heartening. The fact that the crystal shapes have appeared in your mind’s eye is just wild! They have to be built because they sound incredible. To respond to your final questions in this conversation, the small paintings of representational images have two purposes, one is a return to my love of drawing and especially drawing the natural world, and one is to vary the abstract thinking with observational work, which I just have to do at times. My first engagement with art as a child was through my interest in animals and nature. I copied dozens of paintings by Canadian artist Glen Loates, it was a kind of training ground for me as an artist, along with Walter T. Foster’s “How to Draw Horses.” I was pondering this as I painted the small ‘homage’ paintings to endangered species in Canada, and thinking of the climate crisis we are in. I met Sue Coe when she gave a talk at Lesley during our MFA program in 2012, and she spoke to me of not needing to make a choice in my work, that I could do both: engage in exploration in abstraction and also contribute to the need for all creatures to have a presence and a voice through art. Her words and commitment have stayed with me. So I have only recently begun to engage in representational work as a parallel to the abstract work.
My weavings came about through a desire to revive a Finnish tradition and to make handmade heirlooms again, cherished objects that used to be part of every home’s decoration. I feel a longing for these decorative yet practical pieces that are passed down through families, and fell in love with the many incredible designs when I was researching them. The trend towards fast, cheap, and throw-away items or generic items in the home makes me sad. I want my home to be filled with warmth and to remind me of nature, so the weavings really hit the mark. It was also a way to continue looking into colour and design when I didn’t have a studio to paint in. The ryas are done with a tapestry needle and vintage wool on a linen/wool backing - very portable. Also, if you look at the mid-century designs for Rya textiles, they are amazing!! Many were designed by women, and I feel the skill and beauty of so much craft and textile work has been dismissed as secondary to other forms of expression. I believe the connection to painting with these works is through the geometry and colour, and the desire for some human ‘wobbliness’ or sense of it being carefully crafted. The pace is slower and meditative in making them too, you can’t go quickly, so it has translated to slowing down in my painting process.
And, as for the last question on abstract painting and art today, that is a big one! In looking at painting for many years now, I find the alchemy of paint and how it transforms into something beyond the physical qualities absolutely fascinating. When you consider how something was constructed and look closely at the brushstrokes, colour, composition, scale – all of the visual parts – they add up to something much greater. With abstract painting, at first glance, it really is absurd that these visual compositions should have any impact, they are nonsensical in many ways and you are never completely sure of what the intention may have been. For me, abstract painting is able to hold onto a very important existential space, it is protecting that human realm of thought, a desire to understand one another and all life, and has empathy on a level that can’t always be described in words. I often see abstraction in many ways to be on par with how we experience music; it is a human language, but as you said so well in your response above about geometric form, it is all around us and it is a mystery too. As for art today, I find there are increasingly so many niches and eddies in a stream that can absorb a myriad of expression, it’s so full of life! Painting is one part and it has a weighty history. In what I see as a wider field of experimentation, we seem to have left behind cohesive trends or movements, it feels really fresh and it proves just how diverse art can be, there is no end to it! There is also a lot that I think about around the monetary value of art. On the one hand, I wish that everyone would invest in original art and painting; it shouldn’t be exclusive. Then, there is also the side of respecting an art form or a person’s work, valuing it for what it represents and gives back.
Just a few final thoughts on art today: the floodgates seem wide open, and more specifically, painting’s material-based processes have endured. It has expanded even further around the use of materials, and widened the context within which each artist creates. As well, I do think that the climate crisis era confronts the artist with their response, or whether they choose not to respond to the sense of urgency around the future of our world. Art and artists, perhaps more in North American culture, often still have to deal with a general backlash in attitude and funding that considers art to be superfluous. As a crucial language that responds to history and the human condition, it would be really something to see it receive the support that it deserves on an everyday level. In my view, expanding and supporting the variety of spaces and galleries in which to view art would make a big difference to many towns and cities. This is something I hope to help change. And finally, thank you again, Liselott, for this wonderful exchange. I have really enjoyed this.
LJ: Thank you Dana, I truly appreciate how you describe the roles of figurative painting and weaving in relation to your abstract work. It is fascinating how you are now able to integrate your interest in animals and nature into your painting practice. I value your ryas because of their thick and tactile material presence! They are really sculptural paintings (or huge brushes) in yarn! I love their relationship to the grid, tradition, and craft. I agree with you that art can now take any form, but that painting has endured and continues to play an active role of contemporary artistic expression. Like you, I believe that contemporary art can play an important role in creating, defining, and sculpting the future, and should as such receive adequate funding and support. It has been a joy and inspiration conversing with you Dana! I wish you a good continuation in your studio practice. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with the readers of LOL/ WOW/ SOS.
LOL/WOW/SOS: Learn more about Dana Pasila's work here: https://www.danapasila.com