Shara Hughes Interview: Changing the Way We See

is it called anxiety I don't know I think it's like sort of just a need to fix things in a lot of ways again it's like I'm like making a mess in and fixing it [Music] [Music] well I grew up with three older brothers and they always left me out so I feel like I was always kind of independent playing so I feel like I kind of quickly learned to be alone a lot in a place that was chaotic in a lot of ways not to say that we never got along we did I had a great family but I think that I took a class in high school and it was a sculpture class and I remember the teacher I having some kind of ideas and that was to make a sculpture in metals and and wire and everyone else had sort of like these paper sculptures but the teacher didn't let me know that I was thinking differently until the end and we had our final like project do and mine was this huge like clock that had numbers coming off into the air and everything else and everyone else had cardboard and paper and I was like felt really embarrassed and then they told me actually this is great let's encourage it like you you think differently so embrace that so I think that I kind of have a natural tendency towards visual kind of inventions but I I think maybe like later on in high school don't I I kind of really decided I wanted to pursue going to art school and and from there I kind of felt like it was no turning back which I think was stubborn but I think that's sort of how you have to be to be an artist it's funny I feel like let's say ten 15 years ago I was making paintings that had specific reproductions of other paintings in art history inside my paintings because I almost couldn't figure out what type of painter I wanted to be so I was like I guess I'll just try all of them in one painting and through that I was kind of teaching myself how to paint and how to make mistakes and how to live with the mistakes and I I kind of when I dropped being really specific about other artists within my own work is when I I realized that I was I'm actually just a also a good painter I just needed to like see it myself so those references are always going to come up that happens with everybody I think it's more of like a celebration of me just being so in love with all the painters that have come before me that it's almost like of course that looks like a part of a Frankenthal or next to a Hockney next to a David Danish it you know it's just it's gonna be a mix mashup because it's almost impossible not to have some kind of reference so I embrace it a lot of times people will will come to my paintings and say Oh have you been looking at so-and-so and I won't even know who that is so it doesn't mean that I haven't seen them or I'm totally unaware but I kind of love it when that happens since the beginning I've always been interested in combining different techniques in one that shouldn't go together and how do I make my own world in a lot of ways out of totally different elements and pieces and patterns and shapes and all all different types of paintings in one basically it's almost as if I've I've said you know no I don't want the red skill I want all of the skills together and they need to work together so I use a lot of different techniques like spray paint or dye and oil paint enamel airbrush at times markers so recently with the landscapes I start on the totally raw canvas and I'll usually diet a certain number of colors or work abstractly for a while with acrylics something that dries pretty quickly and then from there I'll kind of figure out what kind of space this is and I'll really think how does this logically how would this logically unfold or illogically unfold and and I think that kind of gives me a lot of freedom within the mark-making and went with all the different kind of I guess quilting of of techniques together that feel almost wrong but how do I make it right and so I think being able to use all of that at one is really important to to how the painting ends up the use of color is also totally unplanned it's always on the spot I never pre-mixed I never have ideas before I come to it to the blank canvas it's really like I'm always trying to do something that I've never seen before with with comparison of mine to my own paintings you know maybe a certain color combination you've seen in the past or in art history but they I always try to do something that surprises me and that feels a little bit weird but it has to be there so to make a painting that's convincing and not necessarily right or true is is sort of like my approach with the color oh the landscapes to me I feel like are more of an access point to speak to the viewer about painting in a lot of ways they're not places I've ever been or think about or memories they're nothing they're not they're almost placeless in a lot of ways I like that kind of that kind of unknown place to be sort of place list for everyone so they can kind of enjoy what they're seeing and they can make up their own ideas of where they are where this could be to me that gives me a lot of freedom with working with that subject matter it's almost like I'm not painting a landscape in a lot of ways they're just compositions they're just paintings they're they're you know a bunch of colors together in shapes so I think that's sort of why I was drawn to the landscape because it felt like I didn't need the subject matter as much as I as I needed to make the painting so if I had kind of decided where the painting was gonna go or how it would end up before I started the painting it almost felt like what's the point of making it so being more of a painter and being active with the painting in it telling me where it's gonna end up more than I kind of control it this is important for me and that's kind of what what keeps me going with the work I'm doing every picture it's a world of its own yes all the pieces are enormous too different I mean they're colorful but it's different worlds yes yes I mean or maybe it's just the one world altogether that I'm living in by myself but um I I don't think okay well this world is going to be super dramatic and dark and then the next world is going to be light and fluffy it really just like the minute I decide this is going to be yellow painting it turns into a black painting so they are totally worlds of their own but they're not they're not specific yeah so I wanted to start the flower painting series because I did one sort of a more specific look at one part of that of the landscape and typically in painting in history with flower paintings they're usually in a vase they're usually a still-life they're usually cut already dead so most none of the paintings the flower paintings are are still lives they're all in the landscape and they might be close-ups of them or they might be a lot of in one kind of grouping they almost became more self-portraits or portraits of other people or crowds and I kind of like that because it adds a little bit a little bit of narrative within the work but it's still not enough to make you feel like you have to understand something to look at the painting they're still at the end of the day just paintings that are the same way that I approach the landscapes I like the idea of like the symbolism of the flower I feel like it's usually seen as like beautiful and delicate and the paintings that I'm making are not really that they're they're aggressive and they're you know ugly at times and they're beautiful at times and they're close-ups in there far away and and they're just they're more active than what you think like a typical flower painting would be like so I kind of am embracing the idea of some like changing the way we see something [Music] here we are in New York and just on the way out here we saw kind of homeless people you know this is in a way a terrible world up there is looking at your pictures you don't find it and this is because your distance is up from where is an executive commentary I think it's probably both I think that in a way that the first time you see my paintings they feel very inviting and oh look at the colors I got to get up close to that but if you were actually in this space in that world it would be terrifying and it's I feel like in a lot of ways they feel hopeful but they feel scary so there's kind of both push and pull elements to the paintings and they pull you in and they push you out and it's the disc the the space within them in that way that I'm attacking the canvas kind of like grabs you but it but you kind of you're staying with it but you're feeling uneasy and so I feel like in a lot of ways that is a commentary of what's going on right now like we have to go through this because we're living right now but it feels kind of like a struggle and it feels uneasy and it feels it feels hopeful and it feels scary and it feels all of the things and I feel like I'm doing all of the things with the paintings and so it's both and it feels like a Norway of me organizing chaos I think when I'm make a painting that I feel like is good it's going to the edge and not giving away all the answers and completely describing something it's it's putting suggestions next to each other and letting the painting kind of like twist in a way that is malleable but not closed off so I think there's a way there's some times where I can take a painting and it's almost too illustrative in order like it gives away too many answers and so if I can get there with doing both and kind of having this kind of teetering edge to keep you interested I think that makes a good painting [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 66,600

Rating: 4.8211522 out of 5

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Shara Hughes

Id: 0XOQexr4QTg

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019