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| Image courtesy of the artist and Postmasters Gallery |
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Me and My Dad, 2015
Image Courtesy of the artist and Postmasters Gallery
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IJ: What’s intriguing about your current solo show at
Postmasters is that each painting is different from the next, and yet there’s cohesion,
your voice is present throughout the exhibition.
AL: The aesthetic is important in some ways, but that’s not
the only thing that matters. There’s always something more that’s underlying.
IJ: You’re also conveying a wide range of emotional states
within these paintings. Our emotions change from moment to moment, similarly to
the way your paintings in the show change from moment to moment.
AL: Yes, I would agree. That’s a good way of looking at it.
IJ: Would you say that these paintings are self-portraits?
AL: Most paintings I make are self-portraits I’d say. Even with
the stranger paintings that I don’t fully understand, part of me is still there.
IJ: That’s interesting because you’re calling the show,
“Nothing Personal.”
AL: I made all these quick drawings for a digital sketchbook
with Spheres publication. I wanted to make it a really raw book of drawings
made without thinking, similar to a real sketchbook. I ended up using the
drawings as starting points for the paintings, and as I worked through them I
realized that they were all still connected to who I am even thought I was
trying to escape that.
IJ: Something that you do is you take these classical
themes, but you reinvent them using your own voice and the digital tools you
have at your disposal. You reinterpret
the mother and child theme, as well as bathers, among many others.
AL: Those are just things that I experience. I’m not necessarily
reinterpreting it through art history; it’s just showing human experiences.
That’s the more interesting part, what is it like to be alive right now? As far
as the digital aesthetic, that’s just how I think about drawing, it’s a natural
tool to use. The way we see is so related to the culture that surrounds us.
IJ: We can’t escape it; it’s all around us.
AL: I often think about how a drawing looks in 3D modeling
versus how a drawing in Photoshop looks. If there’s a new computer program that
I can experiment with, that aesthetic will come into the work. I want to
investigate how we are creating images today.
IJ: That connection you were talking about to the human
condition, more than art history seems to be present in your mother and child
painting. There’s something about it
that reminds me the horrors of motherhood found in Louise Bourgeois. Like
Bourgeois, there is an element of nurturing, but it’s also so grotesque.
AL: I didn't want this painting to seem grotesque. I don’t
have to plan something for it to happen, and for me that’s the most interesting
part. I wanted to make that painting really sweet, but it didn’t come out that
way.
IJ: It’s more psychological that way. As artists, I think
we’re more aware of the fact that we don’t always have full control over what
comes out of our hand. I think it’s really boring when artists have everything
planned out beforehand, and there’s no room for spontaneity and improvisation.
AL: That's the whole point for me, the excitement of
something new and finding out what the next painting will be. It would be super
boring if my paintings looked how they looked five years ago, I don’t think I
would bother making them anymore.
IJ: You also spend a great deal of time taking into consideration
the installation of your paintings, which I think is really important. For many
painters, the installation becomes an afterthought.
AL: That becomes another way to connect things. Each
painting is its own thing and I make them all individually, but through looking
at them altogether that begins painting this other picture. It’s like
connecting the dots, and I’ll begin understanding what I was thinking in this
larger way. It creates a more open-ended experience, where one painting will
open something up for another painting, or make you think about something
differently. They’re just always adding to each other.
IJ: There is a sense of openness to your work; you allow a
lot of room for various interpretations to take place.
AL: When I’m making a painting I’m sharing one way of
looking at something, but for me, I love when someone else brings some new
thinking to it, and they tell me something else that they thought when looking
at it. There’s no right or wrong way, they’re just different thoughts.
