An Interview with Laurel Smith
What about minimal art attracted you?
I see the value of elegant austerity in a society that is inundated with superfluous imagery and messages. Minimal abstract art offers more possibilities than representational art does. The perceptual and psychological demands it puts on the viewer are greater than perhaps any other form of art. Minimal art is anything but minimal to create.
Can you explain what it is about minimal work that allows it to remain relevant?
Minimal art is not narrative, nor didactic, nor dogmatic. Minimal art traces the contours of human existence in its most essential form. Minimal work is the closest expression of a conceptual emptiness. And any sense of emptiness that we find or create in today's cluttered world is very special. Minimal painting is as relevant to today's culture as within any other historical era. The advent of new media does not render painting media dysfunctional. Painting holds as powerful a place as it ever did.
Do you think Minimalism today is different than what it was in the 1960's?
Minimalism continues to renew itself each day, each year, each decade as a practice that responds to the nature of contemporary culture. For example, Minimalism today differs from works done mid-Twentieth Century for it does not endeavor to transcend in a Modernist sense. It's less based on geometrical strictures. Works in the 60's were often industrially produced and there was no trace of the artist's hand. Originally minimal art was created to be non figurative, non referencial and non narrative, to paraphrase Frances Colpitt. Minimialism today also differs from Post-modern Minimalism in that it has dropped a dependence upon the literary. By this I mean art that functions as pretexts and subtexts of critical writings, literature, and history. Post modern art was stuck in an idea of critique and it's fortunate we're moving beyond such a narrow position. Minimal artists today have the unique advantage of no longer being constrained by industrial material and application to create an industrial look. Rather, we introduce the hand made quality, painting often with traditional materials. The ways contemporary minimalists use these materials to explore ideas in a contemporary context becomes extremely engaging.
So are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of minimal art?
I choose to be optimistic. Read the writings of people who advocate for the arts, like Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway who founded the 'belle esprit'. They raised funds for T.S. Eliot to focus all of his energy on 'Four Quartets' and 'Wasteland'. Look at collectors today. These visionaries inspire others to envision. We live in a pluralistic society. We see evidence of pluralism everyday. We experience more media than ever before, and yet our global views are becoming more homogeneous. This condition affects even the world of painting. Figuration, for example, displaces many art forms because it has a wider appeal among people raised on television and movies. They just don't understand works without a pictorial content. When limited to a few milieus, the art world stagnates. Artists of history believed that education was a key to a public acceptance of newer art forms. Delacroix spoke of educating the public about accepting his wild works. Monet believed education would help the public understand his hated radical paintings. Breaking the stagnation requires efforts on the parts of artists, galleries, collectors, critics, and funding programs. I'm not saying this is easy. It takes effort to stand up and support artistic ideals rather than fall for the lowest common denominator.
Where did you grow up?
Most of my childhood was in the foothills of the Rockies and prairies of Alberta. I spent a lot of time playing outdoors.
Looking back what do you consider some of the key events that influenced your becoming an artist?
When I was 14 years old I saw a traveling exhibition of masterworks from the Hermitage collection. There I discovered the phenomenological intensity that came from standing in front of a great work of art. The experience was both humbling and inspiring. My aesthetic sensibility was also informed by my careful observations of my environment. I've hiked, skied, and climbed some incredible routes and trails. Through ice climbing I learned about risk, focus, and persistence. Plein-air landscape painting gave me an appreciation of the transient, rapid changes of light. My love of contemporary architecture further inspires my spatial interests. And literature expands my curiosity.
When did you start working minimally?
Like most artists, I began by copying masters' works. I later adapted my compositions to include personal subject matter, but of course my paintings were derivative and representational. But I knew I was still not connected to the essence of painting. Representation and gesture were distractions. So I let go of the gesture. I gave up my brushes and learned to explore new ways to expose what painting meant to me. I scrutinized the elements of my craft. I worked with the residue of paint found in the jars I had used to clean my brushes. For me this sludge still contained a great deal of potential. I dripped, poured and worked the paint sludge with turkey basters, spatulas, sticks, and eyedroppers, anything but brushes. Later, in order to release myself even further from any gestural mark making, I developed shaped canvases. With the help of gravity, the qualities of paint and the hand of the artist were still made evident. Eventually, I exhausted the limits of the sludge and turned my attention to shaped canvases that cast shadows onto the wall.
Are there artists you felt a strong connection to, or artists who you felt helped inspire you?
This is a very complex question. Yes, there certainly is an entire canon of painters that I feel connected to. There are also those who inspire me who have not yet made it into the 'canon'. Others, namely architects, philosophers, authors and musicians also inform my work. I think it is impossible to attempt to list every influence. While it's necessary to be educated about the other modes of painting that have preceded mine it's important to maintain a level of distance in order to reflect my perceptions with as much clarity as possible. To do justice to your question concerning my influences I must also respond as a humanist. I am not a political artist, nor can I contrive to make art that reflects the tremendous injustices I see in the world. Goya illustrated injustice best. The staggering degree of human suffering in this world certainly causes me to reflect upon the privileged position of being an artist. Seen this way, there is an utter uselessness in making art and paradoxically I also see the utter uselessness of life without art.
List a few artists who stand out foremost in your mind and why they do.
The masters of the Baroque period had a tremendous influence on my interest in painting. They hooked me when I was young and they revealed the wondrous things that can happen when paint touches canvas. Rembrandt magically loosened the muddy paint onto his canvases and charged it to resonate with energy, making the experience of looking at his paintings tireless. The unorthodox handling of subject and paint is courageously exposed by Caravaggio's remarkably direct and stunning presentation of light and shadow. Renaissance painter, Hans Holbein, redirects the viewer's position and perceptions by adding the anamorphic skull to The Ambassadors. In more recent history, the Polish Constructivist painter, Stzreminski developed ideas of the unity of painting and further challenged our values of what constituted non-iconic painting. Buckminster Fuller's eccentric, holistic designs arose out of an optimistic global view that he ceaselessly pursued. Joseph Marioni and Marthe Wery's contributions fluidly and fluently skim the continuum of painting's evolution revealing rich surfaces. Artists who inspire me to continue to create are Christopher Willard whose color combinations and eye for unusual detail infuse his abstract paintings and his writings. Sculptor, Anish Kapoor's dynamic playfulness makes viewing a child's game. Yves Klein subverts and exaggerates the gesture in the context of monochromes and other works. Tadao Ando's elegant spaces are vessels that hold and suspend singular moments of reflection. As you can see, I can go on and on...
You mentioned Joseph Marioni and Marthe Wery who both are minimal monochrome painters. Are you traversing a similar domain?
There are contrasts and similarities. I do not consider my works to be monochromatic because each work exceeds 20 glazes of different colors. But similar to Marioni and Wery's works, my surfaces are saturated with an overall application of paint. These works are not to be confused with photography or industrial sculpture or digital media. They are paintings and their emphasis is the paint. While I deny the surface any brushwork or gestural mark, I do want the paintings to possess the hand made quality. Interruptions and imperfections in the application process are welcomed. The beveled edge is painted a contrasting color to emphasize the structural aspect of the canvas and to cast colored shadows onto the wall. My primary color sense has evolved from the earthy palette of minerals and rocks to the ethereal phosphorescent colors of alpine flowers when viewed at high elevations. It's influenced by the blue green light filtering through ice columns on frozen waterfalls and the transparent intense colors that radiate through sunsets. I am also aware that as a perceiving person, color seeps in from everything that I observe. This informs my color sense in ways that always surprise. My aesthetic is simple. It is guided by discerning what has or has not existed before. I strive toward newness. However this is not to be confused with novelty. I define newness to reflect new ideas or to reflect alternative paths of enquiry. New ideas generate new questions. As an example, think of how a great Fellini film resonates with 'what ifs'. That lingering quality is what I am striving to achieve.
Tell us about your Holon series.
In this series I decided to work smaller, to make lush surfaces, and to present the works horizontally. After finishing the series I came across the term holon that was coined by Arthur Koestler and developed further by Ken Wilber. Wilber addressed the nature of how we, as sentient beings, perceive from a variety of integrated perceptual modes. In painting this is critical. How the parts form the whole and then how we perceive the work is the crux of experiencing art. For example, if we are viewing a flower painting it's likely we're viewing it for its pictorial qualities, perhaps even its historical or evocative qualities. My work can function in these arenas but it integrates the surround, the periphery, and it engages the viewer at a new level of perception.
Where do you go from here?
I'm still investigating the relationship of the surface and the periphery. Lately, I've been reading about the life and works of Caravaggio and studying Venetian art and writings. I'm not exactly sure how this will manifest in my work but I am interested in exploring these areas for now. That's the exciting part about creating. You're never completely sure where it will take you.
