Teresa Getty " Pink Flight Suit"January 4th, 2015Archeology of Memories, Mapping of Psychological Journeys and Kite Flying with Teresa Getty
Jeremy Wineberg talks to artist Teresa Getty about her creative process and new installation Pink Flight Suit on view at Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago IL through January 5th. For more information about her show, you can find Thomas Masters website here.
Teresa inhabiting “pink flight suit”
Jeremy: One of the things that strikes me about your work is the sense of playfulness, but there is also a very aggressive handling of the painting medium- can you talk about the process of making and it’s role in the final image?
Teresa: Yes, I enjoy the act of painting so much that perhaps it is play itself, bringing together story telling, chance, exploration, invention and discovery. By forcing the materials to their limits, hiding layers through pouring and revealing secrets by sanding and carving, I lose myself completely to the experience. During the process I respond to different incarnations of the painting in different ways. Answering with tight control or fierce abandon. In a moment of pause or re-collecting myself, what I see on my surface may bring about memory associations that I am not ready to reveal, maybe I feel too vulnerable or maybe trivialized. Maybe the formal relationships are too trite or just simply dissatisfying; whatever the origin, often the emotional response and the formal go hand-in-hand. So I continue responding until what time it feels complete. By then the associations and memories have become the archeology of the work and what remains on the surface is the visual story that I am ready to tell.
J: Your paintings take the form of kites in the work currently on display at Thomas Masters Gallery. Kites seem in many ways to be the perfect image to redirect you to the field they inhabit, and the tension between image and field seems very much a part of your work. Can you talk about how the kites fit into your body of work? have you had a chance to fly any of them?
T: Prototypes of the kites were flown successfully. However, the day that we set aside to fly the actual kites, we had less than five mile an hour winds. First hand, I can tell you, it is mighty hard to get an eight-foot kite to fly without wind.
It is still difficult to articulate how the kites fit into the larger body of work. They are a third incarnation of a drawing that was once made for a costume, turned into a backdrop for Bach’s Dancing and Dynamite Summer Chamber music series. Moving them around while working on that project outside, they just kind of lifted off the ground, being so light they seemed to want to fly. Since they were made for the theater, light itself was a considerable part of their design. They wanted to be kites. But it is more than that. Structurally kites have a strong relationship to my work, I find similarities in the spars and supportive structures as well as the changeability of the towlines and balance. My paintings, by the nature of their layers, have a shifting field. Depending on where one focuses determines the depth or spatial relationship of the work. Kites in the
landscape are optically the same; the field continues to change along with the gaze. Even in a static space like the gallery, they have a way of augmenting the tension of image and field. By dividing the space, shifting flow, they
function to direct our viewing again, defining site perimeters and creating new borders.
Visitors to pink flight suit at Thomas Master Gallery
J: You have such juicy titles for your work: liquid skies over awkward super heroes; Auntie Inez, strawberry-rhubarb in a pink saucer flight; tweetle beetle battle vision: vain gathering, silly slaughter. They seem to add another dimension or layer onto the paintings. How do you see them functioning in relation to the images?
T: Often the titles are just as much a part of the process as adding a new mark, shape or color. Memories emerge from my subconscious unbidden. I tend to jot down these little memory bubbles on the wall near where I paint like in the case of Auntie Inez: strawberry-rhubarb. She was my favorite Aunt and she made strawberry-rhubarb pie for me the first time I tried it, which was also the last time I saw her. Sometimes the title comes from suggestions in the imagery combined with the music or podcasts playing concurrently and the same type of stream of conscious connections. Such as tweetle beetle… at some stage, the painting reminded me of a Chinese junk, that compelled an image of a ship in a bottle, which led me to Dr. Suess, Fox in Sox and his tweetle beetle battle in a bottle, and so on. So, in an odd way, they function as an abbreviated map of my psychological journey through a painting.
J: Another thing I enjoy about your work is that you catch things over time, forms reveal, sensations and inclinations initially masked peak out after viewing repeatedly. Anything to say about the role of time and how we look at painting now, in a world filled with various screens and visual information constantly competing for our attention?
T: The nature of my process explores time and temporality. So many things in my work get absorbed, diluted and erased in the process of making, yet enough remains to invite a viewer to immerse in discovery. One thing I appreciate about painting that sets it apart from screen viewing and the barrage of visual information is time. Regardless of imagery, singular or complex, specific or non-specific, most paintings invite a certain amount of viewer participation and invested time. Brush stroke, achieved color, quality of light and the relationship of these to materials can be so rich, allowing painting to maintain a visual position separate and unique. I enjoy participating in that language, the language of time and long looking.
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