Interview with Liz Weinstein

Me: I guess first things first… Why do you like cats more than you like punk rock?

Liz: I don’t, I hate cats; they are Satan in furry suits. 

Me: Ok I was going to reverse that question too, I should have went with my gut. So what artists do you look at?

Liz: Strangely enough I don’t look at most artists, I look more at architects.  For a long time I was into Frank Lloyd Wright and his stained glass and the whole prairie school movement.  I really like that geometric, sharp line, cut off edges look.  This became a problem because I wasn’t really addressing the edges of my paintings. 

More recently though, I’ve kind of just went all over the place, I don’t have one specific person I look at.  I actually got a bunch of books from a book sale and weirdly enough they are just pictures [of paintings] they don’t have the artist’s names so I just kind of flip through it like, “Oh I like that, cool!” But I never really go and check who it is.  Nothing contemporary really, I just kind of bounce back and forth with old stuff.  

Me: Well that leads me to a few questions… Have you ever been to a Frank Lloyd Wright house?

Liz: Yes, I’m from Wisconsin so that’s where he is from.

Me: Cool, well the other thing I have to ask is if you mainly look at architects why don’t you study architecture?

Liz: I actually considered it, but the concept of just drawing 3d spaces on a 2d plane isn’t really appealing to me.  I want to be more tactile, I actually do ceramics too, so I’m trying to work that sculptural element into my paintings.  I used to actually mix a lot of sand or paper pulp into my paint.  Basically I just never really considered myself architect material.

Me:  But there are a lot of painters who deal with architecture.

Liz: Yea actually I can’t remember his name, but there is this Japanese painter and he won’t actually come up with his own thing, he only paints existing buildings.  He is more of a landscape painter, but I always found that kind of interesting that he never wants to come up with his own designs, he only wants to use other people’s designs for his work. That concept interests me in my own work: trying to break down other people’s architecture into more geometric planes.

Me: What about that interests you?  What about architecture? The space?

Liz: Weirdly enough it’s more of the ability to have straight lines and perfect symmetry but then have an intersecting, random curved shape.  It’s more in modern architecture than in anything else but architects play around with that.  I like how it seems so straight forward but then they just have to mess with you, and throw that little edge in.

Me: That’s cool; it’s kind of a painterly idea.

Liz: It’s weird, I look at architecture and I don’t see it necessarily as 3D straight off.  I wonder first how did they come up with this concept; how did they draw it out?

Me: So that is more like the “Painter” part of you?

Liz: Yea, but then from a sculptural kind of view its more of like looking at one tiny section of it and then breaking it down in what they put it together, how they put those planes together to make that shape.

Me: Right, ok.  I mean I’m kind of the same way in the sense that everything is an image first, you know? And then it turns into the object.

Liz:  I am trying to get back to that right now.  I am interested in trying to bring ceramics and painting together.  Like the whole idea of a tile, it’s like a painting but you can make it 3 dimensional and honestly it’s no different from painting on a piece of wood or on a canvas.  I’m also going to start to get into glassware, and enamel on glass.  I really like that because it is 3d but it’s painted too.  

Me:  Gotya, I am in the same boat of questioning painting.  I mean what is painting?  It can fit into so many different places.

Liz: Yea and I never really liked the concept of paint goes on canvas and you have to be all formal about it.  My whole thing like the 4 years I’ve been in school now is really getting off the canvas.  And it has been a fight because it brings up the question of “Why is this work painting and not sculpture?” basically how does this belong in the category of painting, and explain it.  And it is really opinion based…

Me: It is pretty subjective.  I don’t know if they really need to be delineated anymore.   

Liz: I agree.  A lot of people will come into my studio and be like: “You are painting on a 2x4, what are you doing?”  I did that last year, and it was pretty morbid because I was painting dead animals as an attempt to get back into figurative painting instead of just architecture.  

Me: Well you still had the architectural element of the 2 by 4.

Liz: Yea it was still like a building material.  I like painting on wood because you can build it up to get any surface you want.  

Me: How did you start painting?  

Liz:  Well in high school I started out doing a lot of video work, and some painting in AP art class.  I didn’t start using oils until I got to college.  Sophomore year I had Richard Baker and he brought in a bunch of sand and stuff to mix into the paint.  I was stuck and needed to do something.  I eventually moved away from oil to acrylics and then to house paint more recently. 

                Painting and I weren’t really friends to begin with.  Now I go back and forth; Do I like it? I don’t know if I like it… but I’m kind of stuck with it now.

Me: Well sometimes that’s the struggle, like what else is there to do? 

Liz:  I thought a long time about trying to do an independent study in ceramics and concentrate in that, but I have had so many great teachers who encouraged me to go with my 3d tendencies and bring that sensibility into painting.  

Me: Well it sounds like you have these two things and you don’t really know how to bring them together yet.  Like there is this interest in architecture, but it’s a kind of painterly interest in architecture, but your relationship to painting is a little unclear.

Liz: Yea that’s really what it is.  I enjoy painting, but I’m not sure if it is the medium I’m meant to use so I am trying to find that middle ground.  

Me: I mean do you think you are supposed to enjoy it? 

Liz: I dunno, if it is the school environment are you supposed to enjoy being told what to paint and what to do?  Now that we are farther along, teachers are supportive and let us do what we want.  But then with too much freedom you push yourself beyond your limits and become unhappy.

Me: Well that is always the tough part, with so much freedom you have to learn how to bring yourself back in and focus on something, otherwise you can even never get started, its like well where do I go?  It is important to have your interests in mind, and maybe it’s better if they are a little unclear because It forces you to try and put them together and come up with something interesting.  

Liz: Yea, I feel like I’m kind of doing ok now.  I don’t want to just paint on canvas and I want to take it somewhere else.  Without going to crazy if that makes sense?  I just don’t want to push it so far that it doesn’t make sense anymore.

Me: Well there is a fine line there.  

Liz: Last year when I was doing the hard edged geometric paintings people kept telling me that I need to calm down with that, find a way to loosen up some.  Then I found out I have OCD and that’s part of the reason I was so into the straight line.  So the next thing is to wipe the slate clean and do something I’m really not comfortable with.  Maybe I’ll go back to figurative painting.  

Me: That makes me think about what you said earlier about how architects always find a way to throw that curve ball in there.  You have the orderly part and the system, the OCD part down but it sounds to me like you really just haven’t found your curve ball yet.  I’ve always been a little envious of painters who have to overcome other, maybe psychological, issues to be able to paint, OCD or dyslexia, or ADD.  It just makes it seem much more of a personal battle.

Liz: My work has felt really impersonal lately.  Really planned and just not enough.

Me: You were maybe getting to something more personal with the sand in your paint.

Liz: Yea and the thing is I hate how impersonal painting can feel, I want it to be more tangible. 

Me:  I don’t think you want your paintings to be clean and perfect, it’s like you want to break with that but there is something stopping you, and you can totally make work about that I think.  

Liz: I’ve definitely been thinking about that.  I am tired of the orderly.  Why do I have to be contained by the 4 straight edges of the canvas?

Me: Yea and that makes me think about the format of your paintings.  The traditional format of a rectangular canvas is very logical and structured, and to feed your desire to break with that organization, don’t concern yourself with the square anymore, forget it.  You can become precise, and organized outside of the canvas. 

 

Liz: That’s kind of what I’m feeling.  The whole idea of a 2d painting in a 3d world is uncomfortable; you can’t just rationalize everything like that.