“Despite not being able to see color, I’m obsessed with it.”

Interview by Sonja Teszler

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?

For the time being, I currently live and work in Kansas City, Missouri, but I spent most of my life growing up in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. I am partially blind and colorblind, and have been since birth. I moved to Kansas City in 2007 to study painting and creative writing at the Kansas City Art Institute, and have been stuck here ever since. Outside my practice, I work as a Direct Support Professional at a non-profit arts studio supporting artists with developmental disabilities.

You were commissioned to produce a permanent installation for Kansas City Museum, in a city that you have a personal biographical connection to. Did the process of making that work differ both in research and conceptualization, from a temporary exhibition or independent practice? What were your inspirations for this piece?

Very much so. And I’m still in the process of conceptualizing what will end up becoming the final product. The museum wants something specific that lines up with their mission as an institution. So, in thinking about this piece, I’m trying to incorporate the history of Kansas City along with my own personal narrative from my time spent here as an artist.

It’s been difficult for me because I feel somewhat removed from this place. I’ve spent a lot of time in Kansas City, more time than I would have liked to, but since I’m partially blind, that pretty much means that I’m immobile as well. If I could drive, I would have left years ago.

I have a handful of good experiences that I can take away with me, but there’s also an equal amount of darkness that I can’t look passed, and it will stay with me forever. That’s part of growing up and figuring yourself out, I suppose. I know that I want to include some nods to Disney, since he spent a decent amount of time here before moving to Los Angeles and hitting it big. My studio is actually right down the street from where his old Laugh-O-Gram Studios used to be. So, there’s that connection. I think there are rats living there now.

Your personal narrative of being partially blind and colour-blind and your upbringing in the Arizona desert sound fascinating in terms of an artistic practice - could you talk about how you got into art, and how your background relates to your visual and conceptual references and process of making and researching the work? You described your work as “exploring the complexities of sightlessness in a sight-driven world”, how does that reflect in your choice of medium and subject matter?

I got into art at an early age. I started drawing when I was old enough to hold a pencil. I didn’t have parents that were necessarily interested in art, but they managed to foster my creativity regardless. Arizona is a place of magic and wonder. There’s a large part of the desert that I carry with me, and this Saudade is stitched into my work.

My subject matter stems from a constantly blurred perspective. I literally see things differently than most people. Since my vision is skewed, my entire perception of reality is slightly distorted. It’s these distortions of reality that manifest into my work. I had to learn about color theory through words rather than actual color. I didn’t use red for a long time because I didn’t understand it. Visually, it doesn’t register. Neither does green. I’m constantly forcing myself to use colors that I can’t see to communicate to an audience that can.

In college, I was constantly critiqued for my use of color. Everything I painted looked muddy to everyone else. So, I stopped trying to be the painter that I wanted to be, and eventually carved my own niche. Despite not being able to see color, I’m obsessed with it. I think about what colors might exist in other parts of the universe. Colors that the human eye has no understanding of because we either haven’t seen it yet, or because we visually can’t process it. There are animals that can see infrared and ultraviolet, and that’s more fascinating to me than the color spectrum we are used to seeing.

Your works are a playful exploration of form and colour, re-stitching and reshaping the canvas into autonomous compositions, also rich in symbolism and containing fragmented figurative elements reminiscent of figures from a comic book or cartoon. At one point you refer to your works as ‘paintings’, but then also as collages and quilts - how does the ambiguous medium relate to the subject of your works and what was your motivation behind manipulating the structure of the canvas? Would you say your interest in formal abstraction such as in your earlier works from 2016, is now moving more towards the narrative and representational?

I feel like everything is suspended in a state of ambiguity. The subjects of my work are in constant turbulence because of this. By me stitching pieces of canvas together using thread, I’m creating a physical tension to compliment and counteract that conflict. People will view my work and say that it’s not a painting because I’m not actually doing any painting. Sure, I’m painting swathes of color onto canvas, but there’s no mixing or blending – no apparent technique to what I’m doing, which painting has always been concerned with. I spend more time cutting out shapes and sewing than I do painting.

I was at a turning point in my life, and I was trying to figure out what the next step to move forward was. I had accumulated a body of work that I had been dragging around from studio to studio, completely unsatisfied with. I didn’t know what else to do, so without hesitation I took a pair of scissors and began cutting everything up. This made sense to me.

I find myself moving more and more towards the representational, but I don’t want to completely abandon the abstraction. If anything, I want to forge a seamless path between the two. I want to create compelling narratives that reflect the chaos that surrounds us. Through objects, people, animals and nature, relationships, and emotions: to stitch up the emptiness that I know people are feeling.

Could you describe in more detail the influence of comedy on your practice? You mentioned “punch lines” , moments of comic relief, are incorporated into and are guiding your works. In relation to that, how do you regard the role of humour in art and what does it mean to you? How would you describe the nature of the humour in your works in particular?

In school, I was the class clown and went out of my way to make people laugh. So, for there to be humor in my work only comes naturally. Life for the most part is one drawn out dark comedy: equal parts joy and gloom. I use pastiche and parody as defense mechanisms to articulate the unpleasantness I’m pulling information from. Humor in art is nothing new. Painters have always been good at embedding humor in their work, and it was the viewer’s role to pick up on the joke. I look to Elizabeth Murray when it comes to exploring/exploiting the role of humor. Breaking down the seriousness of painting’s history, while simultaneously expressing bliss for the medium.

I think about punch lines in terms of a Looney Tunes cartoon. If you go back and watch any of those older episodes, there is a lot of darkness overriding the situations. For instance, take when Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam are playing a game of Russian roulette with each other. Or when Wile E. Coyote is constantly chasing after the Roadrunner and failing – that to me, is a metaphor for addiction. I feel like I’m constantly running into the same painted faux tunnel. While unsettling to a certain degree, these moments are intended to appeal to children, only later in adulthood do we realize that these characters and their actions become humanized, reflecting the very people that created them. These are the real kind of moments I seek to integrate into my work.

How do you go about naming your work?

It can happen organically during the process of stitching, or I may have a title bouncing around in my head and I’ll make a piece based off that. And then there are times when I can’t think of a title at all, and I’ll force myself to come up with something, because the thought of having a piece titled “Untitled” is unsettling to me. I don’t like untitled work.

I listen to a lot of music in and out of the studio. Since my eyes don’t work, I naturally developed an affinity towards music early on in my life. I think there is some influence of that when it comes to naming my work. I listen to mostly visceral, emotionally-charged music. Quite a bit of metal, shoegaze, post-punk, techno, and electronic. The Fall is a big influence when it comes to playing around with words in relation to imagery. Making sense out of the nonsense.

What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

I’m still coming down from the high. I went on a backpacking trip through Spain and Portugal this summer, and seeing The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch and The Triumph of Death by Brueghel the Elder – two of my all-time favorite paintings – really blew me away. Aside from that, all the patterned hand-painted ceramic tiles that adorn the buildings in Lisbon and Porto, the street art that surprises you around every corner, the architecture, and the wildflowers. The last thing I did before leaving was take a tour of The Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid. It was pretty incredible to see the process of how tapestries are made, and the amount of labor that goes into each one. I’m kind of obsessed with tapestries right now.

Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

I’m going to be spending a lot of my time in the next year working on this installation for the Kansas City Museum. Once that’s done, I plan on moving somewhere else. Otherwise, I’m putting together work for a solo exhibition for whoever will have me. To be determined. 

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@stephenproski

All images are courtesy of the artist
Publish date: 24/10/19