Alicia Gibson’s paintings take you back to high school where the margins of your notebook pages are lined with crushes and doodles of hearts and peace signs. Only these are made up of layers of built up paint, found music sheets, key chains and fake flowers with loaded sayings like “MARRY ME” and “DECADES OF DECEIT”. Drawing from her memory and subconscious, Alica’s work is raw and personal. We were able to get a bit of insight into Alicia Gibson’s process during our studio visit. Recently she has shown at Canada Gallery, Lyles and King and Rachel Uffner. She is currently in the group show ‘Fort Greene’ at Venus LA which will run through October 29th.

F: How do you start a painting?
AG: I start with a bit of loose content, paint, and a blank canvas.
F: There are a lot of similarities between your paintings and your drawings. Do you approach them the same way?
AG: They both share an adolescent color palette, meaning colorful/trapper keeper.
Of course with the paintings I have to invest a lot more time and money. The drawings tend to be slightly more representational but I do keep them around my computer and jot notes/ schedules on. I’m terrible at schedules. I do my drawings at home and paintings in the studio. Separation of church and state.

I know the drawings are probably more free, looser as it probably would be for anyone, but I really enjoy painting as well. Did you know Warhol liked his mother’s handwriting so much he often asked her to use her script for his illustrations. Don’t know where I was going with that besides the fact of the the use of typography to express emotion.

F: Your work feels almost like a journal entry. They come from a personal place with very specific narratives. Can you talk a little bit about that?
AG: Yes, the work is personal and diaristic. It just seems more honest to me. I’m kind of in my own head a lot and have a hard time grasping what people are actually saying. I’m often stuck in a negative space. Like I might totally minsterperate what someone says.

They could be saying the nicest things, but I take it as a diss. Then, I’ll obsess about what I think they said, get pissed off, angsty, and generally make a painting from this misinterpretation. But, by the end, the painting usually becomes funny, at least to me and my friends…an inside joke? A way to process a graver situation, that may or not be real.

F: Does the work start as drawing or journaling?
AG: I never journal, or keep a diary or anything like that. But I do ruminate or jot random notes to myself that I find much later. The drawings are a separate entity to me and I don’t believe I’ve made a drawings for a painting. Maybe I get a few Ideas after the fact, but I never make a drawing with a painting in mind. It would kill the drawing.

F: Do you have a phrase before you start your text works or do you start painting and it naturally occurs?
AG: I usually have a phrase, but it’s not really realized until I sit down to paint. It’s usually words that have been bouncing around my head. Then I’m able to paint. So, it’s pretty spontaneous. At the same time it comes almost from my subconscious, what I’ve been dealing with in my life brought to the surface. Memories, issues I’m dealing with at the time. They could be from that morning to past relationships months ago. The phrases are real, not fictitious.

F: There are multiple reads and layers in your work from the construction of the image and the text. Can you talk about how you build up the surface? There is a lot going on with an assemblage of burlap and muslin over the canvas. Can you talk about the different materials you are using in your work.
AG: I almost just said it’s ok to be arbitrary, but yeah nothing really is, even if we try. Everything comes from a memory(inside ourselves) or is a response to a given situation, personal or political. The paint handling is the voice. And I’m all about double-entendres when I can be. I’m just as confused as anyone else and I really respect the courage to be vulnerable in one’s work. Love it or hate it:) I try to put as much of me in the work as I can. By this I mean mainly the aura, but you can’t really force that one.

AG: I’ve always been interested in materials and the muslin and plaster of paris allow the paint to be absorbed, kinda like a freso. The burlap obviously allows for a rough surface, that kills the brushes, but adds a variant. I usually get into various materials through happenstance, i.e. people will give me the fabrics or trinkets:) As of late, I’m using mainly just paint on canvas.

F: The surface seems really worked up how many layers levels do you go through? Is there a call and response in your process?
AG: I always start on a fresh canvas except maybe once I painted over another patinging. I don’t like thinking about the older painting while I’m making a new painting on top of it. It’s kind of sad, like I’m killing the older painting because it wasn’t good enough. Yeah, it’s sad all around. I don’t really see my work as having layers, I mean I don’t old mastery techniques. I guess by using varying materials, it creates layers. I have no idea how many. Every piece is a variation. There is a call and response method in my paintings, but I don’t just dive in. Of course I have a working idea of what I want.

F: It seems like a lot of stuff is created in the moment and very personal. Do you ever step back after completing a painting and have the urge or need to self censor?
AG: No, but my mom tries to make me sometimes. I mean there is probably only one person besides myself who would know what the work is about and that is the person whom the work is about. It’s really pretty cryptic. I have had many panic attacks feeling everyone knows this and that relationship described in the painting, but they don’t.

F: Can you describe the narrative in creating the work.
AG: The work often comes from ruminations. Phrases that stick with me after I leave a conversation. A lot of the time the imagery isn’t linked to the text. Or maybe subtly. It often starts from a dark place and the work is a way to process and by the end of the piece I’m usually laughing at the previous ‘serious’ situation.

F: You just recently moved studios. How was that process? Were you able to pick up where you left off?
AG: I’ve never had windows before, so that was a huge change. Actually I’m not a real fan of sunlight and kind of miss the grittiness of my last studio which I’d had for 8 years. But it was time to change and this studio has more wall space and is a bit bigger. Give me another month and it will be just as grimey:) My studio mate is great and we’re supportive of each other. It is about a 10 min walk from home as opposed to the two miles.

F: Can you start with describing your process? How do you start your paintings? It feels like you are not painting from observation. Do they start with sketches and sources or more from memory?

J: My process usually begins by reflecting upon recent paintings made within the last year and looking at what the larger narrative might be. I usually start by drawing directly on the canvas working from my imagination. Nothing is precious in the studio, and I allow myself to build and destroy anything that doesn’t feel right. This most recent body of work started by feeling compelled to discuss the current political atmosphere and its relationship to certain tropes of heteronormative masculinity. It’s a strange time in our human history and it frightens me. Most of the paintings evolve through the process of discovery and when all the figures and scenes feel right, then I begin working in details from some pictures or preparatory sketches, but mostly it’s out of my own head.

F: Your work explicitly confronts a male point of view. There’s a conflict between excessive masculinity and also a (non-literal) castration of the figures. Can you talk a bit about this and where you see your paintings going from here?

J:For many reasons, the male point of view is a wellspring of creativity for me. There’s a mythology wrapped up within a gaze that is forever fascinating. I began making these portraits because I wanted the audience to come face to face with the angry male populism that is pervading our cultural and political environment. I believe it is a larger influence than what most of us want to imagine.

You’re right to pick up on a non-literal castration. I keep thinking of what Nicole Eisenman said about gender (She’s one of my favorite painters), how she wishes gender would just go away, and I agree basically. However, gender has shaped so much of our history, and it still pervades in so many ways that I feel compelled to paint its flaws. The castration of the figures is a wishful nod to the obsolescence of male superiority. And this at times has taken on an implosive, or self destructive quality to the figures. However, with the recent larger paintings, I felt the need to illuminate the outward destructive forces as well. It’s 2016 but in many ways our systems are medieval.

Where will I will go from here? After a body of work has been completed, I always want to completely change my direction and paint something else, or make sculpture. But so far, I always come back to the body in painting. I ruminate constantly on how many people there are in the world and what impact were having upon it, and I have a compulsion to discuss our modern conflicts. There was an article written a year or so ago that spoke of the body as a failure in art and the wonderful things that come along with those “failures”, and that imperfect challenge always engages my creative mind.

F: There’s a non specificity in the places and subject – the figures climbing over a fence could be an airport or a shopping mall. The group of male portraits could be off duty police officers or southern farmers. Do you feel that by paring down the specifics you can get closer to describing the characters and places?

J: I find that a bit of non specificity can be used to engage the imagination of a viewer. Each person brings their trunk of experience when analyzing an image, and this subjectivity helps feed the core of our continual interest in a work of art. Most places I’ve seen in the world have the similar, human-made landscapes-all from the 20th century. Parking lot buildings, old factories and airports all have that same utilitarian look. We are all familiar with these places. Portraits, too, have this ability to make us try and identify the individual, either from memory or picking up on visual cues to familiarize ourselves with that “type” of person.

F: You create characters placing them in certain scenarios or loose narratives that sometimes border on magic realism. Where do these narratives come about? Are they based on news stories? They seem very American like from American folktales.

J: The narratives usually begin to formulate from outside events, both fictional and real. If I’m reading the newspaper or a book and there is a moment that strikes my imagination then I’ll use that as an entry point to begin a painting, but I don’t fixate upon it. I let it unfold and evolve over time. Some of the recent work plays with themes of American folklore and our fascination with shows like Duck Dynasty. This myth of manifest destiny that has pervaded as a dominant narrative in our country is terrifying how it keeps moving through time as an influence, like some ghost we can’t get rid of.

F: What is a typical studio day like?

J: Once I’m in my studio, I try to unplug from the world to keep the wheels spinning. I’ll get some music playing or a podcast going and suit up with gloves and my apron. I have to trick myself into picking up the paintbrush, so I’ll start by looking at what needs work, adjustment, change of color. I’ll fix a small thing, and once I’m painting, its leads to an escalation of engagement with the material. There are frustrations abound, but leaps of enjoyment speckled here and there.

F: How long does it take to produce a painting?

J: I think every painter wrestles with this question and I don’t think there is a given answer. Some paintings can happen quick and fresh. But it can be suspect. You work on something and it looks great….too great, and you have to come to terms with its existence. Then there’s this point where you have to bust it up, and at that moment, you reach a place within a painting where there’s something deeper that comes to fruition. For me, a challenge of building the unknown and bring it into the world is more important than obsessing over its aesthetic. Some paintings take years, while others are made in a few weeks.

We visited Sarah Faux just as she was getting ready for her solo show at Stems Gallery in Brussels. Her studio, in the massive 17-17 Troutman building, we talked about her exploration in texture and color in her work and the analogous relationship between the body and paint.

In addition to her solo show, Sarah Faux’s work will also be shown at the Stems Gallery booth at NADA on May 5-8th.

F:I noticed that there are exposed parts of the painting where it seems that you dyed the ground and other parts where you left the canvas completely exposed. Can you talk about how you start a painting and how you determine what kind of ground you start with?

S:I try to work on a lot of paintings at once start each with different ground preparations like absorbent gesso that shows the texture of the canvas or slick, resistant oil ground or dyed fabric primed with something clear. I typically have an image in mind or at a minimum a color palette that functions as a jumping off point for figuring out the ground. Lately I’ve been drawn to brighter, more resistant surfaces, so that I can use paint more like watercolor, with the surface itself glowing through transparent layers. One thing I really get off on is watching a color change as a single brush mark passes from an impermeable surface onto an absorbent one. I prime most of my canvases with mixed surface preps so that the ground will shift beneath the image.

F:In several paintings the same image is used with different color palettes. Do you start from sketches or is it more organic where one painting leads to the next?

S:Lately I’ve been making pairs where I’ll use the same image twice. The pieces aren’t quite diptychs, but I do intend for them to be hung next to each other. I don’t think of this approach as switching palettes, although that’s part of it. My real aim is to complicate one sensory moment by depicting it with two different emotional tenors. Like in a recent pair, “Prickly Things” and “Blacklight”, someone is licking her own nipple, but each painting is a totally different recollection of the event. One’s bright, airy and dizzy, the other gritty, acidic and lurid. The image is conveyed in two different painting languages as well, with varying levels of legibility.

F:There’s a certain amount of sexuality and semi-autobiographical narratives built into the images. Can you talk about the subject matter?

S:I think a lot in analogies between the substance of paint and bodily fluid. Like oil paint being a physical oily skin, or poured pigment reading as blood, urine, semen… The physicality of paint and the experience of living inside a fleshy mass are intertwined for me. And I experience the dichotomy of my own body as both an object and agent when I’m in a state of heightened physical sensation. So, sexuality comes into play a lot.

I’m also painting from a distinctly feminine perspective, and in the real world sexuality and the sexual agency of women is often policed and controlled, put into neat categories. By painting between figuration and abstraction, I’m embracing ambiguity and the knowledge that sex is complex: calm, violent, pleasurable, sad, joyful… I think the unpredictable nature of oil paint can get closer to what real sexuality is like.

F:One thing I notice immediately is the vocabulary of marks you have built up on each canvas but something that also stands out is the different surface textures in the work. Can you talk a bit about the variety of surface texture in your work?

S:For a long time I thought of the canvas as completely analogous to the body, one surface equaled one person. I wanted to create surface depth within that body that could mimic this imagined person’s psychological depth. People have their own areas of openness, points of resistance, aspects of themselves that are on the surface, feelings that are more hidden. While I am less rigid in my compositions these days, I still want the surface itself to be analogous to the content, so that propels me to find new textures to respond to.

F:The scale of the painting is about the size of the body. Is scale a big factor in how your work is produced? When you work small vs large do you scale up the size of the marks?

S:I like working large these days, on painting that are taller and wider than me. This scale is full of possibility, like a wide open field. When I work small, I inevitably end up thinking of the paintings as objects, and so I’ll paint objects on them, eyes, hands, scissors, etc. I do like that on a small scale, if you don’t scale down the marks, suddenly one brush stroke takes up half the canvas.

F:Can you describe your studio space?

S:I’ve got my own space with 8 ft. walls within a shared larger room. Its got great natural light, about 300 sq. ft., lots of folding things and movable parts so I can rearrange according to my work flow. I move things from the wall to the floor or to sawhorses a lot and work on many pieces at once, so things are constantly shifting position every day. A lot of times I’ll leave my paintings hanging upside down overnight so when I get back the next day I can see them with fresh eyes.

F:How long have you been here and what do you look for in a workspace?

S:I just moved in in September, and I’m subletting from a friend. It seemed like the perfect fit since it’s private enough that I can feel totally alone, but I’ve got inspiring, respectful studio mates who make awesome lunch dates. I’m pretty adaptable though, I look for privacy, wall space and light. After catching tons of colds this winter, I’m realizing that warmth should also be a factor!

F:What does an average day in studio look like?

S:I usually come in the late morning and dick around a bit while I stare at whatever work’s in progress. I’ll drink tons of tea and eat lots of trail mix until I can finally put some music on and concentrate. Whenever I do settle in to paint, I end up getting so engaged that I’ll want to make a move on every single painting that’s in progress, so I’ll jump from one piece to the next. Ultimately I’ll end up staying kind of late and leave exhausted, emptied and starving.

F:What can we see from you in the future? What projects are underway?

S:I have an upcoming solo show, my first ever, at Stems Gallery in Brussels. That opens on June 2nd, and I’m finishing up the work for it now. I’m also doing a booth with Stems at NADA in New York in May.

We met with Josh Sperling in his Industry City studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. To get to his space, we passed through a furniture studio and walked into his meticulously organized studio reflecting the precision in his work. Each piece is carefully planned out to the wooden structures underneath to how he stretches the canvas on top. There were pieces in mid-process laid out on the tables like puzzle pieces as completed interlocking canvas works hung on walls. We talked to Josh as he was getting ready for his two-man show with his childhood friend Sam Friedman at Joshua Liner Gallery.

‘From the Cradle to the Grave’ opened January 7 and runs through February 6, 2016 at Joshua Liner Gallery.

F: What is your process?

J: I start with an idea and then begin drawing it on the computer. I do not hand sketch. Once the overall composition is finished each individual piece is designed to minimize weight while maintaining strength. All the pieces are layed out on a 4’ x 8’ file and sent to a cnc machine to be cut out of plywood. I receive the shapes, assemble the parts, and then stretch the canvas by hand. This is the most challenging part of the process. After the canvas is stretched it is painted and varnished with acrylics. Finally each part is attached to others to assemble a whole painting.

F: Do you see your work as more sculptural or painting?

J: If they live on a wall and are viewed head on they are paintings. If they live in the middle of a room and are viewed from multiple angles they are sculptures. Up until this point I have concentrated mostly on wall pieces made of acrylic on canvas over wood. I consider these paintings.

F: Does the wrapping of the canvas dictate what the shapes will be or the scale at which they can exist?

J: Yes. Any shape is possible to stretch with canvas if you cut the sidewalls. I have been opposed to this because it has helped me better understand the stretching process and it is cleaner. I design my shapes to be able to stretch without cutting the sidewalls. This in general means larger, curving shapes.

F: I notice that you do not paint the sides of your objects, keeping the the unprimed canvas exposed. Why is that?

J: I do not paint the sides because I want my work to be considered paintings. This is an older tradition in painting. It also shows off the craftsmanship of the stretching.

F: What’s your process for the larger interlocking works? How do you take in consideration wrapping of the canvas within the interlocking structures?

J: I design the shapes with the slightest bit of play between them. When the canvas is stretched it fills these small spaces between shapes and the pieces interlock perfectly.

F: Do you see the shapes that are created by the stretching of the canvas as linear moves almost akin to drawing?

J: Yeah. Certain shapes, especially the squiggles, definitely give that feeling. The movement they create is a direct reference to drawing.

F: There is a certain amount of satisfaction that I get by seeing the structures pre-wrapped, Obviously, I have the chance to see them this way in your studio but have you ever thought about presenting them without the stretched canvas? Or would this change the conversation you want to have about painting?

J: At this point in time I do not want to reveal the structures underneath. I feel that I have yet to fully explore or simply get bored with the canvas wrapped structures. I have thought about exposing them at a certain point down the line but not yet.

F: Do you determine the colors in the digital stage or do you construct the objects first and then determine the colors?

J: I determine the colors digitally but inevitably about a quarter of the colors change once I begin to see how the colored shapes interact in real life.

F: The local color of the object and the shadows are determined by the lighting situation. Some colors seem flatter; the neon colors seem to flatten out the whole shape while other colors give more depth. How do you determine the color and depth you want in each painting?

J: I choose the colors based on their interaction without taking into consideration their individual ability of showing light and shadow. I am beginning to understand individual colors ability to reflect and absorb light but have not fully reached a complete understanding. In general lighter colors have more contrast with their shadows and darker shadows have more contrast with their highlights. This aspect of the work is extremely interesting to me and I strive to create the most dynamic shades within each color.

F: With the wall piece are they each individual shapes or are they recurring? Is it considered one piece or multiples (like prints)?

J: The squiggle wall piece is considered one piece. Each piece was designed individually but arranged on the wall specifically to interact within the whole. After this the colors were chosen also taking into consideration the whole piece. It is a giant painting made up of individual marks that just happen to be paintings.

F: Can you talk a little bit about your studio? How long have you been here and what do you look for in a studio?

J: My studio is in Sunset Park, Brooklyn in a complex of large buildings called Industry City. I have been in my studio for a year but I have had other studios in Industry City before this one. I share a large wood shop with a group of cabinet makers. Within that wood shop I have a private space. These 2 spaces are what I look for in a studio. A dirty wood shop space where I can build my structures and a separate, clean space where I can stretch, paint, and store my work.

F: You work alongside furniture and cabinet makers, do you feel that that has influenced your work?

J: In a technical way. I observe the materials, tools and joinery techniques they use and occasionally adapt one of their building methods.

F: What is a typical day in studio like?

J: Typical is sipping on small black dunkin donuts ice coffee and listening to outlaw country music

F: Your work is very concise and methodical. What’s the most satisfying part in your process?

J: The most satisfying part is finishing a painting and seeing it for the first time. My paintings are made from multiple parts that do not get assembled until the very end of the process. I see the separate parts progress but I never see them assembled on a wall until the last step. After all the hard work suddenly having your idea come to life is the best.