12 maart 2016

Joe Bradley #2










Joe Bradley in his studio, Brooklyn, New York, 2011(?).

"The artist Joe Bradley has his studio in an old pencil factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There is no buzzer. You must call his cell phone to be let in, and then ride a manual elevator to the white concrete space where he works on the fifth floor. Bradley was part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial and was recently featured in two solo shows. I visited the thirty-five-year-old artist to talk about his evolving process as a painter.

This building is called the Pencil Factory. When you go outside, there are these giant pencils on the wall. It’s got a lot of light, and it’s quiet and big enough. You can have six or seven paintings up at the same time and don’t have to shift them around.

I don’t go into painting with any kind of plan. The ones I am happiest with I have no idea how I arrived at. The best ones are always a real surprise. For most of the paintings I use unprimed canvas and oil paint. I like drawing when the canvas is on the floor, and then I’ll pin it up and see what it looks like on the wall. Sometimes, I turn it over and work on the other side. The nature of the oil paint is that it kind of bleeds through the canvas so you have some sort of residual marks seeping through from the other side and influencing the composition.

I need time, really. Eight uninterrupted hours is ideal. My day’s a little irregular. If I have some kind of deadline, I try and get here at eleven in the morning. It depends. You have to know when to quit. Sometimes you’ll be rolling along and it’s a good idea to stick around, and sometimes you’re not going to hit it at all and you got to leave. If I have something to do, I’ll stay here really late. There’s no fixed schedule. I’ve slept here a few times. I don’t like to torture myself.
...." (bron: The Paris Review, foto's: Michael Nevin)

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