 Hello, I'm Betsy Stone and welcome to Pictures at an Exhibition. This is a program involving short 15-minute interviews with artists who are showing work in Amherst and today we are at Hope and Feathers Gallery with Laura Radwell who is a landscape painter in an abstract style. Hope and Feathers is located on Main Street in Amherst and is also a frame shop so it focuses on local artists work both emerging and established local artists and is very involved in the community. I'd like to introduce Laura Radwell. Welcome Laura to Pictures at an Exhibition and we are at Hope and Feathers. This this one person exhibit is small and it's a little jewel. I love the colors of it. I love the landscapes and I'm very curious about your trajectory as an artist. How have you gotten to this point? Where did you start in in your art career? Well I will try to compress this into a very brief answer. I as a young person thought I wanted to be an artist but my vision was not sufficiently clear and my parents wanted me to follow another path so what happened is that all throughout my earlier adulthood everything that I did I gravitated toward incorporating a visual component of some sort and in the 1980s I started a business in communication and marketing and I hired designers to work with to service the clients. It became so apparent to me that what I should be doing was doing the design because I could get to work with the visual part of me and have some form of visual expression. So one thing led to another and for close to 25 years I did design mostly two-dimensional but sometimes other types of installations and fast forward about 20 years I became dissatisfied with the fact that I couldn't express myself visually in a larger way using just the components that I had been using in my design work and I started to do some photographic work with photographs that I took and because I knew the design software I created these digital abstracts using real-world images but because I could layer them I could transform them and create interesting textures and forms and shape and I did that for the last several years while I was still running my business but it was always clear to me in the back of my mind that I had to paint. I knew that that was a long-held dream. So in 2014 I started to wind down the business and I started painting and I was painting very small little tentative landscapes and here I am and I've gone through several stages in the last five years in terms of the focus of my work and I've arrived here now in this body of work called Embodied Landscapes. Great let's talk about one of these pieces. I've seen this piece on postcards and and promotion and I love this piece I see why it was chosen it's just got it's got it all it's got I can see the sense of landscape in the horizontal line but you've you know you've exploded it it's it's got wonderful color and expression how how do you conceptualize a piece like this where does this start for you? Conceptualize is an interesting word because I think that all of the years of running a business meant that I had to be supremely disciplined and I had to track very carefully all the details that were involved in servicing any client and I felt very contained so what characterizes most of my painting whether it's this body of work or previous body of work is spontaneity and improvisation and I wait for a day when I feel in spur inspiration and this painting in particular I knew that I needed to work large and I I took a black charcoal and I just danced around the canvas with it I made shapes and I wasn't sure where it was going what does emerge as you pointed out is the horizon is still here I can't seem to let go of landscape because it's such a major influence in all of my work from one body to another and I made shapes and then I had an idea that morning of colors that I wanted to use I wanted to use some colors that was somewhat different I use a lot of blue in my painting but this is a very subdued slightly off you know softened by black and by dark areas and I mix a palette on my table and I've created these shapes and then I stand back and I look at it and I go hmm okay where do I go from here and I just really give myself the freedom to take up the brushes and start filling in color sounds like fun I want to do it it is it's very playful and it's very immediate and I think I'm very conscious about not wanting to get hung up and the plan was this and I'm supposed to do that I have no training or little to no training in art it's just something that has been inside me and I think it's a fortunate thing that I'm not bound by the rules yeah that that is a fortunate thing a lot of people who are highly trained artists say you really didn't miss anything by not going to art school but okay so this is embodied landscape what do you mean by that embodied and how is that the direction your work is going in right now okay well I have to rewind a couple of years or well back to 2014 when I started painting landscapes and they were I wouldn't say they were representational or realistic but they were tighter as obvious landscape and the areas of color and the textures blended one into another and overlapped and it was very dreamy shall we look at one of those so we were just talking about the more atmospheric looser qualities of your previous work and here's a painting that is is a predecessor to what we're seeing in this exhibit so can you talk about this yeah sure this painting is representative of a direction that I developed earlier on after returning to painting in 2014 and it's has a lot of sky the sky is a fascinating gift in my life I could paint the sky forever and it's landscape clearly but it's abstracted it's totally imagined I have never been to this place a lot of people ask me when I'm painting where is that where is that and I can't really say it's wherever you want it to be and it also shows how everything is softly blended and I use markings on the surface of the paintings because it is a way of communicating my spontaneous spontaneity and my impulsiveness while on while I'm painting and it also gives an interesting layer of perhaps each where I suggest some imperfection which is a concept that I really like to think about imperfection Laura this is just gorgeous the colors are so luscious in this painting and I love the way the horizon is so low and it kind of bring the eye to this this point did you enjoy painting this one came easily at what was the experience of painting this was an interesting story because I was asked to do an interview on public television and part of the interview was a request to actually be filmed while I was painting yikes so I started yeah yikes I started with a blank canvas I had a background color on it I knew that I was in an orange mood and I had my palette laid out and there was nothing I could do except let it happen and despite someone right over my shoulder I just painted it and it came out and this is it well I see you've got some of that's that a line quality in there that you scratched in to it how did you do these I don't know if the camera can take up this almost combed line combed in there I have a variety of tools and combs and brushes and little pointy instruments that I use that I just grab and make these make these lines and that's texture which is something I love the interest to another interesting thing about this painting again I had no configuration in mind just came as I started the painting is the question about essence and when the essence comes into a piece of work and how do you know what you've done yes how do you know what you're done I sometimes it's very evident and sometimes I know that it's not done but I don't know how it's gonna be done or when it's gonna be done but the question arises like this painting has its essence it has something that speaks already and then why go further you know and this is an example of that because I looked at this painting since should I have done more doesn't need more but yet perhaps your response to the fact that it's okay I can't this is perfect in my eyes yeah okay Laura I want to talk more about your title and body landscape and this piece has such a feeling of landscape but it's also very physical and organic looking today how did this come about well this is embodied landscape is kind of a convergence of ideas that have been bouncing around in my head and also in little small sketches of work that I have done like while traveling in France and the countryside in France was so absolutely beautiful but it was very divided into sections you know you looked out on a field and it was there were several fields that intersected and the cut the shape and the geometry was just overwhelmingly beautiful and that started to take a bigger role in my painting that I was doing there and at the same time I started to do a little bit of figure drawing and very loose very abstract and I was using pencil Olympics media and then wondered one day how this might come together in work and what were these new separate directions or would they ever manifest together on a surface and this in essence is really what what is the result I think of that thinking and that you know the curves and contours of the body resemble the curves and contours of the landscape office hillsides roads pathways so this is this is the result this body of work is really the result of that kind of thinking you know some drawings and sketching some side of that anatomy and also the beauty of the landscape and how it's divided you're you were talking about France took to France so this happened a couple years ago well I was in it was an artist residency and I was there for two weeks about one year ago and then I returned in the month of May for a month because two weeks was not enough and it was a very fruitful experience I felt incredibly inspired and also liberated from everything that happens here just putting myself in a different environment is open doors are you going again I am going again I will go for a month I think two weeks is too short I might be a dad long but you know in terms of gearing up and then packing up and you didn't I need more than two weeks and you are you two or these are all so you're taking your oils to France are you working I take oil and then at the end of my previous experiences I used acrylic which was hard for me to do it was myself and I may do that again or I may change my medium and find other products that dry the paintings more quickly Laura this is an interesting part of your series this you know predominant color is blue cool colors were you in a blue phase like Picasso went through this I'm always in a blue phase I love blue I love turquoise turquoise I love every variation of blue I love green and this series is not worthy and to me because it's smaller real estate and I had to contain myself on a smaller canvas and yet I knew what I was trying to do and I was glad to see the results that I achieve the same type of division in the landscape the same structure I think they are lyrical but they're also muscular at the same time the color contributes to the feeling of dreaminess which is still characteristic that I take it from my previous body of work and this one is also interesting because I wanted to intentionally leave the turquoise blue periwinkle blue other types of blue and incorporate slightly different tones and then add this crazy lavender pink and I wasn't sure how that was going to work out but it turned out that I felt good about it so thank you for watching this first segment of pictures and an exhibition featuring Laura Radwell's exhibit embodied landscape which is up until the 29th November at open feathers gallery Main Street in Amherst also if you will stay tuned my friend Eva first will be interviewing I would tell Sakhalin at whose work is at the University Museum of Contemporary Art I am Eva first and I'm standing here in the exhibition space of Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass today we are going to interview Abital Sakhalin who has who has had work that is spent over a long time but 50 or 60 years the museum here at UMass used to be the University Gallery and it started out about 40 years ago it got renamed 15 years ago or so because the space is not only a gallery space but a museum with a permanent collection of over 3,000 works on paper it has a very strong educational component to it and works oftentimes exhibitions oftentimes are being curated by undergraduate students as well as graduate students so here we are in the museum and I would like to introduce you to Abital Sakhalin Abital hello we are and we're looking forward to a nice conversation so we are now here in the museum and we are sitting underneath one of the earliest paintings in this room and that's the Horrors of War yes we both are immigrants and grew up in the shadow of World War II right to what extent did the art influence you in the to what extent did the historical events influence your art I think it did that I am more interested in the immaterial world than the concrete world because the concrete world world can disappear and the immaterial world is something that stays on the spirit of the immaterial world I don't know if it's a good answer but that's I think it's a perfectly wonderful answer and I think that is something that that is true for everybody I think to to focus on the immaterial world because the material is oftentimes just too it draws us into the wrong direction in some ways yes especially in this early 21st century yes yes so talking about the immaterial world I think then this is what all your work is all about it has to do with light and with essence right and so I would like to ask you yes you're trying to get an essence of an object right what do you understand of an essence of something how do you draw this out of something and then put it onto pieces yes well that's the reason why a paint very often the same subject but it's never exactly the same it's at the spirit of the the essence for me is really what really matters it's the spirit of the situation or the object of the landscape or that that's what it is so when when do you think you have captured that spirit or the essence of something at what point you say that that's it it's intuitive and many artists work on a particular subject over and over again right when do you stop doing that and move on to a different subject when I feel that I answered what I was looking for and I don't know exactly what I'm looking for but when I'm satisfied that I've said that I expressed what I wanted to express so then I stop and then I go on to something else so here we are in different part of the exhibition and one of the pieces that struck me was this one here that is an image of the Basilica San Marco in Italy and I would like to ask Avital you are you talked early about immortality and the non-material world and in your work there is a lot of churches and mosques so do you feel that architecture contains spirituality or what is it that attracts I guess architecture does yes convey that yes you're right I mean to me I was totally surprised when I saw this work because of its colorfulness but also about the application of gold foil can you tell me more about well I was when I saw San Marco immediately thought of Byzantine architecture and there's quite a bit of gold there so that's why I used these collages that's the reason so Byzantine architecture or Byzantine art it blows a lot of gold but it's like halos and gold background which you know has a precious timelessness to it and and I think you were very successful on combining this with Basil San Marco because Byzantine art and Venice have a lot to do with each other yes exactly so you have also some other works here in this gallery that that show churches so Avital let's just look at one of the paintings in particularly in particular the mosque painting that's right next to this is a very colorful image and what makes this image identify for you the mosque what's the essence of this mosque well the dome and also the crescent on top and basically it was very architectural very simple and these are the forms that I was able to to paint some kind of an entrance in the Moorish architecture yes and the shadow and light playfully of this exactly the angles of the sun that of the shadows that are being yes because of the strong strong sun yes yes and the the colors of blue are various shades of blue that do they reflect the various blues in the course of a day on the sky or what what how would you interpret the blue in this work how do I interpret the the color blue in this well because the sky is very blue the sea is very blue so that's why just as simple as that it's a very joyful piece and it's beautiful piece thank you so here we are all of a sudden in the new world we are now in provenance we are now in promen's town Massachusetts and the work between avital and me is this I think a significant work and I'm a child tell us a little bit more about this particular work and what it did for your career oh yes well I got a full bride because of that drawing I had a painting of that but I sold it one of the few things in fact the teacher wanted to buy it while I was painting it not this but the painting of this and I said I can't give it to you or even sell it to you because I don't know how it will end so I could have used the money you know art students yeah but no but this no I consider this my best drawing and I did it when I was still at Cooper Union when I was still in college and I stayed in a shack it's a fisherman's shack which was right on the water at that time and now of course provence town is full of bars and no more shacks no more shacks and so I was able to draw this so I'm very critical of my work but I think this one I think that's good pretty good so you have various other motifs of the ocean and the coast in the main and the boats right what made you choose those as subjects well because I was in what first I was in provence town and I love to look at the sea the way it changed colors during the day and evening but what was the question again what drew you to the coast and to make these rocks on water in the in the coastline I was just attracted I just thought since the water changes all the time and and whatever belongs to the water like boats were very interesting to me so that's why so I'm Italian now standing in front of a work that has a lot of significance for you and this was done in it is titled gourd right which is the town in France can you tell us more about this well it's a village a mountain village historically dates back to the 13th century it was a place where lived a shoemaker who belonged to the shoemaker guilt and it when after Paris in Paris I painted Notre Dame and it disappeared each time I was trying to get the immaterial quality and finally I was painting I was removed everything I felt the stone was too too heavy and it didn't really I didn't express what I tried to say so I would always remove part of the painting so at the end I was painting white I mean and I thought that's it I'm not a painter anymore and an orthocritic said it's amazing that my age because I was very young at that time I was in my early 20s right after Cooper Union that I came to the conclusion that everything is an overstatement so then I went to go that was invited by my cousins he was a professor of sociology in Paris and the southbound and he was invited and so was I by Shagall who was his friend who bought the house there for very little money at the time it was something like hundred francs or something and he was told by another painter that it's a great place to hide during the war and so and this was right after the war so we went there and there the light was very striking very strong just the opposite of what I had experienced in Paris especially at Notre Dame which disappeared all the time and this was all those so all I could see was the torn down houses without roof and without the roof because young people had to remove the roof so that they wouldn't pay any taxes and young people didn't want to stay in the village after the war they wanted to go to town so the place was totally abandoned except for a couple of artists who found it and who told Shagall you know if you want to hide during the war this is a good place so when I went there there was already a couple of art critics and a couple of other artists who were there and so we stayed in the only place that had water it was the schoolhouse everybody else had to go to the fountain and I so I came without anything just black pencils because since I was paying nothingness I felt I won't be able to paint but this inspired me because everything was in the light or in the shadow and very all the forms are right there so that's why I did it like that so it was just the blue of the sky black for shadows and white the destroyed houses so so Abital you just mentioned Notre Dame and how you were you know trying to reduce it because you didn't like the stone and so here we are now in front of a water color right and that is an image of Notre Dame right I really like this work because it is so fresh and so you know reduced in some ways you see still the towers of Notre Dame you don't have the rosette you have she takes Abital takes everything away from this and looks at the essence right yes yes I was I was sort of gravitated towards Notre Dame because I found it also in a fantastic setting being hugged by the two arms of the sand and the two bridges and and I thought it absolutely and I like the front the sides are more interesting with the flying buttresses but I wanted the simplicity of the front so that's why I painted it that way and yes and then I I sort of gravitated there every single day and I spent hours and I walked up along the sand and back and and I was totally mesmerized and then what happened and then I started to remove everything was too materialistic too much the stone so I started to remove not this one but some of my other drawings or paintings because I felt it's I'm trying to get the spirit and it's too much the stone so I removed that a lot and I finally thought I'm not a painter anymore because come back to the white canvas and then I was really very distraught because what's the matter with me see I think you were you were about 30 years ahead of your time because that notion is a minimalist notion that got to really looked at much later in time so I decided I and I have enough of it and I bought a bouquet of flowers and I came to my hotel room where I lived and these were I forgot they're very colorful colors red with black inside of I forgot what it's called and then somebody came to visit me my cousin and I said you know for once I didn't pay Notre Dame I paid flowers and she said where is it I said on my easel when I went to the easel I was shocked because the flowers were gone and it was the rose window the flowers you know the violet and red and black lines very strong and I didn't even know that I had painted that that was really disturbing that I didn't know what I had painted I had sort of a mystic moment yes oh again and so after that I went to gold and where the light was very strong and that's why I went just with a pencil because I'm not a painter anymore I remove everything everything is an overstatement and then of course it influenced me that I thought it was beautiful and what it was but this was the exact opposite it was sort of a dreamy place to to be haunted by to make right thank you thank you thank you thank you so much thank you and and being open to all these questions yeah thank you so much for wonderful questions I hope I did okay thank you so that concludes today's session an interview and I will see you in December