Featured Artist: James Mullen
Depth of Field
This body of work consists of photographs that are digitally printed on canvas, and then are painted upon. At first blush, they are photos of paintings that have been painted over with thick, impasto paint. Upon closer viewing, the background images are actually painted in a tromp l’oeil manner to appear to be in the background of the space, but are actually on the surface of the canvas. These background images are predominately from the Portland Museum of Art, in Portland, ME, and specifically of works from the Goldfarb Collection of 19th century American paintings. The invocation of this space is a way of activating the material quality of these works, and the space they share with the viewer, in an effort to collapse the distance between the creators and the audience.
About James Mullen
James Mullen received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of New Hampshire, and completed a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Indiana University. He has taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, the University of Evansville in Indiana, and since 1999 has taught at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME.
He has received numerous awards and scholarships including an Individual Artist Grant from the state of Georgia as well as multiple Research Grants from both the University of Evansville and Bowdoin College. He has also received numerous Fellowship Residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, Hewnoaks, and the Petrified Forest National Park Artist in Residence. He has had thirty solo exhibitions of his work at venues including the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Providence College, and three solo exhibitions at Sherry French Gallery in New York City. In 2013 he was awarded a Fellowship Award Exhibition by the Phoenix Gallery in New York City, and has several solo exhibitions scheduled over the next year, including Locust Grove Estate in Poughkeepsie, NY, the Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College, and the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts.
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Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest interviews James Mullen
J.P: When looking at the work in the “Depth of Field” series I see a relationship between this group and the “Threshold” photographs. In the Threshold photographs the eye is led from the foreground into a more distant landscape, in the “Depth of Field” series the viewer has to pass through the paint in the foreground to get to the paintings, first recognizing the colors in the foreground to find them repeated in the background paintings. Did the Depth of Field work develop from the “Threshold” photographs?
J.M: As a visual artist, I am particularly interested in exploring light and space, and it is true that there are shared interests between these two bodies of work. They both depend on a readable sense of space that connects the viewer and the illusion of depth. In the “Threshold” works I was interested in suggesting the presence of an interior space that is shared by the viewer, acting as a lineal zone leading into the window/deep space. I continue to be engaged by the idea of painting as window, and its ability to allow us to project ourselves into that fictional environment. Many of these painted images utilize multiple forms of representations of a particular place (site photos, Google, other paintings I used on site photographs as a tool to make these paintings) I used on site photographs as a tool to make these paintings and the landscapes they depict fluctuate between being a window and an object.
The Depth of Field works invert that paradigm, and I use paintings to make photographs. I create gestural painted works on a sheet of glass and then document them in different contexts. The authority of these background images allows the paintings to float in that deep liminal space, activating the space shared by the viewer, both bodies of work seek to interrupt the passive gaze into a representational space.
J.P: On your website you show two groups of work in the “Depth of Field” group. The first one under Paintings, the second one under Photography. In the first group there are the paintings of the Goldfarb collection in the background, in the second one I see different backgrounds, (interiors, etc.) . Are these photographic or painted? I now get curious about the process in this series. Would you enlighten us?
J.M: In my photographs for this project I created painted works on glass that I then situate in a range of environments (inside/outside) and explore how these works change. The paintings are visceral, gestural abstractions that are self-referential rather than representations of another source. Manipulating the context allows me to explore ideas about scale, form, transparency, and the autographic language that is intrinsic to the painted image.
I sometimes print these photographic images onto canvases and will sometimes create paintings “behind” these printed gestural forms. I used several of my favorite works from the Goldfarb collection at the Portland Museum of Art as sources for these because they are exquisite, contemplative paintings with a particular focus on light and space. I have reproduces these images to the rear of the depicted space to represent both the spatial and the chronological distance from the viewer. The bold, gestural physicality of the printed abstraction commands our immediate attention from far away, and then upon closer inspection the handcrafted reproduction in the rear reveals the materiality of the actual paint on a physical canvas.
So, the inversion for the in person viewing experience is that what appears as a bold physical use of paint is actually a photo reproduction and what appears to be a photo reproduction is, upon closer review, a bold physical use of paint. By drawing the viewer into the work, I seek to collapse the space between the viewer and the artwork, creating a more collaborative engagement of the work. I am interested in differentiating between a virtual viewing experience and one in real space with a physical object.
J.P.: Comparing your “Pilgrimage” paintings to the photos in the “Site Specific” series of photographs I find similar subject matter. Other than that in one there are paintings, in the other photographs, how is the experience different?
J.M: I began this project as a way to explore famous sites that have been the inspiration for generations of artists, and to treat them as primary texts. I wanted to experience that sense of place, scale and light. I then would develop those experiences into studio paintings after my return.
What I discovered after many of these trips was that I started to be able to decide which works would most successfully tend themselves to a translation into painting, and which would not. There was no strict metric of which things worked better in one or the other, but I did find that visually dense images that are abundant in information often work better as photos, and many images that utilize bold graphic shapes more easily lend themselves to the physicality of the painting process. While I strife for a particularity of light in all of my work, there are certain events and situations that are better conveyed through photography.
J.P: What is, in your opinion, the space between painting and photography in your work? Is there a different functionality and how do the two media support each other?
J.M: I find the space between painting and drawing a hydraulic channel that is constantly in flux, for me, a photograph is a momentary capture from the flow of time and makes the micro event available for sustained and repeated contemplation. A painting is a compilation of moments from that flow of time, even when based on a photographic source. This collection of thousands of moments and decisions that culminate in a painting are all contained within it, and can often reveal themselves through prolonged viewing. In this regard, all paintings are time machines that bring their histories forward in time.
For some, the camera has usurped the prolonged attention of the eye and shortened our attention span. I find the opposite to be the case. I often use the immediacy of my iPhone to capture what Willem de Kooning called “Slipping Glimpses”, transitory visual moments. Its ease of use and ubiquitous nature has transformed how we see the start of the 21st century. Photography has become such an overwhelming presence in our world as to be invisible to us. The structures of early photography flowed from painting and drawing and in return it shared new ways of seeing with painting strategies in new ways with the expansion of digital manipulation. Today, we see paintings through the lens of photography, as well as the converse, and my work explores this area as it navigates through these constantly fluctuating waters.
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