Laura Vahlberg: Hi Elise! Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview. So first I wonder if you can tell me about your connections to Italy. I understand you travel there on a regular basis and your most recent body of work was made there, right?
Elise Schweitzer: Yes! I'm so lucky. I take students to Italy during our January term at Hollins, and I've been fortunate to visit in the summers to plan those trips, and to spend time painting and exploring. In February 2020 I was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, where I made most of the paintings for my sabbatical exhibition, "Painted Arches and Walled Gardens." We had just finished a month in Florence with Hollins students, and I was still turning over ideas about proportion and geometry, Brunelleschi's arches and the lapis lazuli in Fra Angelico's frescos in San Marco. We stayed in Italy until March 6th, and got back right before everyone went into lockdown.
LV: When I first learned about your work you were painting large scale narrative figurative pieces as well as representational works centering around horses and their riders. Your most recent show made in Italy looked to be a blend of observation and invention. I’m curious to know more about your journey between representation and abstraction.
Also, what is a typical day in the studio is like for you?
ES: For years I painted entirely from observation, but in the summer of 2018 while I was an artist in residence at the VCCA, I started making little color studies to "go with" the observational paintings, and it was a total surprise to me that those little paintings took off, with a life of their own. Ideas from Bauhaus color theory had been cooking in the back of my mind since teaching a color theories class at Hollins as a first year seminar, and suddenly it was all that I wanted to do- put one color and shape against another to tell a story, or to make space, or to evoke an emotion. I think folks who paint perceptually know that what I'm describing isn't really different from painting from life, but the reference is different. I was painting from memory, and from intuition, and from a sense of humor, and those paintings continue to build on themselves.
When I was in Italy and looking at familiar paintings, new things stood out to me, and those impressions became the start of the arches and the walled gardens in my work now. I would love to make large scale observational oil paintings again, and I'm waiting for those ideas to wander back into my studio. I don't plan to paint in any one mode, I'm following where the studio energy leads right now.
LV: I remember you mentioning that you have been to a couple of interesting artist residencies including VCCA. Can you talk a little about those and how they have influenced your practice?
ES: Yes! The best thing about residencies are the people you meet. The time and the space to make artwork is great but the inspiration is even better- the off hand comment in a studio visit that sticks with you for years, the work-in-progress that you see and hear, and the range of life experiences you talk about with artists and creative folks at all different stages of their journey.
In 2011 I went to the Vermont Studio Center for the month of March, and those friendships I made a decade ago had a huge influence on my life and creative career. When I was a visiting artist in Italy I had to carefully plan exactly what I would bring, and exactly how I'd get the work home. At VCCA I just threw all my supplies in my van and had faith that I'd figure it out there, and I did.
I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find residencies that welcome family members in the future. The American Academy was incredibly welcoming to my family, but it's tough for artists with little kids, and I wish there were more opportunities.
LV: That’s a perfect lead in to my next question. You and I both have two year old kiddos. How has it been navigating being an artist and a parent and a professor?
ES: Add in the pandemic- which makes each of those things so much more complicated. Can I answer this question with a primal scream of frustration?
I don’t know what it’s like to have a toddler when there’s not a pandemic happening. I started painting abstractly before we had the kiddo, but the mode definitely fits the compounding pressures we’re all feeling right now. My paintings are all water based now, and come from ideas I can think about for a while and then realize quickly when I have a small opening of time to be in my studio. I have a beautiful small space to work in our new house, with excellent light, which makes all the difference.
LV: Yes! I know I had to change my mode of work to fit the life of being a parent.
Do you have any advice you would pass on to artists just starting out on the road to painting?
ES: The best advice is to be ambitious with your work, make big plans and commit to the process before you know for sure it will work out. I so clearly remember starting multiple 9 foot wide paintings before I knew what the paintings were really about, and before I had exhibitions lined up, before I got grants, before I got a good teaching job... if I had waited to know for certain things would work out, I never would have gotten started.
It's such a strange timeline, maybe a bit like writing a book. You have to write the whole book before you even find a publisher, right? I see students hesitating over their work, reluctant to commit if they're not sure the painting will go well, or if they'll get to that next step. You just have to jump in.
LV: Last question: How do you know when a painting is complete? Do you start a painting with a time frame in mind (one-shot painting vs. long term)?
ES: I know a painting is complete when I can live with each part of it, and yes, that’s kind of a circular answer. For oil, the life of the painting can be so long, there’s so much flexibility in the media for revision, scraping back, sanding, etc. In the past I documented each working day with my large oil paintings, and they often took 20-30 full day sessions. Or about 3 months of painting. With gouache, especially gouache on panel, I’ve found I have a narrower timeline for making changes. I can only repaint a surface 3 or 4 times before I feel like it’s losing the clarity I really enjoy in the paint surface. I probably abandon 1 out of 5 gouache paintings, and the ones that work usually happen in 2 or 3 passes.
LV: So then the length of a painting is determined by the material? That makes a lot of sense. That a painting can be a sort of dialogue with the material as well as the motif. Thanks so much Elise!
ES: Absolutely! Thank you Laura!