| Salmon Toor: How was the Yale School of Art, as it is one of the best schools in the country for painting? Was your style similar to the style of work you are producing now? Consequently, how big of an affect did the Grad school have on you as an artist? Elizabeth Huey: The whole experience, for me, was the equivalent of being a piece of gravel thrown into a high-powered rock tumbler or a small building getting the wrecking ball. I guess the plan was to rip up everything, including the piping and the wiring, in order to make room for a new and improved structure. |
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Salmon Toor: How was the Yale School of Art, as it is one of the best schools in the country for painting? Was your style similar to the style of work you are producing now? Consequently, how big of an affect did the Grad school have on you as an artist?
Elizabeth Huey: The whole experience, for me, was the equivalent of being a piece of gravel thrown into a high-powered rock tumbler or a small building getting the wrecking ball. I guess the plan was to rip up everything, including the piping and the wiring, in order to make room for a new and improved structure. This meant many nights in the studio at 4:30am, drooling from exhaustion, red-eyed and staring at another failed painting—assessing the damage, laying out new plans and trying again.
One of the primary advantages of attending Yale is the access it provides to artists/critics that I might normally feel too shy to approach. Highlights from Yale included studio visits with Dave Hickey (I cried) and conversations with Peter Halley and Mel Bochner presenting on Picabia and Surrealism. I still occasionally reflect upon Kurt Kauper’s interrogations and Rochelle Feinstein’s on-point observations. Best of all, I was influenced by Sean Landers teaching a group of us landscape painting. He’d arrange field trips to the beach, the woods, parking lots and apple orchards. He hired models to dress up. One day, we painted an albino gorilla and a pirate. Outside of the painting department, I studied Anthropology, Electronic Music and Magic and Power in the Renaissance.
During school, it was hard to feel relaxed and comfortable in such a competitive and demanding environment. I spent a lot of time with my door closed. It’s been rewarding to have different kinds of friendships with fellow classmates since graduation.
ST: Tell us a little about your current work. How would you describe it? What is it about? Does it inform a certain kind of audience, or do you think your work can be seen and appreciated by anyone?
EH: Two years ago, I realized my paintings were all too often relegated to the land of fairy tale. It’s alright for me to employ child-like iconography, but problematic if the work fails to bear relevance to real world activity. On any given day, an infinite number of psychologically complex questions occupied my mind. My observations would trigger unanswerable philosophic dilemmas and they would play out in unlikely scenarios within my paintings. I had the impetus for the work to reflect not only these ongoing investigations, but real historic events and people as well.
I was awarded a short residency at Wabash College and, during my stay, I visited the Indiana Medical History Museum on the grounds of the former Seven Steeples Asylum. This chamber of old, scientific artifacts had a dramatic impact upon me. It led me to the conclusion that painting a series based on the history of American asylums would encompass a wide range of historical, religious, psychological and medical fields.
Presently, I’m reading about the proposed causes, conditions and cures for the psychologically disturbed during the 19th century. The lives of Dorothea Dix and Thomas Kirkbride influenced this period, and their valiant fight for the moral and ethical treatment of the insane is inspiring.
ST: I noticed the recurring religious icons of devils and angels. Why those? How important is religion in your work as a whole? Are you a religious person?
EH: I’m continually shocked by the justifications that many “religious” people have for performing the most absurdly damaging acts. From ages 13 to 16 I was a rebellious teenager and my parents sought the advice of a psychiatrist to try and control me. The doctor strongly urged them to place me in a long-term facility. Consequently, I was locked away from society for two years and, for the first six months, incapable of walking without restraint.
The leaders continually reminded us that God had placed us there to be saved from our will and misfortune. Now, I usually run the other way when any group or individual claims to be “the chosen one(s).” Despite the fact that I witnessed all kinds of abuse, inexplicable moments of sublime solitude also manifested themselves.
Throughout history, religion and its proposed values perform a significant role in diagnosing and prescribing treatment for the emotionally disturbed. Religion continues to play a major role in dictating moral values and philosophies, therefore influencing both government and community. Even in a psychological field dominated by prescription medications, a belief in God as a proponent for therapy persists.
Am I religious? I want to believe that there is a benevolent force looking out for my good, directing circumstances in my favor and leading me towards an eternal, sublime utopia. Who doesn’t?
ST: How do you justify your technique as a painter? Is it in accordance with the subject matter? Is it supposed to make the viewer feel a certain way?
My work has always been emotionally expressive. But, I’ve never been interested in a one-dimensional read, i.e., “This is a Sad Painting.” “This is a Happy Painting.” Every deeply significant event in my life with a complex range of emotions resists simple categorization. I use multifarious techniques to make my paintings, from collage to brushes to blades—an assortment of tools are employed. It’s important that the juxtaposition of chaotic and systematic, natural and artificial, sensitive and violent, is reflected in the paint handling. Both history and the mind are comprised of fragmented stories and images. The collaged sense of space and activity reflects this fragmentation.
ST: I understand that the paintings are rather large, (for instance, some of them are 4 x 8 feet!). What purpose does size serve in your work?
EH: I make small work as well, but I originally started making big paintings when I had something big to say. I want the viewer to get swallowed up, to lose the sense of being in a white-walled, commercial gallery. I’m starting to cover the walls entirely. I’m making sculptures, videos and wall drawings.
Both traumatic breakdowns and revolutionary breakthroughs are characterized by a distancing from the normal or the mundane, a loss of reality. I’d like for my exhibitions to simulate this same affect.
