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HP: It’s that concept of Wabi Sabi that has a lot to do the beauty of imperfection, a sign of something soulful. But that’s just one trope. When you see a car that someone’s finishing so perfectly by hand, there’s a kind of frisson to that. Even if you are not aware that it’s made by hand perhaps there’s some kind of energy left over in it from that making. |
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Heidi Pollard, Fort, 16 x 16 in. Oil on canvas / panel.
In Conversation: Heidi Pollard Interviewed By Astrid Bowlby
Astrid Bowlby: Talk to me about naming.
Heidi Pollard: Titles can offer a kind of window in or a resonating overtone to the image. But often a painting’s yelling at me from the wall while I’m working on it—‘This is my name! Rraaahhhh!’ and then, that’s it.
AB: Your works each have a specific and individual feeling. Some people work in series …
HP: I’m not really a series person. I ricochet between pieces—switch it up over any given stretch of time. Apparently, I’m not so capable of sustained interest in a theme.
AB: I think of it as an incredible strength in your work. And you clearly love paint and all the different ways paint can go down.
HP: Yes, that took a while to develop. I think I used to like the image more than I liked the paint.
AB: Does that mean that the image is maybe more embodied in the paint now? Instead of just made with paint?
HP: Exactly. The two can’t be separated from each other particularly. I’ve wanted to become that kind of a painter.
AB: I have to ask you about humor because we’re both kind of goofy. Some of your paintings are very goofy; some are very serious; sometimes it’s what you’ve titled them. Like Boot: ‘boot’ just makes Boot even goofier.
HP: There’s an aspect of humor that’s all about the pleasure of silliness. A title can point out that it’s ok to laugh, that, in fact, it is funny. Or it’s serious in a way that includes laughter, you know? It’s very human.
Heidi Pollard, Tiptoe, 8 x 10 in. Oil on canvas / panel.
AB: In War Paint #2, the way you’ve applied the paint is kind of cartoon-y but it’s also a very serious painting: the mood, the color. I feel it’s operating on both of those planes: using cartoon-y or animated moves as a way to temper serious feelings. I think that ‘cartoon-y’ also often means direct. Sometimes it’s like writing a shape. I’m looking at Buffet right now and it feels like a table or a body with objects on top of it and the space is very shallow.
HP: I go back and forth between very shallow space and having some tension between deep and shallow space in one painting. And I agree with you about the directness of the cartoon-y. I think of Hiroshige’s sketches, drawn rapidly from life in the streets. They look like caricatures but also accurate and sincere; so that’s an interesting balance to strike—how far to go to one side or the other.
AB: That gets back to personality or what it needs. Because you’re the boss, you get to say ‘I’m sorry, you’re not going to be that elegant.’
HP: I’ll do something elegant—almost like I want to be part of the cool crowd in school! They’ve got the good chops, the nice clothes. They’re all so cool. They all look good and I want to be like them so I’ll make a painting that’s like them, you know? And then, I swear, I can’t stand it after about five minutes and I have to make that part go away, at least partially …
AB: So it’s kind of like making a big fart sound? Or a raspberry sound?
HP: Yes. OR … it’s to take the blandness out of the beauty. Real beauty is never so perfect. Beauty is, in fact, completely flawed; it has pathos.
AB: There’s an idea in Japanese ceramics where they’ll make something perfect and then kind of mess it up a little bit, as a way in.
HP: It’s that concept of Wabi Sabi that has a lot to do the beauty of imperfection, a sign of something soulful. But that’s just one trope. When you see a car that someone’s finishing so perfectly by hand, there’s a kind of frisson to that. Even if you are not aware that it’s made by hand perhaps there’s some kind of energy left over in it from that making.
AB: Yes, that’s an interesting idea.
HP: It’s one of my little theories that a lot of great art objects have a kind of aura left in them. Often it seems like there’s a real charge to the object long after it was made. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t actually true.
AB: I do think you’re getting at something: when we are privileged to see peoples’ studies or little tests, stuff that they’re working out for whatever opus they’re making, those things often have a kind of rawness or energy or potential that ends up somehow getting drained or controlled. This painting you made, it’s 4 x 4 feet, called Head … that thing looks like you threw it together in about five minutes, in a good way—and I know perfectly well that you didn’t—but it is an amazing tour de force of that kind of energy for me; if I were walking through a room that thing would stop me.
HP: Thank you! It was painted in a few sessions that stretched out over several years. By the end I was painting more wet into wet—trying to get freer with my goopy-ness, you know?
Heidi Pollard, Goodnight! 2011 Solo Exhibition at the Roswell Museum and Art Center
Roswell, New Mexico
AB: Talk about how long paintings tend to stick around in various stages for you.
HP: It can be years or a few hours. It just depends. I used to look at things for much longer. I’m less fearful now, but I do have to wait for a glimmer of something to tell me how to proceed.
AB: Do you ever just get a hankering to do something like make a giant toy for example?
HP: I’ve collected toys—especially cheap drugstore toys like a plastic ham sandwich with layers you can take apart. I love them and have been waiting for that to slide into my work. I think it has since I’ve been making 3D objects the last couple years, those little ponds. What else do you think of as toy-ish?
AB: The cork pieces, Land Buoys, they are just kid-like … you want roll them around! You see the possibility of how they can be made; ‘I could so make one of these!’
HP: Yes. I’m trying to let my life in the studio become an increasingly direct exercise in joy, let’s put it like that. Life is short. You find out when you get really sick maybe …
AB: Right, and then you say ‘Oh good, I’m going to do what I want!’
HP: Yes and no one cares—bottom line—whether you do or not so you might as well.
AB: If Michelangelo were alive today, he might not be painting on the Sistine Ceiling with a brush and pigments. Maybe he’d do something else.
HP: Which leads us to the conclusion that I’m kind of a Neanderthal when it comes to ‘making.’ It’s taken years to paint with more than one color at a time. I’m interested in digital technology; it’s just that I haven’t figured how I need it so much yet.
AB: Right, right. So it’s a tool?
HP: Yes, one color at a time baby.
