On Voice, with Nancy Goodman

I had this idea to write about finding your voice. Initially, I thought about asking artists that I think have unique “voices.” But then I thought, wouldn’t it be better to find out why some people use their voice and others don’t? That suddenly seemed more a question about the psychology of voice.

I turned to Denver therapist Nancy Goodman. I’ve known Nancy for years and have always liked her take on life and healing, especially her approach to trauma. Here’s how she describes her practice: “the marriage of psychology and spirituality creates the strongest fabric for our healing and growth. Change based solely in psychology is like a tapestry with only horizontal threads. It can lead to a “well-adjusted” person who still feels empty or alone or lacks meaning in his/her life. Change based solely in spirituality, like a tapestry with only vertical threads, can lead to a person with sound ideals and principles, but without the resilience to handle life on life’s terms.”

The following is an edited version of our conversation. As soon as I find time, I promise to put the recorded version up online. But for now, here it is.

I also want to thank my dear friend Melanie Yazzie, who I refer to in this interview, for allowing me to use her images throughout. -Rose

YOU TALK PLENTY

ROSE: OK, so let’s talk about Voice.

NANCY: Let’s.

ROSE: I loved it when I sent you those questions, and then all of a sudden you riffed off all these amazing thoughts about voice and emailed it back.

NANCY: Yeah, that was fun.

ROSE: So, when I was thinking about this, I was struck with an epiphany: I haven’t been using my own voice. And I think when I say that to people, they’re like, “Oh, I hear you loud and clear,” right?

NANCY: You talk plenty.

ROSE: You never stop! And, who knows where it comes from—our youth and everything that society has told us, especially women, you know: “that sounds angry.”

NANCY: Dial that down.

ROSE: Exactly, dial it down, back it off, and put a smile on it.

NANCY: Right. You look prettier if you smile.

ROSE: Right, right. And so, you lose your voice in a way. You talk, but you stop vocalizing what you really want to say. I’m wondering, as a therapist, is this something that you see often?

NANCY: As I’m listening to you talk about it right now, the thing that comes to me is this: There’s a difference between talking, which our culture says women do too much of and using our voice, which is a much more authentic expression of ourselves. Anybody can talk. Anybody can say anything. A lot of times we talk just to fill the silence, impress people. There’s a lot of ways we talk, but using our voice is a completely different conversation altogether because that comes from an authentic place. But, when we look outside ourselves for how we’re supposed to sound to the world, there’s nothing authentic about that.

I think your question was, is this common? And yeah, I think it’s common. I mean, I know more about how this shows up for women than I do for men. I think white men are not squelched. I think people of color, both genders, have a lot more risk when it comes to using their voice. It’s just not safe—not as safe. But I know most about women and that it’s a pre-programed cultural expectation that women sound like this and not like that, whatever that may be, depending on your family and your upbringing.

ROSE: Let’s talk a little bit more about the notion of being pre-programmed. Because it sounds great to tell people to just say what’s on your mind, say what’s in your heart. But it’s not that easy. So, what are all these factors that we’re dealing with?

NANCY: Ultimately, it probably gets down to that human-based fear of public ostracization, rejection, abandonment. If I say the wrong thing or sound the wrong way or offend somebody or overwhelm somebody or scare somebody or don’t appease, don’t make somebody else feel comfortable, then I’m at risk for rejection, for anger, for violence, not getting that job, not getting invited to that party, upsetting my husband or partner.

ROSE: When I was initially thinking about voice it was because, in the art community, there’s always this conversation about finding a voice. That’s really at the heart of this. What are some things that can help when your voice is being tamped down? How do you reach in and get your voice?

NANCY: I think that the first part of that is, how does that happen? How does it get tamped down when you’re in the process of learning a craft? It’s similar to being brought up in this culture. There’s a message that there’s a right and a wrong way to do things. As a writer, I can say that learning the craft and learning the art of writing are two very different paths. Learning the craft—some instructors say to take your favorite books and write the first couple chapters by hand so that you get the rhythm of your favorite authors. That is one way of learning: to watch other people who’ve been practicing it for decades.

If artists are learning how to express themselves, they first learn how to use paint or clay or a pen and paper, and how to put words in the sentence and how to put sentences together. Then they can launch themselves from there and say, now that I know how to use the tools I have, how am I going to use them to express things the way that I want to express them? And so, then the risk in being creative is that people will judge it.

TELLTALE SIGNS

ROSE: Let’s talk about that, the fear. It’s really a fear. I know in my life, I’m that quintessential middle child, always wishing: can’t we just get along? But then I am exhausted by the end of this trying to get along when what I’m really trying do is politely escape but I’m afraid to say anything. It’s draining.

NANCY: You use the word draining. Which is a pretty late stage realization that you haven’t been expressing yourself for hours, days, years. It is exhausting not to be authentic. It’s a good internal checks-and-balances. If what I’m saying is energizing to me, it’s a good sign that I’m being authentic. And if what I’m saying is draining to me; it’s really draining our life force energy to not be in alignment with ourselves. So that’s a good indicator. If I’m depleted by the end of the conversation from not expressing myself and might get resentful, I might get bitter and might get judgmental. I might get depleted. If I’m not expressing myself, I might feel fear. I can feel lonely.

ROSE: You and I talked about when we don’t use our voice that there can be a backlash.

NANCY: Women who don’t use their voices will find the backlash of that somewhere in their lives. Health problems, taking it out on their bodies via eating disorders, staying in abusive relationships, lack of understanding of or ability to practice self-care, depression, anxiety, despair, poor parenting, projection of judgment onto other women.

When women specifically aren’t using their voices, they have to ask: what is the cost to me? Is the bitterness and resentment or depletion and exhaustion taking its toll on my body because it’s an incredibly stressful way to live. Blocking our authentic voice is stressful on our bodies and often sometimes traumatic, depending on the situation: being in an abusive relationship, or dealing with an abusive boss or a really unhealthy workplace, and exacerbating the problem by staying in a situation where using my voice is not accepted and then taking it out on others.

You see women not using their voice but then criticizing and judging all women who, for example, stay home rather than work or vice versa. Or criticizing all women who wear tight clothing. So, projecting my own self-limiting behavior onto other people and then judging them for that.

Shit rolls downhill. If I’m not using my voice, I’m depleted, so my children aren’t getting from me what they could if I were more authentic.

When we are not using our voices, we feel like victims. When we feel like victims, we continue to be victims. Somewhere in there the tide has to turn where we say, it’s my job, it’s my responsibility to use my authentic voice to benefit myself and everyone around me and because if I can’t use my voice, I will stay stuck in that forever.

GROUNDING

NANCY: I just need to say this to get this one off my mind. You mentioned earlier, doing what everybody else is doing gives us a sense of belonging. That’s an important starting place because when we’re talking about self or when we’re talking about using our voice, that’s a self-actualization skill. And we need to feel like we belong before we’re able to arrive in that self-actualized place. There’s value in belonging. First, there’s value in learning the craft before we branch out on our own because then we have this foundation of “I know what I’m doing. I know who I am. I know where I stand.” It’s like orienting ourselves in the world. I’ve grounded, or oriented myself in the world first, which is a good, solid foundation. Then to express myself authentically, which is risky and scary, it’s like jumping off. So that belonging, I think, has its place.

ROSE: I like that. First things first: get grounded.

NANCY: Yes! So, the bigger my foundation is, the farther I can wander before I feel like I’m going to fall off the edge into the abyss. If my foundation is big and I know my craft and I know my mentors and I know my community and it’s a large enough, then I have lots more room to wander around and explore my own authenticity and find what works and doesn’t work for me personally. So, there’s value in that belonging phase first, and then you have the freedom to start saying, “Who am I as a writer? Who am I as a painter? Who am I?”

*Made Him Strong*, Melanie Yazzie, monotype

Once you recognized that you’re not using your voice, that what you’re doing is depleting or stilted or tedious, tiresome, that it’s causing resentment, it’s causing self-doubt and all of that, you can start taking risks and saying, “If nobody’s looking, what would I want to write about or paint?”

It’s our own experience of authenticity that starts to build on itself. The momentum starts to go, because when we painted the thing that we really wanted to paint, as crazy and weird and unlike what we were taught, it feels amazing and freeing. It feels right. It feels joyful. You would rather be feeling those things. I think it takes time to be willing to choose that over what is expected of us.

THE BOGEYMEN: PERMISSION AND SELF-DOUBT

ROSE: I want to come back to self-doubt and permission and talk about how those two things fit together or fight against each other, and how we can reconcile them.

NANCY: Permission, I think, comes both internally and externally. It’s lovely to get permission from the outside. It really, really helps. And if you have a choice between two mentors, I would go with that one who’s going to give you permission to explore on your own because that external permission is really freeing.

Internal permission is a choice. I have to be willing to give myself permission to be who I am in the world, and I think we do that incrementally. We dip our toe in the water.

And self-doubt. So, I’ve come to a place in my travels where I believe that self-doubt has a very small, important role. It’s a checks-and-balances sort of thing. It’s what makes me look outside before I decide whether or not to put on a coat; I have enough doubt to make me look outside. It’s just this tiny little voice, saying, Are you sure?

But if self-doubt is allowed to get any bigger than it should be, which is tiny, than it takes over and it causes all kinds of pain and suffering.

*Jackie the Horse Boy*, Melanie Yazzie, monotype

If self-doubt doesn’t lead immediately to new information, then it’s taking on way too much control of our lives. If self-doubt makes me say, you know what, I’m not sure if that’s the right word, let me go look it up in the thesaurus, then it’s useful. If self-doubt says, I don’t know if this story is any good; that’s subjective. I’m not going to get any new information from that line of thinking.

ROSE: OK, so how do we get past that, especially in the beginning phase where self-doubt probably stops more artistic endeavors, you know?

NANCY: Sometimes it can be helpful to have a conversation with the part of us that we could name “self-doubt.” Get a little bit of distance from it and ask, why are you here? Where’d you come from? When did you show up in my life? Was I two? Was I ten, or twelve? And why? Oftentimes, if we can get back to where that self-doubt is rooted, we can start to have compassion for its role in our life.

If it showed up on the scene when I was four, let’s say, because I got laughed at in preschool and it was traumatizing, and self-doubt came on the scene to make sure that never happened again. It’s now second guessing everything I do socially in order to keep me from ever getting laughed at again.

Go back and ask, how familiar is self-doubt to me? How old does it feel? And why did it start? Where did it come from? And then thank it: You got me through preschool. I never got laughed at again. You were clearly successful. Thank you, but I’m actually in charge now. I’m the adult in charge of this body, this person and I want to write this story whether it’s good or not. Doesn’t matter. I want to write the story. I want to paint this picture. I want to build this thing that I’m excited about, so I need you to take a step back. What will it take for you to settle down? What do you need from me, Self-Doubt, for you to settle down so that I can go write this story?

Well, Self-Doubt might say, I want to make sure you don’t show it to anybody until it’s really, really good. OK, I promise not to show it to anybody until I’ve edited it three times. How’s that? Or, I want to make sure that you don’t put this painting on the wall of a coffee shop where people might laugh at it and nobody’s going to buy it. And that’s going to mean X, Y, and Z. Okay, I promise I won’t put it on the wall of a coffee shop until we know for sure that people like it. How’s that? Once it settles down, then you go paint your picture, you go write your chapter.

ROSE: I was listening to Brene Brown who was talking about creativity and how hard it is for adults. She said she lost count of how many people told her that an elementary school teacher said something that crushed them like, “that is a terrible drawing of a horse” or whatever.

NANCY: My kindergarten teacher told me that suns are not supposed to be in the corners of the page with the little lines on them, because it looks like a spider crawling off the page. That’s the last time I drew a sun like that.

ROSE: I had a teacher, I think it was second grade, and I wrote this little story that I was proud of, you know, and she circled all of my misspellings in red ink and then on one in particular, wrote, “Not even close.” We remember these things, right? I can’t tell you the name of the teacher. I don’t know what she looked like. I just know that the message was: you did this wrong; you’re a terrible speller.

NANCY: And, after that people think, now I won’t ever do that again because I’m broken, so I will stop. That’s just so unfortunate. Because, like we were saying in the beginning of the conversation, it’s not that everybody has a painter inside them or a novel inside, right?

ROSE: Exactly. Which is why I love that idea of being able to talk to self-doubt, really, and confront it instead of letting it own you. And to have some compassion for why it’s there in our lives.

NANCY: We all have some form of it, self-doubt. But when it’s really big and really loud, to be able to have a relationship where we can be in charge instead of it and by attending to its needs because it’s not going to stop protecting us. If we don’t think we need protecting, it’s going to get louder, it’s going to rage up hot and stronger, out of self-protection. But if we say, look, I got this, I’m the adult here, I’m in charge, I’m using my brain, I know how to make my way in the world. What do you need to calm down? It will tell us.

CRITICS, CRITICS EVERYWHERE

ROSE: So that’s the critic inside you. Then, we have the feared critic outside of us. Even a spouse or family members. And, you know, some family members love everything you do, and to me, that’s almost more damaging because it’s like, well, now I just don’t trust you.

*Mining Memory*, Melanie Yazzie, monoprint

NANCY: That’s right.

ROSE: And then there are the ones who criticize everything. I think they mean to be helpful, like self-doubt. How do you get over that fear of external judgment?

NANCY: Let’s just say there’s going to be external dogma. And so, getting to a place where that expectation is realistic—I’m waiting for my parents to die because they will disown me if I write my memoir, or they will be horrified, or they will lose their standing in their own community—that’s a choice that we have to take ownership over.

Am I going to let this external judgment sway my decision to use my voice or not? And if the answer is yes, then my fear will sway my decision to use my voice. But if we own the choice, then it’s no longer self-doubt. It’s a proactive, life affirming decision.

If we are afraid of critics’ judgment, not necessarily family but stranger’s judgment, we can ask the same question. Am I going to let my fear of critics keep me from using my voice in my art and in my life? And if the answer is yes, then you have to ask, is that a value judgment or is that fear? And in that sense, it’s probably fear because you don’t ultimately know what people will say. They may love it, right?

As we know, art and self-expression are subjective. If you line up ten people, it’s guaranteed, some people are going to love it and guaranteed some people are going to hate it. And guaranteed some people aren’t even going to notice it. Do you want to base your actions and your connection to your own authentic voice on the guarantee that some people are going to love it? I promise you; some people are going to love it. So, go ahead; it’s just a choice.

And that is another way to be in touch with our authenticity. I authentically want to create something regardless of the external reaction. I authentically want to create something, but I don’t want to shame my parents. I authentically want to create something, and my parents are responsible for their own feelings. I’m going to go ahead and get it published. It’s all just a personal choice, but I think there’s a lot of empowerment in coming to terms with your choice.

ROSE: Yes.

NANCY: Just facing it allows it to shake out, sort of dulls the pain of it.

ROSE: I was talking to a friend, Native American artist Melanie Yazzie. She was telling me about how, early in her career, she was angry, and her work was angry; it was expressing this anger about her situation and everything she was dealing with. But she realized that the people who were angry with her were already with her and the people she wanted to connect with, they simply walked away, saying, “Oh, she’s just another angry Native.” So, she realized she needed to figure out how to say something that the people who walked away would hear, because she wanted to communicate.

NANCY: “I need to express this anger” and “I want to communicate”—those are both authentic drives that transform over time.

ROSE: Yes, yes. And so, she worked on that but then she had to deal with people who criticized her work saying things like, that looks like a child could do it, or I could have done that. So, Melanie started telling those people, “You should do it then.” And she even said, “Here are the supplies I used. When you’re done, will you please send it to me, and we’ll talk about it.” And she’s tells people this in a totally authentic way, not in a snide way at all. She’s actually had people try to paint then contact her and say, “Oh, that was a lot harder than I thought.”

NANCY: I think that that’s a good illustration of how connected she is to her voice. She’s not doing that to prove anything. She’s not doing anything for acceptance. She’s not doing it for people to say you’re amazing.

ROSE: Exactly. Because when somebody says you’re not that good, she says, “I’m not trying to be, but you could be. And I would love it if you were.”

NANCY: That ability, that generosity of spirit, in my opinion comes directly from a true connection to our authenticity.

ROSE: I agree. And I think that’s something that she embodies completely. And then to have people say to her, that was a lot harder than I thought. What they’re realizing is: I can copy something all day long, but if you need me to express what’s inside of me, that’s a whole other ball of wax.

LIKE-HEARTED PEOPLE

ROSE: Something we’ve talked about with the external critic is having a support system, a community.

NANCY: I’ve been hearing recently people calling those types of communities not “like-minded” people, but “like-hearted” people. Like-minded means we all think the same way, which has its place, but like-hearted people are the ones who are going to feel safe. It doesn’t matter what you’re using to create. What matters is that we’re both looking for authentic voices or we’re both pushing each other to our edges. These are the callings of our heart.

And to find people who feel like they speak your heart language, that authentic voice, they may have very different voices, they may be writers and you’re a painter, they may be loud, and you’re introverted—that part doesn’t matter. It’s the level of authenticity. How safe do they feel within themselves? And how safe do you feel within yourself? And can you find people that match that? And then you can just let go in front of those people you can express yourself and feel like you have a safety net. Because ultimately, I think, what art is doing is speaking universally, right?

ROSE: I was remembering, as you said that, of standing in front of a Jackson Pollock painting, and thinking, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can’t leave.

NANCY: Yes. That authentic voice is something that we connect to.

ROSE: When you go through that experience and you put the work out there if it’s writing or poetry or singing, or whatever your art is, and just have that one person come up and say, that that was good.

NANCY: It shuts up the inner critic.

ROSE: And it’s so important because there’s that thinking that maybe I’m doing the wrong thing because my sales have slowed way down. Is it just a bad time economically or have you lost touch with your authentic voice? You’re the only one who knows the difference between the two.

NANCY: I think there’s a lot of encouragement to be found in this authentic voice realm to completely let go of the outcome. It’s not about the outcome for artistic expression and individual expression. It can’t be about the outcome because, once it’s out of our mouth, it’s being received in ways that we have no control over. And it may not be the time for our words or our vision to land with people. But that’s not our business. Our business is simply the expression of it. And then we let it go.

THE JOURNEY IS THE ART

ROSE: It makes art the journey.

NANCY: And you’re expressing your journey at this particular moment in time. And what a blessing for the world to have a vision or a picture of your individual journey at this moment in time. And the ripple effect that happens to whoever it touches, whoever gets to learn from your experience! It’s such a gift for human beings to learn what it’s truly like to be you.

ROSE: And in that, learning to understand what it’s like to be themselves.

NANCY: That’s right. Yes. Because we’re so social and we’re mirroring each other and reflecting off each other. I know more about me in relationship to you than I know about me when I’m by myself. And so, if you tell me your story, I’m going to hear it through my ears. And if it’s authentic, I’m going to hear the juiciest, biggest gift you can give the world: telling me about you.

ROSE: Well, and then give you permission to tell your story if you want.

You know what? I think we have this this huge movement going on right now with a lot of people standing up to be heard, really heard, like we haven’t seen since the sixties. I feel like it’s just been such a great thing for a lot of people—and artists—to finally be able to breathe. To have African American artists telling their story through their art, that culture living alongside the American white culture. It’s so beyond my second-grade teacher telling me I couldn’t spell. This is being able to express your voice after generations that have been told, No, we’ve heard enough of you, even before they’ve had the chance to speak. So, my question is: how do you uncover that? Because, in some cases, it’s like PTSD.

NANCY: I love the fact that there have been so many white people who are metaphorically handing the microphone over to people of color. As if saying, our voices been heard, you know what the majority culture’s opinion is, we’re done talking. The pendulum needs to swing in the other direction before it can find a nice balance, which will come in time, I assume, because that’s how nature works. But right now, the pendulum needs to swing. And we need to ask, what has this been like for you? We are ready to shut up now.

ROSE: When you do hand the microphone over and somebody starts telling you a story through their eyes and you see that, for instance, a traffic stop isn’t the same for every person. But, you know, people don’t believe these things are really happening. I would think that adds to the trauma.

NANCY: One of the most powerful ways to heal trauma—and I need to qualify this because it’s not going to single-handedly heal trauma—but a really powerful part of the process is to tell the story over and over and over. The more people of color as a culture are telling the story, the more power they’re going to have over it.

When we tell the story over and over, it doesn’t heal it like there’s no trauma. Trauma lives in our bodies. And so mentally and cognitively, using words to tell the story doesn’t touch the trauma that lives in our bodies; that is a completely different topic. But there’s so much power in owning our experience and then being able to express our experience. Telling our story is an incredibly powerful thing to do. And the more that people who have been traumatized can tell their story, the more that heals to a degree. And it has an incredible collective healing as well.

We all have such limited views on the world. None of us have the 360-degree view of it all. None of us have reality all figured it out. But each of our individual slices of the pie are valid and valuable and nourishing for the people to get this perspective. And when you see from that perspective, when we put both of those together, we’re both benefiting from a greater perspective of what reality looks like.

THE YIN AND THE YANG OF IT

NANCY: There was one other thing that keeps coming into my mind. When it comes to creating authentic work and expressing yourself authentically, I think there’s a beautiful truth to the idea of holding the masculine and the feminine at the same time.

The feminine is the creative part but it’s messy and formless. It’s the energy of creation. The masculine is what holds the form together. The masculine is the craft. The feminine is art. The masculine is the words we choose, and the feminine is the emotional impulse behind the desire to write that sentence. The masculine is the canvas and the colors of the paint, the feminine is the picture that evolves through the process of that painting.

When we’re not allowing the masculine to hold its rightful place in our work than it becomes that toxic masculinity, which is critical and judgmental, and self-doubt gets riled up by all of that. But if we allow the masculine energy to be the form of our work, and if we can identify the masculine and feminine parts of the artistic expression, we can allow the rightful place for both of them.

*Plant with Care*, Melanie Yazzie, monotype

And if we can identify where my creativity is and where my form is in this process than we’re allowing that masculine-feminine energy to completely support what we’re doing. And it then clears the way for authenticity.

ROSE: How do you get them back into balance if one takes over?

NANCY: I’m not so sure how this fits with other art, but with writing you have to just create first with no form. It’s all feminine. It’s all creation. And then bring in much more of that masculine energy and start editing it and forming it. And so, it’s not always that they’re both happening at the same time. It’s that I’m using them the way that they are meant to be used in their optimal ways. And when I do that, my authenticity is more free flowing.

ROSE: The artist Wayne Thiebaud said that you have to do ten paintings so you can throw nine away.

NANCY: Yes, and the first nine are the feminine, the tenth one is the masculine.

TELL YOUR STORY, FIND YOUR VOICE

ROSE: To circle back around to authenticity and voice, it seems that what we’re talking about, ultimately then, is storytelling. From Melanie Yazzie’s Native American paintings that people have said were childlike to Motherwell’s big black color field paintings and the Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings or hyper-realism paintings or photography, it’s telling a story. And it’s the artist’s voice coming through.

NANCY: And it goes back to all the things that we were talking about. Find that support to convince the critic inside of you. Don’t tamp down the critic; parent the critic—I’m the adult here, and you’re the one struggling. How can I help you?

ROSE: And give yourself permission.

NANCY: Yes, to go down that path, you really do have to talk to that inner critic because nobody is going to be good at throwing a pot the first time they try. No one’s going to be good at writing a novel the first time. And most people don’t do these creative things without community support. Whether it’s a passage in a painting or a passage in your writing, you need the support to bring your voice out. Find the people who really want you to share your voice.

But, if your goal is the outcome of selling “x” number of pieces of your work, then you’re missing the point. The point is self-expression and self-expression is an ongoing process. The outcome doesn’t matter, whether they sell or not. It doesn’t matter. Whether it’s appealing to other people or not doesn’t matter. Self-expression is a thing in and of itself that has nothing to do with outcome.

It’s the journey.

Witness to the times

My dear friend Ron Hicks and I were talking today about the death of George Floyd, as we have been for days, and the demonstrations and riots and calls to defund the police and it all suddenly reminded me of the poem HARLEM, by Langston Hughes (1902-1967). You may recall the first line: What happens to a dream deferred? But it’s the final line of that poem that keeps playing through my head: …does it explode?

Daniel Sprick, the living and the dead

Part One

There is a delicate rhythm to the most recent work by realist painter Daniel Sprick. From the confines of his studio, we glimpse the outside yet are held captive within. He won’t tell you what these paintings mean, if anything, nor should you ask, for each will say one thing to you today and take you by surprise the next with a new revelation or insight into your own world.

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Wayne Thiebaud, part one

I interviewed Wayne Thiebaud on March 16, 2009, at the LaBaron’s Fine Art Gallery, in Sacramento, California. It was a drizzly morning but the gallery’s tall white walls and sky lights created an airy atmosphere. Our 60-minute interview easily flowed into 90-minutes without either one of us noticing. Personally, I could have stayed there all day soaking in every word this brilliant artist had to offer.

RF: When people write about your work they use such words and phrases as: ‘what happiness feels like’; ‘radiant rainbow outlines’; ‘dance of brushstrokes’; and, ‘joyful’. I wonder, is the light and humor in your work a reflection of you as a person or more influenced by something outside your control?

Those pictures are a result of my being a spoiled child.

WT: Those pictures are a result of my being a spoiled child. My parents were terrific parents and I could really do nothing wrong. So, I had one of those privileged spoiled lives.

RF: It’s interesting that you would say that having grown up in the Depression.

WT: Yes, and it was an astounding experience, particularly in reference to what’s happening now. But then we had moved, my dad sort of lost everything, he lost all the money he had except for enough to go in with some members of the family to buy a ranch in southern Utah. So, I was raised during that particular time when I was young, and we always had plenty to eat because we grew crops. The only problem was we couldn’t sell them. So, that was a really wonderful time for me as a child. And my parents were of course hard-working but dedicated to the fact that we would get our way out of it. We were on the farm mainly when the depths of the Depression occurred.

RF: Then you moved to Southern California, right?

WT: Right – to Long Beach – which was a wonderful old place to grow up.

RF: And a continuation of a wonderful childhood. I can just imagine growing up on the beach.

WT:Yes, it was great.

RF: On that same note of how you grew up and what you bring to painting: You were friends with the de Koonings and met them, I think, when you went to New York the first time…

My heroes were people like de Kooning and Arshile Gorky and that whole wonderful period of New York painting.

WT: Right. I stayed in New York two times in my life, about a year each time. The first year I tried to sell cartoons and I wanted to work in advertising. Then, when I got interested in painting, I came back ten years later in 1956.

My heroes were people like de Kooning and Arshile Gorky and that whole wonderful period of New York painting. And that was a great changing experience. I had started teaching at the Long Beach Junior College so I had to take a year off without pay and went back and worked again in New York advertising, but spent time in the evenings and weekends getting to meet those people, going to exhibitions, spending time in the Cedar Tavern – it became such a famous place – but at the time it was kind of one relatively small art world. And you saw at openings, and in the general context of that period, critics, artists, writers, poets, all the kind of community. So, that was a great changing experience for me.

RF: I wonder if you had – the first or second time you stayed in NY – if your comics had taken off and you had gotten a job in NY, do you think living in NY would have changed the way you painted or the way your painting had evolved over the years?

He made me shape-up more; made me do more reading; made me understand what real critical interrogation of work was about.

WT: I think…I had already met someone who was a great model, what you would call a really serious person who worked doing painting and sculpture, and he became a very critical kind of influence. He made me shape-up more; made me do more reading; made me understand what real critical interrogation of work was about. His name was Robert Mallary. He was a terrific influence.

RF: Would you tell me some of the things he recommended you do at the time and how he made you ‘shape-up’?

WT: Essentially, work harder; develop a critical sense; understand what you are doing and know how to design problems which would get you to someplace where you thought you wanted to be. And that was very helpful. He would spend hours on what it was to interrogate a work of art: How to understand it in terms of its formal relationship; how to develop alternatives; hypothetical possibilities that you should learn to think about; how to sit and reflect and really try to determine in your mind running alternatives to what you were doing in terms of the picture’s potential. Make it darker, how to transfer it from, say, one kind of value structure to a higher structure, what that would do to it. What to do if you were to take all your color out of it and do it in black and white. Those options, which represent for a painter, I think, the tools of use and how to prepare for yourself always to be specific in order to take risks, to not be afraid of failure, make lots of work which is worth only throwing out. So, that was a very big and helpful exercise.

RF: Not being afraid to fail is a really important thing for an artist, isn’t it?

WT: Very much so. And for students, particularly, getting them used to that, and getting them used to the idea that the ‘nerve of failure’ is a very important aspect of painting, and while it makes you uncomfortable and vulnerable, if you don’t elevate your desires and ambitions to some kind of level of reality in terms of the long tradition that you are a part of however small then you have the risk of ignobling that great tradition which we use and which we respect and which we are hopefully a part of.

RF: I recently read that a high percentage of art students never actually go on to be artists.

WT: Yes, it’s a high fall-out rate.

RF: Why do you think that is?

WT: Well, it’s too damn difficult and too painful on the one hand. I think it’s a kind of neurosis. You have to give up a lot to gain a little. There are no guaranteed results. Those are not good options for a life. But if you are willing to make a life out of it, if you can learn to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst, and see the painting itself as an extraordinary human invention – that becomes enough for you – then going to museums, taking it on, loving what you’re doing, conditioned to the failures, getting some good instruction and critical reaction, which has nothing to do with success but has to do with a realization of where you are, what kind of progress you’re making and ways to do that and to form – I think, also another important thing – a kind of community of your own with some of the people, whether it’s one other person or a group of people. Those groups represent a kind of balancing act where you can have some kind of frank, honest confrontation and some sort of shared, communal love and series of responses; then you’re going to be okay, then you’re going to find a way to do those things which you love to do and are willing to give up those things that have no guaranteed results.

RF: Since we’re on this track, what’s the best advice you give your students? What do you really want them to take away – because you are still teaching at UC Davis, right?

WT: You’d have to ask the students about teaching. (chuckles) Teaching is one of the great other activities of my life. It still intrigues me, it still baffles me. You try to figure out to what extent you can have influence and what kind of influence you are responsible to have. Your responsibility, it seems to me, is to try to give them, first of all, those great examples of what it is to make these paintings, which are miracles, and to respect that and to understand that; to try to develop and show them what tools there are to make that possible.

RF: I’m always curious about this: I think the best instructors are able to help students find their own voice. You don’t see a lot of Wayne Thiebaud wannabes out there. How are you able to do that, encourage your students to find their own voice?

WT: Thank God for that! You have to aim higher than that.

RF: (Laugh) Oh, stop!

You are in a serious business. You are in the world of Rembrandt, Degas, Picasso, Michelangelo. How audacious that is to pick up a brush in light of what’s been done, right?

WT: No, I’m serious; it’s not a false humility. You are in a serious business. You are in the world of Rembrandt, Degas, Picasso, Michelangelo. How audacious that is to pick up a brush in light of what’s been done, right? So, nothing to do with false modesty at all but to try and account for yourself in some way and to try and liken your own development and how you might be making some progress and what traps there are for you out there. To try and avoid becoming what I might refer to as an ‘art world employee’ where you develop these products of commercial value, where you manufacture some kind of product. That’s not what painting is about. Painting is about, for me, research, confrontation, taking risks, going on and trying to challenge yourself to get better always. So, it’s a – I don’t know where we started with this question – it has to do really with some kind of self-confrontation, continuously. And there are lots of issues that are wonderful alternative also to the kind of dedication it takes to do what might be a parallel instance of art and science, where there is research (science), which may be totally irrelevant to what you are doing or may be on the cusp of some discovery, or applied research which has very good formidable functions and uses, and that’s something which I admire a lot, like great graphic designers, illustrators. In those realms, those also have the capacity to make art – whatever art is. And that’s an important distinction for me to be sure that you are careful about calling yourself an artist and be proud of calling yourself a designer, craftsman, painter, so that you are on a realistic footing.

Art is something which we are still trying to define. It’s an abstraction. I’m talking about it like I know what I’m talking about. All I’m doing is telling you my prejudices.

RF: I appreciate that. It’s a question I ask artists all the time: When does it become art? So many artists, you start out copying and growing, illustration is a great foundation, but when does it go from illustration to fine art? Those lines are kind of blurry, I think.

WT: Very, very blurry. It has to do, I suppose, in a simple minded sense from the extraordinariness, and it has to be something really special, something golden, something so extreme, so accomplished that you can say, “That probably is art.” But that is very rare. Most of us will never be artists. Most of what we do won’t be art; it will be some stumbling, half-way, partial, interesting, effective – and those are all very sound reasons to do. It would be wildly impossible to be artists. God bless those people who do it. Berthe Morisot is an artist. Rosa Bonheur is an artist, for me, beyond, and because, they are also painters and they use painting as the medium which allows them to get through to an extraordinary accomplishment. Yes, I call that art.

Wayne Thiebaud, Part Two

RF: I think it was Picasso who said: “Bad artists copy, good artists steal.” I love your quote to that affect: “I’m very influenced by the tradition of painting and not at all self-conscious about identifying my sources…I actually just steal things from people that I can use—just blatant plagiarism.” Would you talk about some of your influences, especially people like Edward Hopper and Richard Diebenkorn, and explain how you feel they were influential?

I’m very influenced by the tradition of painting and not at all self-conscious about identifying my sources…I actually just steal things from people that I can use—just blatant plagiarism.

WT: Absolutely.

RF: I’d love to talk about that, and when we are talking about art and artists and sort of defining things, who would you say throughout your life has been an influence, and who do you look at as an artist.

WT: Well, all those people that I previously mentioned, and the whole tradition of great painting. It might help to clarify something, and I suppose being an old teacher of a hundred and eight years (laughs), when students come and are disinterested finally and say, ‘Well, everything has been done, what am I doing with this? How can I ever possibly be? Why should I add anything, if I could, to this?’ Well, you try to talk about the idea of influence. That’s the whole story of art history, form one stylistic variance, to one sort of character of style to one issuance of change.

This evidence of what we call ‘original’ are very minor changes. It’s almost as all painters are most surprised when someone comes along and does something and everybody gets all excited about this, and some of us say, ‘What? That’s not surprising. That comes out of, you know, Roman Illusionistic painting, and so and so.’ What is it if you take someone like Van Gogh and you can find all his influences from French Tapestries and Magacello, Daumier, Millet, all of his heroes, Pissarro, Degas, all the people he said he loved, he loved Cezanne. And you can say, ‘Yes, you can find all those issuances in Van Gogh—why is he still Van Gogh?’ It’s a new visual species slightly away from all of his influences; it’s suddenly this new visual species. So, as soon as you say “Van Gogh!” (snaps his fingers), this IBM card – not only is it painting – it’s also, when I look at a cypress it’s a Van Gogh cypress. How he made that connection – it’s a miracle, a marvel.

RF: I was just thinking of an opera that Zandra Rhodes a fashion designer designed the sets for. She really channeled Van Gogh into the sets, so instead of regular palm trees they all had these Van Gogh patterns. So she took his patterns and gave them her own twist for the Bizet opera the Pearl Fishers. It was so stimulating; to reflect the music and not over power it.

WT: That’s terrific and that’s why we do what we do.

RF: I know this is the bane of the artist: the title. People have said you’re a ‘Pop artist’ others have said, no, he’s not a ‘Pop artist’ he’s a ‘Realist.’ What do you think of all these titles?

Well, you’re lucky to have people call you anything.

WT: Well, you’re lucky to have people call you anything. I’m just essentially a traditional representational painter, and by that I mean, always interested in imagery, trying to make a representational painting that has as much abstraction as seems to fit that particular mode of representation. The tradition, which is so long enduring, for me, is that which is able to manage those two things, essentially, memory and perception; how to negotiate and orchestrate those two rather extreme dualities. The synthesis that you might make from that is what is for me so fascinating in the long tradition of painting.

The thing that influenced me, (one of your other questions was what other things influenced me), would be poetry, literature, but also sports. The reason for that is central: that’s the concept of empathy, muscularity, kinesis, where a work of painting for me always achieves its results if things like balance, symmetry, grace – based on the human body – our reach, our actions, our bounce, that plumb line of body that tells us when things are skewed or when those vectors operate in space in a certain way. So, you’re tuning the body in terms of growing and rendering light and understanding how illusion operates, when you can’t use illusion, when you are not verifying plasticity of the surface of the two-dimensional surface area, you are trying to reduce the three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional surface, which is an impossible idea but a marvelous picture. And when you deal with fictions, you then have to believe in that fiction in your body, in your mind and prove that you are doing that by externalizing it for people to see and experience.

If your not going to a Cezanne exhibition and doing this (he moves forward and back in his chair as if dancing with an imaginary partner), but his carving and his trip through space, if you’re not feeling that you’re missing what Cezanne’s perceptual orchestration was about. He’s always trying to find where that thing is. It’s astounding. Sport is a kind of metaphor for a thrill with what the body can do, whether it’s ballet or basketball or golf or tennis, all of those characteristics. So, I’m not liked [by my students] because I make them stand when they paint. Sitting is a whole other thing. At least for a while, I like to get their bodies up and moving and feeling all these touches that they are making on this raw surface are operating themselves. Isn’t that nutty?

RF: No, actually that makes sense. I’ve always heard people talk about athletics that there is a muscle memory…

WT: Absolutely.

RF: …so, the more you do something your muscles have a memory for it, and painting is a physical activity. Then you have the memory of your mind to coordinate with your hand. It always seems that if you are searching, though, that that hand never quite does what’s in your head.

WT: No.

RF: I wanted to talk about Diebenkorn – you were friends, right?

WT: Yes. I miss him.

RF: He influenced several artists I know. I have a friend who had the great good fortune to paint with him. I wanted to talk about him and something you said about how Diebenkorn was thought of as provincial for working out in the West, or more precisely, for not working in New York City.

WT: Well, that’s that New York provincialism. You just can’t deny and they can’t deny it. They are uncomfortable with the idea that everyone should be thinking, “Why aren’t I in New York?” They just can’t imagine anyone living elsewhere. And that’s the great thing about New York; it’s one of the greatest places in the world. It’s so easy then to think about regionalism. But in the tradition of painting there were a lot of great hick painters.

RF: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

WT: So, they like the idea of calling Diebenkorn’s painting ‘California painting.’ They refer to me as a California artist. And that of course is like saying ‘California mathematics.’ There is only one kind of painting and it’s the whole tradition and Dick loved that so well. He loved the idea of trying to combine Mondrian and Matisse in some reasonable, interesting way; but mainly just sticking to the agonizing process of just trying to get the damn thing right. He was not highly articulate, but he was very bright, very well read, loved poetry, loved music. So, that hesitancy in his proceedings was tantamount in giving him the strength to be willing to wait, change, modify, extrapolate, destroy, rebuild. That is the kind of thing which his influence is so useful to painters or to anyone, but that for me was central to his power, and a very great painter.

RF: It was interesting the phases his work went through – and I wanted to talk to you about the phases your work has gone through especially as we look at a 70 year retrospective – his phases were from abstract expressionism, then coming back around and shocking the world by painting realism…

I like to paint anything I want, any time I want, repaint things, paint a pie if I want to, and that understandably drives critics crazy.

WT: I think that is only shocking to people who have no access to painting. Painting is…it doesn’t matter if it’s abstract or realism, it’s all the same, based on relationships, based on color; all the things are the same. It’s wonderful to think of it in those terms, I think. It can be a great danger. My own sense, I think I’m way too wide. I like to paint anything I want, any time I want, repaint things, paint a pie if I want to, and that understandably drives critics crazy. I’m determined to paint anything I want.

We were in Palm Springs before an opening and sitting in a café and a fellow came up from the street and asked, “What is this group, you’re whole family joshing around, what are you doing?” My son said, “That’s my father over there having an exhibition.” “What do you mean exhibition?” “He’s showing paintings at the Palm Desert Museum.” “He is? What’s it called?” “Seventy Years of Painting.” This guy just looked at me and said, “That guy should get a life.” (Laughs) He was dead right, that’s my life. Anyone else, unless you’re highly neurotic, passionate about something…so that’s my take on it.

You’re only a prostitute when you are doing something out of not loving it.

Dick, he always, he was very impatient when his work became formulaic. That’s something you have to guard against. Except, those formulas also are very crucial, you’ve got to work them out, that serialization of a single theme or idea has to go on until it evaporates. You’re only a prostitute when you are doing something out of not loving it. Painting morally persists when its substance is still real and qualitative, and exists there when you’ve done in that instance the best you can do.

RF: And then constant challenging of oneself.

WT: Always. You never can really be still.

RF: Which came first, the pies or the thought to reduce things to simple shapes?

WT: I don’t know; it’s so hard to disentangle something like that. It’s all one piece. When I was in advertising I don’t think I work very much different than I do now except I have a lot more time to work on things and try to get them more interesting or spend more time with them or refine them more or make them crazier without the art director saying you can’t do that.

RF: You were mentioning that with de Kooning it was the reduction of the figure, is that something that when you saw those works for the first time, did that strike a chord or change things for you in some way?

WT: Well, he was very influential in many ways; some of the things I’m saying came from him. He was very impatient with critical writing, for instance, he thought it was mostly nonsense. When you talk about… He said one time, “They say I have ‘non-environmental space.’ What in God’s name does that mean? But it’s a great term so I’m going to use it.”

Well, de Kooning was amazingly trained, as you probably know, six years at the Academy where you don’t get a graduation, you have to go before a board and say to them, “I think I’m well trained.” He said, “Can you imagine me saying that? I just snuck off one night.” He was so beautifully trained as a draftsman. Such exquisite use of line, like Holbein, his rendering in charcoal was extraordinarily beautiful, like Chardin still life. He knew a lot of anatomy and design and color. He wanted to be an illustrator, a commercial artist, that’s why he came to New York.

RF: When I see his work, it’s very confrontational. Was that him?

He was trying to be an artist, and that’s dangerous.

WT: Him? He was trying to be an artist, and that’s dangerous. But he was willing to chance it. He refers to himself – he wanted to take that and use it to look at his painting because it’s a great instruction – ‘I’m a slipping glimpser.’ Perfect term to tell you what he’s trying to do with these elaborate brushstrokes; if the brushstroke stopped, it’s stopped, like this (he suspends his arm still in the air as if holding a brush). And that’s a great thing to look for, what’s underneath? That’s not a generalization, it’s an essentialization.

The best thing I ever heard about de Kooning was when someone asked Salvador Dali what he thought of de Kooning and he said something very profound and insightful, he said, “He’s okay if you like blown-up Valasquez details. So, go to Valaquez and look at “Les Enfant” shirt, blow it up and see if you’ve got a de Kooning.”

It’s a lesson that if students get it they grow substantially because they begin to think about all these tools that are knowledge, that are so alive, and still possibilities to use just because you enjoy the hell out of it. It’s so great to frost a cake with de Kooning brushstrokes because it has to do with the whole interesting…what is tempo in painting? You don’t think of that because it’s still, but none-the-less integral. Those brushstrokes are the indication of time, the difference in time between two concurrent painters. Rembrandt, still, quiet, dark, very slow and Frans Hals – fall back in the chair. It’s a whole different thing about time – or light. Understanding how rich light has to be in a painting to include as many kinds of light as you can, even in a dark still life. The use of glowing light, glare light, where it’s over-focused, gleam – all those tools of light that you can use in your own painting and enrich it so you don’t settle for easy solutions or one-dimensional attitude. I don’t know…You can see why I’m so interested in teaching. You get with students to some point dealing with questions.

RF: I was wondering about Hopper. I saw the show at the Art Institute…

WT: Was that the one with Homer watercolors?

RF: Yes, across the hall.

WT: Yes, I saw that in Chicago.

RF: You did too? Well, I felt like I met him after walking through the show. I felt like I met him and I’m not sure how I feel about that. He seemed much more open in his work that he was – from what I’ve read about him – in his life. But the work seemed to really, maybe reflect how he looked at relationships, aside from the art I felt like he bared his soul in the work.

WT: Very good painter. And in art world talk they do him a disservice. Greenberg says something like this, and it’s an art world kind of way of putting down someone but not too far because they are so well considered by so many people…

RF: …so you can’t really say anything too bad…

So, Greenberg says, “If Hopper were a better painter, he wouldn’t be such a great artist.”

WT: Right. So, Greenberg says, “If Hopper were a better painter, he wouldn’t be such a great artist.” You give that to a student and the student has to puzzle that out. If you are useful to the student, you make sure that he understands something like that because it’s a central question.

Why is there a great rage right now that if we want good artists we have to ‘de-skill’ people. What’s that about? It’s about primativism and the use of primativism and how important primativism is. It’s great to celebrate academic drawing but you have to be sure that you indicate the risks of that as well so that people don’t get trapped in it, that they use it properly as a tool that’s going on, as a tool for extrapolation (God, why am I talking so much? Well, I haven’t been teaching for a while.)

Essays on Art