Leonard Baby: Independent Art Fair, NY
Past exhibition
Overview
Spring Studios
50 Varick St., New York, NY 10013
Dates & Times
Thursday, May 11, 2023 | 10am – 8pm (By invitation only)
Friday, May 12, 2023 | 11am – 8pm
Saturday, May 13, 2023 | 11am – 8pm
Sunday, May 14, 2023 | 11am – 6pm
50 Varick St., New York, NY 10013
Dates & Times
Thursday, May 11, 2023 | 10am – 8pm (By invitation only)
Friday, May 12, 2023 | 11am – 8pm
Saturday, May 13, 2023 | 11am – 8pm
Sunday, May 14, 2023 | 11am – 6pm
Works
Press release
A conversation between artists, Leonard Baby and Walter Robinson
WR: I think one of the things that's interesting about figurative painting is how many different sensibilities and styles there are. To me, there's a tension and dynamic between how realistic you are versus how expressionistic you can be. And often, I find myself wishing I could be more expressionistic. Because, in a sense, it is so much work to try to make it look realistic. What's your feeling about all that kind of dichotomy, that kind of binary?
LB: That's my biggest struggle for sure. I’m on a lifelong journey to be the best painter that I can be, but I am always falling short of that. I think everyone falls short of that, other than the Masters. I often need to stylize these more, otherwise, it's very clear that I'm failing at something that I'm setting out to do rather than these stylized, impressionistic things, where you're telling the viewer I did this on purpose, and it's by choice not by chance.
WR: Style saves you.
LB: Definitely.
WR: Very interesting. My excuse always is that I want it to look like paint.
That is to say, a lot of people use glazing, and they make it invisible. You can't really tell how they made the picture. I get that feeling often with the Old Masters. And people ask, how did they even do this? You can't see too much of our ownership, there are too many centuries between us. A lot of contemporary artists, like Will Cotton, are so good at what they do. I could never approach that. I tell myself that my excuse is that I wanted to make it look like paint to make sure everybody knows it's paint on the canvas. That's my alibi. And so I'm really pleased to think of Richard Estes, the greatest photorealist painter. If you look up close at his paintings, you can actually see all the small brushstrokes. He's not doing a lot of blending. But you are good at blending.
LB: Thank you for saying that. I wouldn't agree.
WR: Maybe, that's probably too technical.
LB: Right. I would say that there are painters, like Will Cotton, but then there are painters’ painters, where you look and you're just like, that was so much fun to paint. The Alex Katz show at the Guggenheim was just like that, I was so excited to get home and paint because you can just see how much fun he had painting that.
WR: Working from film stills. You don't really want to be someone who's painting movie stars and celebrities, right? That's a different kind of project.
LB: Yes. Definitely.
WR: What do you think is the emotional sensibility of the work? They seem kind of quiet, reserved? I don't know. What do you think? Are you aiming for something?
LB: I find that my interest is always pulled to visual irony or humor. But it's interesting because a lot of them are humorous to me, but dark or sad to the viewer. In the context of the film that I'm watching, it's usually something funny that I see, and I feel that I need to make that official.
WR: do you have the TV going in the studio while you work?
LB: I don't because I have to be very focused. I’ve tried that before, but I guess it’s too much.
WR: So you say there's humor in that. And the pictures that didn't leap out at me, are there visual puns or something that I should look closer to see?
LB: I think you would only pick it up if you're watching the film. But in the context of the film, it's melodrama, or I think melodrama is a big theme in my work, which I find funny, but I also relate to a lot.
WR: So you'd like there to be some kind of feeling in there, some kind of drama, some kind of
definitely subtle action.
LB: Yes.
WR: One of my first thoughts when I looked at the paintings just now was Robert Bechtle, the photorealist painter. There's a show over in Chelsea.
LB: Yes, I haven't seen it yet, but it looks amazing.
WR: I think what my reaction to that work is are the very middle class snapshots, which yours are not, that’s not what you're doing. I don't think.
LB: No, but I've been compared to him several times. He has such a sterility and realness that I wish that my work had. I feel like mine exists kind of in this sappy mid-century hoppy world for better or for worse, but I think that sense of domesticity and finality is there for sure, with both of our works.
WR: Maybe they're not photo realist because they're fictional?
LB: Right. It's definitely what I aim to replicate, it is not life. I aim to replicate the film like technicolor in cinema scope. I like the coloration of those mid-century movies. It's like nothing else, the blacks and the browns are so deep and the reds are so matte, everything feels so matte. I feel that I'm following a different rulebook by that I'm not painting reality. I'm painting a depiction of reality.