Double Portrait – Conversation with Whitney McVeigh

Untitled I, 2009
acrylic monoprint on paper
122 cm x 153 cm

“The subject does not pre-exist. It emerges out of the interaction between the artist and the medium.” – Robert Motherwell, A Process of Painting 1964. Would you say that this is a true statement with regards to your own approach to painting?

Yes, that’s true of the more abstract work. With the large-scale monoprints sometimes I begin with the basic shape of a body simply as a starting point. On the whole though the work is made with no premeditated thought and the image evolves during the process. It’s important to let the materials lead and to see what they’ll bring. One can then shift and change their direction by altering the direction or texture of the paint and then something else altogether happens. It’s about existing in the marks that one’s making and being open to the unexpected and also engaging with the process. If one knew where one would end up before beginning the work, there wouldn’t be a need to make the piece. The subject is therefore found and not described.

In the same essay as the above quote, Motherwell describes the importance of ‘getting used to a room’ in which to work, you have described your style as fluid and immediate, what circumstances or situations are needed for this fluidity and immediacy to occur?

I agree with this, the more familiar I am with the space the easier it is to begin and work freely. Preparation is important. Time is spent gathering materials, placing them, making sure everything’s readily available for the various stages of the larger works. I work with fast drying materials and approach the paper from all directions. I’m working through the images and making more than one at a time so it’s vital not to stop mid-process. Space is key as paint is poured and printed and there must be no sense of having to be concerned with the surroundings, no distraction from the paint itself.

Once a work is finished can you, with hindsight, isolate a starting-point for that work? I’m thinking about your works on found paper and pages from books do the pages signal to you in some way as to how to proceed with the work?

Yes with the book work. I’m responding to the existing page. The worn surfaces invite a kind of intimacy in the making. For example the medical texts I took apart in China, the pages were thin and delicate and therefore a delicate line was applied. The collages are made several at once as with the larger pieces. I surround myself with the pages and draw image and text together; I’m entirely present and working with the materials letting the images form themselves. I tear the words out with my fingers or with a blunt knife, the torn edge is significant, all of my work addresses human presence, the life within and how best this can be represented through the materials. I’ve written for many years, documented my thoughts in short sentences and words come to mind in the first instance, a line or fragment to work with and I’ll cut out the text accordingly and piece the images together. Knots and Splices, made from an old shipping manual are psychological works exploring the existing image on found paper in relationship to the newly printed image on the page.

The word fluid conjures the image of something continually changing and moving are your paintings a split-second of this fluidity captured and recorded, like a film still cut from a reel? Is your work about time in this way?

Yes, this is essentially what it is and it’s what I mean when I say I’m moving through the images. In some respects I’m not considering the end result, the piece as a whole but the fluidity of the process and being fully and actively engaged in the materials and in a moment in time. Paint is a medium for expression and it’s about existing freely in the material in order for it to capture something of the force of life and as the artist I am striving to convey some kind of truth, otherwise I wouldn’t be making images.

How do you understand the term ‘abstract’ with relation to the trajectory of your own body of work? I know that you studied portraiture very closely and the ‘Heads’ series seem slightly less abstract than the black paintings; if all paintings are a certain degree of abstraction do you feel your art is freer if it is of a higher degree of abstraction?

I’ve always had a greater interest in the marks that make up the piece then the subject itself. When I went to China, I made a conscious decision to make a series of images that were exploring the diversity of marks that a brush could make when pulled across a surface. After reading about Motherwell’s approach to his Reconciliation Elegy paintings, around this time I bought a large Japanese horse-hair brush. Motherwell described making these paintings as “mopping a ship’s deck under a black starry sky”, I was so taken by the image of the dark and an awakening of the surface through the mind and material. My trip to China showed me the parallels between the Eastern approach to Calligraphy painting and Abstract Expressionism, both approaches have the same pulling back or holding of energy before bringing it forward onto the page. So abstraction is more about sensation. Monoprinting is unexpected in that you are working relatively blindly – it goes back to the idea of working in the dark – much of my work is made in a ‘non-seeing’ state (being very close to the materials) and is looked at periodically during the process. With the Heads Series the Head is the vehicle for abstraction within the painting. I use the head to explore colour and line and a kind of mapping of the psyche through the materials. But yes the more abstract the painting, the freer one can be with the marks as one is only involved in the medium itself.

In the BBC4 program ‘Where is Modern Art Now?’ we saw you at work using your hands to push paint and imprint it onto large sheets of paper – have you abandoned the brush altogether?

Not at all but the large monoprints are physical works, almost sculptural, impressions where the paint is drawn into and poured on before printed one from the other. I use my hands and the back of brushes, sticks, any tools that are lying around in the studio to redraw into the surface once the first impression has been made. And often the brush is used after the pouring to extend the paint creating texture in the paint if moved quickly and if the paint dries then light is introduced into the black through the spaces in between. I use the brushes in different ways. If you let the brush dry out a little with the paint in it, you can print with it. Again it’s about being open to the materials and what they can yield. I pour and use tools more than brushes though on the whole. Using my hands is a way of connecting with the work almost like making sculpture.

Recently a quote from David Sylvester struck me in relation to my own painting… “The meanings, all of them, lie in the paint and they are in the paint not latently but in the impact of the paint upon our senses, on our nerves. Nothing in these paintings is more eloquent than the paint itself.” How does this statement relate to your own work and your understanding of painting?

It’s relevant and applies directly to the A Foundation show I’ve just had of the large-scale black monoprints. Something happens in the process of the printing of these images by hand and varying degrees of texture can be achieved in the paint. Marks appear in the black that I couldn’t have imagined. The paint takes on the appearance of human blood vessels or fish bones that become their own fragments within the piece itself. And yes particularly in the making I get a sense of the paint having an active play on the mind inviting an opening of the senses during the process and this is the dialogue, the mind affects the direction of the paint and in reverse the paint takes on its own direction in response to the mind. David Sylvester’s interviews with the American painters have been a large part of my teaching.

You asked about figurative versus abstraction earlier, you only have to look at a single brush stroke in a figurative painting as early as a Delacroix painting and single it out to understand the impact on the senses that a mark of paint can make if applied with emotion.

What’s next for you? Have you any exhibitions coming up?

Lots in discussion so let’s see. I’m working collaboratively with a writer on a project that’s been ongoing for several years and we’re hoping to exhibit it this year. I’m currently working with text and found objects.

Click here to visit Whitney’s site

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