Studio visit - Kirsty Budge May 2020

DS: Lately I’ve been thinking about some of the quotes from your works and the humour with which you tackle difficult subjects. Each time someone asks me how I’m going, I keep recalling your 2017 painting that quotes Real Housewives: “I’ll tell ya how I’m doing, not well bitch”.
How are YOU doing?

KB: I love that you told me this because that is a dream response to my paintings involving Real Housewives and other reality TV moments and especially from people that don’t watch the shows. I will happily wait three years for this pay off! This is why I love certain reality shows because they are explorations of the human condition and provide us with these little moments both in soundbite and image that (when they are good) can resonate with everyone. Dorinda Medley (from Real Housewives of New York) said this line in passing to author Candice Bushnell at a party in 2017 and it was so in the moment and reactionary but so deeply truthful. Inserting Dorinda’s head into my painting diffused the vulnerable and sensitive personal subject matter in that moment for me because it was sharp, funny and bleak.

Incorporating reality TV references in painting feels like a conversation with a new kind of Pop Art and I relate to how the artist Pauline Boty in the 1960’s referred to Pop Art as “Nostalgia for now”. A friend recently articulated that Real Housewives is like Arrested Development but with real people, and that description couldn’t be more accurate. These women are some of the funniest people on television. Housewives iconic moments have entered the general lexicon and have become a sort of dialect or shorthand visual adjectives to describe feelings and moments to connect us all. I think it's important to include them in my work at times because I want to paint from a contemporary perspective and embrace the absurdity of life, in a way.

I’ve gone off track and this doesn’t make sense, I could talk about this for hours. How am I doing? I am in a much happier place now than I was in 2017 so I am pretty good thanks!

How is the pandemic affecting you?

Like a lot of people I have lost a large portion of my income, I have a little art class that I run for kids 3 afternoons a week which is on hold for now but I still work a couple of days at an art store. I have my health and lovely friends and family so I am very fortunate. I am naturally quite introverted and solitary and it was only this past summer that I had just begun dating, going on little adventures and really making an effort to get out of the house and into the world, so that is different for now.

My daily anxiety management has been a lot easier and now I see how the speed of daily life contributed a lot to that anxiety. I do really like this slow and quiet pace of life with an emphasis on personal space and taking the time to do things properly instead of trying to pack a lot into each day. Social expectations have gone for the moment and I am finding that very calming, slow and safe. I am quite nervous about daily life returning to its old ways but I am looking forward to spending time with people I care about and getting back outside properly without being spooked.

Your last exhibition ’The Doing’ (2019) was quite inward looking, focusing on your immediate environment and headspace, painting and thinking about your home/studio and bringing your attention to your immediate environment in a very conscious way. It strikes me that the mode of working and thinking you were practicing then is very relevant to our current circumstances. Could you tell us about your current studio/ living space?

I moved to Thornbury in August last year because of irreparable roof damage in that lovely Toorak apartment that I painted from and about. As a result of that situation I very quickly realised that I actually needed to live closer to my friends and to my sister as I had been purposely isolating myself for a long time and it was starting to not be healthy.

At present my studio is in my lounge room of this Thornbury apartment. I have paintings stored in my entrance and in the hallway to my bedroom so I guess my whole apartment is actually the studio if I’m honest, but I try to not let it take over. After my last exhibition in April, I really struggled living in such close proximity to the studio because I had unconsciously stopped painting for about six months and it was a constant reminder of what I wasn’t doing.

Luckily before Covid-19 hit I had made friends with the home studio again because I am now five days in the studio and have never had this much time to just paint before. My practise has evolved into more of a fluid process without time constraints. I can be pottering around home doing the boring chores that I used to resent for taking precious time away from painting but I now catch glimpses of my work while doing them so I’m always working on a subconscious level. It’s nice.

We’d been planning on presenting new works for the Melbourne Art Fair in June (postponed!) and also your solo exhibition here in November, which we hope won’t be impacted. Could you tell us about the works you are developing?

In April 2019 I did a month-long residency at the Caselberg Trust on the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand and that time really helped me to properly begin exploring my own relationship to the landscape and to natural light.

This summer I was enjoying painting en plein air at my friend’s country house in South Gippsland and it's turned out to be a strong new starting point for me. A lot of my underpainting is done en plein air and the colour palette for the works are taken from the landscape also.

Once these works are brought back to the studio they then become about creating a balance between maintaining the essence of the landscape and following the push and pull within the painting itself. I also just wanted to generate imagery from direct experience that makes me feel alive and a part of the world. We have spent a lot of 2020 indoors, first for the hazardous air quality from the fires and now the pandemic. Staying inside isn’t that difficult for me generally but the threat of the outside not being a viable option is really concerning. Looking outside and spending time outside in nature is vital when experiencing an existential crisis of any kind, especially mid-covid.

You’ve mentioned to me that this new body of works seems to synthesise elements of the two branches of your previous painting practice. Can you elaborate?

I’ve realised that when I have struggled mentally and emotionally I gravitate towards tangible references for guidance and stability or that articulate feelings or an idea in a way that I can’t. This influence has then inevitably changed the “style” of my work but I basically just make the paintings I want to see and the notion of maintaining a style across my work is not important to me. I consider the medium of painting is my “style” and that concept is far less claustrophobic to me because I value the relationship and the freedom that I have with painting. I guess I just continue to gain more understanding of my painting practice as a whole and why certain elements and directions are important for me to incorporate in my work.

Over time I am seeing how the meaning of a work is accrued because I was confronted recently by looking at older work of mine and having a completely different understanding of it. I always aim to be open and authentic in my work but I wasn’t to know how that level of vulnerability would affect me later and that the painting would hold a completely different reading for me of my life at the time. I don’t regret it at all, in fact it’s actually been personally very helpful but it was difficult to see so I need to be mindful of that for myself. I like how I can see different realities and signifiers merge into something new as I continue to change and grow as a person but I think a general sensibility of mine is always there in the work somewhere.

To me, painting is one of the only places where I can connect contrasting elements and realities that encourages a visual reading all of its own. The painting plane is a great equaliser and composition is very important to me and so, it’s something that emerges over time through a process of decision making and trying to listen and follow the work. At some point it all just starts to make sense. One of my favourite artists Francesco Clemente talks about how painting is about ways of thinking that contemplate different truths at the same time and about how it's about unity.

Your work is often psychologically charged and responding to events in your own life and your wider world. How do you think this period will effect your artwork?

My experience with trauma and crisis is that I’m pretty good in the moment with the big things and not always very good at the smaller stuff. I’m working on that. Looking back, I’ve always made big leaps in my work during the hardest times for me personally because it forces you to reassess why you do what you do and who it is ultimately for. You start to take chances when you have nothing to lose and I feel like that now.

I am a pretty slow painter and unable to churn out paintings at a speed so it's a nice feeling to have things slow down around me without always feeling like I’m always a bit behind. I already feel different while painting and am loving losing time again while working. I just feel inherently less rushed and more in tune with myself and my work than ever before which helps when intuition is a key part of my practice.

I am also working on my need to over analyse everything and apply meaning too quickly. I want my work to reflect this change in myself but it’s a paradox because the work itself requires analysis all the time. I’m trying to balance the not thinking and the thinking. 

Last time we met was in February and we had a very cheery talk about the sense of impending climate doom and how the bushfires had effected the work you were making. Neither of us saw this disaster coming though! It seems to me that part of you was psychologically prepared for this (if that’s possible), and that your work was already making shifts?  

Because I am lucky enough to have a base-level sense of impending doom, I try to be as practical and optimistic as possible in the face of it all. I am a planner, very conscientious and try not to live beyond my means so I will not be overwhelmed in some areas when life starts to look like uncontrollable diarrhoea and requires you to surrender and be flexible. It's mainly self protection because I haven’t really known any different.

As a result of my upbringing I am very independent and self-sufficient but with those qualities comes trust issues and the tendency to hold back or retreat from people I care about for fear of being hurt. In saying that, I try to confront and show things in my work that I can’t necessarily articulate in person or make sense of. I ask myself hard questions all the time and when in grief or crisis, the muddiness tends to fall away and your intuition becomes very heightened and sensitive to what is fundamentally important. In those moments art means nothing and everything all at once. At the same time, some of the deeply funniest and most nonsensical moments of my life have been during some of the darkest times so there is always a tiny crack of light somewhere.

During the bushfires I got really basic, like “We are going to lose the colour Green in nature” kind of basic but now I have a new appreciation for green, so there you go. I had just started painting again and the bushfires started that age old line of questioning again. What do I do and why? Who do I do it for? What can it do for others? 2020 has been a very solemn and scary time and our own mortality feels more present than ever. Finding relief in epically small moments and trying to encourage connection and a sense of hope feels important to me right now. The writer Henry Miller wrote about how to paint is to love again, to see again and to live again and I try to approach my work with that in mind.

You’ve often used popular culture, celebrities and historical figures as players in a narrative that is personal, where they act as a kind of avatar for your interior dialogue, however I sense you being more direct in your work lately?

I see these figures that I put into paintings as a sort of ideogram, a character that symbolises an idea of a thing. References in my work aren't only visual, I like to include them in the titles of works also. Sometimes I will hear something or remember a phrase from a movie that is the final connecting piece to the painting puzzle. I’m always on the lookout for connectors in the content I consume. Clues and pieces are everywhere and bring me a lot of joy when they reveal themselves. Lately they are gravitating towards an absurd and surreal realm which feels like the right space for me at the moment. I like seeing unlikely relationships between things.

Every painting to me feels like a conversation or a love letter and who this dialogue is directed towards is changing all the time. I am still just finding my voice, thinking about what I am trying to say, figuring out what I like and what I need. I’m trying to focus less on the personal interior both literally and figuratively and am wanting to embrace external chance encounters and follow where that change takes me. I have felt a strong shift within myself personally. I’ve confronted some old ghosts, met some new ones and I feel alive and invigorated by the unknown but at the same time acknowledging what is here and now and practising acceptance of it all. I think I will always glean from my own experience in some way but I feel very free to embrace whatever comes my way. My work is all a reflection of this I think, well, it is to me anyway!

You’ve explicitly painted many of your heroes, could you tell us about some of your influences, not only from the visual arts but also other cultural figures, writers and musicians?

I have always been drawn to biography which I now see as a self parenting mechanism on how to be and how to live. The comedian Marc Maron refers to this concept as something that relieves the existential predicament of being you. Some of my favourite writers are Janet Frame, David Sedaris and Chris Kraus. I consume a lot of comedy in various forms and I love the work of Jenny Slate, John Early and Lara Marie Schoenhals. Musician wise I am a diehard Fiona Apple-head whose music changed my life in the late nineties, gimme that anywhere anytime. I listen to a lot of RRR mainly. I could just listen to a Fee B-Squared or an Astral Glamour playlist every day. I dance a lot at home, while I paint, while I potter around, while I cook dinner so my music choice depends on my vibe at the time. Dancing is an important way for me to release energy and take me out of my own head. Over the past few years podcasts have turned into a serious source of inspiration for me, I shriek with laughter while I paint, listening to comedic recaps and deep analysis of the subtext within my fave tv shows (Watch What Crappens, Everything Iconic with Danny Pelligrino and SUP are the leading intellectuals in this field). I also love longform conversational interviews by Marc Maron, the absurdist and filthy humour of Dear Joan and Jericha and I am a serious devotee of Keep It, a weekly pop culture podcast.
 

You work with a muted palette but also colour that is warm and rich. I recall you also saying that your colours are often mixed on the canvas? Could you speak about your use of colour?

I mix all my main colours and tones beforehand, always mix my blacks and greys. I do mix on the canvas when I need a particular tonal change. Colours change depending on what is underneath them or what is next to them so I do adjust on the canvas when needed but it’s not my primary way of working. I impose my own boundaries and a limited palette provides me with a little set of rules but within that there is so much to explore, especially when the muted tones are made of five different colours and I aim for warm and rich so that’s good! Earth tones are a must in every colour mix for me.

Tell us how you approach painting? Sketches, preparatory drawings, planning vs working it out as you paint and reworking compositions on canvas?

I don’t do any prep drawings for paintings, in fact I probably need to draw more. I take a lot of observational notes throughout the day, snippets of what I hear and see out in the world. The odd thumbnail sketch of a funny moment. I photograph my work at various stages so I can look at it in an isolated space if I am feeling lost in it and need to see it more objectively. A teacher once called it “taking your painting for a walk’ and it does work, sometimes I take them outside into the laneway for a fresh look at what's going on.

If I’m really stuck I print out colour copies of my paintings and draw on those, I guess that's kind of photoshop by hand but it is mainly all worked out on the canvas. I also work on multiple canvases at once which is pretty important because when something isn't working and I can feel frustration brewing I can then switch focus to another work to get over myself. I never want to force things because that energy is felt in the work. I like painting in layers and a part of every stage of the painting revealed. I remove a lot of paint and that's a very important part of my process, when things aren’t working I like to see what’s underneath and find new ways to move around in the work. Sometimes it’s about getting rid of your favourite part, that’s always hard. I spend a lot of time just looking at the work, painting with my eyes trying to connect and solve the puzzle.

You’re a New Zealander but have been based in Melbourne for much of your adulthood. Could you tell us about your relationship to your homeland? And tell us about your residency there last year? When coronavirus struck we’d been planning a trip together to New Zealand (also postponed!) Does a crisis like this make you miss NZ?

I did start to miss NZ at the beginning of this pandemic because Jacinda Adern is just such a humanist and so comforting and I wanted that safety and support. I have a tricky relationship with NZ because I don’t have a physical home to return to. The members of my family that are still around are dispersed throughout the country so there’s no central family base.The concept of home for me is about people and fortunately those I am closest to are here. There was a time when I was only going back to NZ for traumatic events and funerals so NZ has been associated with sadness and crisis for me for a long time and it was haunting me a lot.

To combat this, last year I wanted to establish a new relationship with my home country so I did a residency in Dunedin last year for a month in April at the Caselberg Trust on the Otago Peninsula and it was wonderful. It was a new part of the country for me to explore and I made the trip into a pilgrimage dedicated to the works and lives of painter Rita Angus and author Janet Frame. I followed clues in their works to houses, studios, museums, cemeteries etc all by bus down the east coast of the South Island. As hoped, this trip facilitated a renewed appreciation for the incredible landscape which I had lost as I rolled my eyes at it as a teenager so I now feel a lot softer towards the concept of home. There really was a deep connection to the land that I came from and it was very nurturing. I basically cried for the first 10 days I was there. I did huge bush walks, bike rides, I danced and read and listened and observed and breathed in the air, nestled in front of a fire and it all helped, I needed it. It was hard but rewarding. Apparently the crying while curling up in front of the fire was a common response of other artists once they had arrived at this house but I didn’t know that until afterwards. That was wild to hear.

The residency in NZ achieved the renewed sense of connection to home that I had hoped for  as well as helping to guide my work in a new direction. I look forward to going back again and maintaining that relationship.

I wanted to close by recalling your 2019 exhibition ’The Doing’ with its title drawn from an Amy Poehler quote, as it seems to speak of a good path for artists right now: “You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. That is what I know.”
[Amy Poehler, Yes Please, 2014 (Pan Macmillan Australia) p.15 ]

A brief list (lol not that brief)… what are you currently

Reading:

• Why This World, A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser

• David Park, Painter, Nothing Held Back by Helen Park Bigelow

• I like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum

• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

  
  
  

Watching:

• Better Things - Pamela Adlon

• I never watched Sex and the City in it’s heyday so I am bingeing that at the mo (I think it’s important to note that I’m a 50/50 Samantha/Miranda)

• Real Housewives of New York and Beverly Hills seasons have just started so I’m fully engrossed with “our girls” (as me and my pals call them).

• Rewatching Lynn Shelton (RIP) films and Nicole Holofcener films.

Listening:

As mentioned Fiona Apple is always a constant but her new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters is on repeat lately.

Missing:

hugs, massages, dinners with friends, going to the movies

Enjoying:

• Walks

• Instagram live content and videos especially Carey O’Donnell (@ecareyo), John Early(@bejohnce) and Julio Torres (@spaceprincejulio) - very specifically observant, comforting and just so funny and smart. I love them.

• Fee B-Squared’s instagram brekkie roulette @feebsquared

• The artwork of Jamieson Moore - achingly beautiful photographs and video works. The way she sees the world is a real treat and so heartwarming. @jamiesonmoore

• Phone calls, who knew?

View Kirsty Budge’s work in May / June 2020 at NADA FAIR (www.thisisfair.org) and Melbourne Art Fair online viewing rooms.