Keltie Ferris Spray Paints in Solitude | "New York Close Up" | Art21

How does an artist connect to the world while working alone? In this film, artist Keltie Ferris begins a new series of abstract paintings in her Bushwick, Brooklyn studio. Painting in isolation, Ferris discusses both the pleasures and anxieties of working in solitude. Throughout the film, Ferris looks outside of her daily studio process for connections to the world, taking stock of viewer's responses to her work, finding inspiration in both books and the urban environment, and situating her paintings in an art historical tradition. Applying oil paint with various techniques—brush, palette knife, and a spray gun—Ferris builds up layers of marks over several weeks into complex shapes and patterns. Asserting that abstraction is about "trying to undo the nameable things in life," Ferris describes her paintings as being about "seeing through to other worlds."

Keltie Ferris (b. 1977, Louisville, Kentucky, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

CREDITS | "New York Close Up" Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Editor: Joaquin Perez & Mary Ann Toman. Cinematography: Rafael Moreno Salazar & Ava Wiland. Sound: Nicholas Lindner, Wesley Miller & Ava Wiland. Associate Producer: Ian Forster. Production Assistant: Paulina V. Ahlstrom, Don Edler & Maren Miller. Design & Grahics: Crux Studio & Open. Artwork: Keltie Ferris. An Art21 Workshop Production. © Art21, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.

"New York Close Up" is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support provided by The 1896 Studios & Stages.

For more info: http://www.art21.org/newyorkcloseup

[Music]

♪oh ♪oh oooh♫ the Lord, the lord♪

[music continues]

It's a little bit like 'Karate Kid'.

[laughs]

making painting is such an enterprise in solitude.

One of these things really struggle about whether I could actually do this for my life

it's like I don't know if I can be alone that much.

It was really rough for me when I left school and started painting alone and full time

I was living home and working at home. So I had no reason to ever leave the house

Like going buy milk,and I would chat with the person selling milk, for [Laughs]

like, way to long.

"Can we see inside?"

"Oh yeah!"

[Laughs]

I mean, I think this is how they paint cars.

But they don't use oil paint, they use enamel.

I think there is a little bit of guilt to be an artist in this time.

when you could be doing something more proactively positive directly in the world.

It's hard to do something that is not justified by anything.

I don't know if I actually succeed in that, but that's the goal.

[Spray sound]

There is something indulging about painting.

My individual creativity sploodged over the surface for you to admire how unique my mark

making shit smearing process is.

I struggle with that not all the time but i occasionally do struggle with that about what I do with my life.

{scoffs]

It is such an ugly, ugly stage in the painting. [laughs]

Oh my God I can't believe I am showing this to you guys.

It's horrible.

[sighs] I don't know.

I think I am going to have to put more purple down. I don't like how it looks like a squid in front of a building.

I've had a lot of people say that my paintings remind them of graffiti walls,

or seed maps and grids in a sort of literal sense.

At first when people said you seem to be inspired by the city, I was like: "No, it's so corny..." and "...that's not true..."

Then I realized, I have like a view of Manhattan from my studio.

You know, that's the main thing I look at when I'm not looking at my paintings, as I look out the window.

My paintings are about, I think, seeing through the other world,

like maybe hiding and exposing a road system on top of the subway system, under an air traffic control system.

That's what an abstraction is, it's not about things that are nameable,

it's sort of like undo the nameable things in life.

This is what I'm looking at, Bernard, Albert Allen, I just looked at..., I just found... re-found these yellow ones, yellow Albert's paintings...

...like yellow and grey, whites.

[exhales]
"God!"

Slay me, you know!

[laughs]

The color is so good. What? It's like puke of orange and yellow.

Yeah, painting is one of the oldest thing in the world.

I mean, hands down. Not only it is of the oldest things in the world, like, when you make a painting

you have no idea how long it's gonna last.

It could last a very, very long time. It might not, it might be put into a dumpster tomorrow.

Cause maybe in hundreds of years people'd be looking at my paintings.

Maybe even as just as artifacts, of what idiotic people do in New York at some point.

I think the beauty of painting is just that you feel a kinship for a moment at least, of the world.

You feel a little less alone in the world, which is great.

[music]