Paint a shaped, colorful canvas with Elizabeth Murray | Art21

Elizabeth Murray:
The whole thing is so scatological.

When you're painting, it's like so
physical.

It's really physical.

You're squeezing the paint out of the tube
which is fun.

You're mixing up the paint.

It's making something happen with a very
sort of fluid material that is constantly

somewhat out of control, harnessing it
somehow, harnessing that energy of the

paint. I think that's the primary thing
that painting is about.

For a couple of years I've been working
with cutting out shapes

and kind of glomming them together.

You know, like basically making a zigzag
shape and making a sort of

rectangular shape and a circular bloopy
fat cloudy shape and just putting them all

together and sort of letting the cards
fall where they may.

I know the shapes are always referred to
as cartoony.

And they are cartoony and bumpy and
rounded

and inflated and sort of wacky.

All of these shapes are stuck on to each
other in some kind of way.

Sort of like a weird fence or a weird
lattice.

Another part of it for me is to use very
intense color.

With the color and with the shape
and with the drawing inside of the shape

really it's just simply trying to make it
work somehow.

There are so many different combinations
of things.

It's like being a safe breaker and you're
listening to the-

those movies where they've got their ear
up against the safe and you are listening

for the right click for the right
cylinders to like drop down.

Sometimes it's felt really like that,
like I'm just like painting

and painting until the right thing
happens.

I want there to be conflict and I

want there to be tension.

And yet somehow I want to make these
very conflicting things live together,

and not just butt up against each other
but really live together.

I do drawings inside the book.

And they're just kind of like warm-up to
get my mind into it.

You know like to give myself some,
some place to start from,

that's really all they are.

It all starts with drawing.

I think the thing I remember the most
is, when I was little was,

the excitement of being able to draw
something.

I loved to draw, and I did obsessively.

I guess I kind of realized that it was a
skill that made me feel good about myself.

The Art Institute in Chicago totally
changed my life.

There were people there, the likes of whom
I'd never seen before,

in little Bloomington, Illinois.

I absolutely feel in love with that
world.

But I think as much as I wanted to be
an artist,

I wanted to be different the way they
were different.

Because it felt like freedom.

Instead of being trapped in your little
Pendleton skirt and your bobbysocks,

and your saddle shoes, you could wear
big heavy black boots and put blue

makeup on and just, you know, say
what you thought.

You didn't have to be a nice lady
anymore.

But the teachers seemed to be there
to teach you that you had no hopes

and no prospects, and being an artist was
one of the most impossible things in the

world.

And you'd better realize that this was a
life of suffering, struggle, and you

weren't going to be any good anyway.

I had to really find a way to believe in
myself.

You know, I think I did it by looking at
the paintings in the galleries in Chicago.

I would go everyday and I would look at

this particular DeKooning painting called
Excavation, and I would almost like

do a dance with it.

Like, oh, he went this way

and oh he went that way,

and oh he smudged this and feeling

like the depth of that painting.

When you look at it from a distance it

looks like this roiling boiling pot of
paint kind of.

Except the order is in that paint.

And when you go up to it you begin to see

like the layers of it, and I sort of

deconstructed the painting

and I would go back down to my painting

and I would try to do it.

I never got that good, but it made me

start to feel my body and my mind.

My mind letting my arm make the decision.

And when you start to get the control then
your feelings can start to flow.

And once that starts to happen, it's
like you know, you get on

the track and the trains starts moving.

I just realized this was going to be
my life.

I really need time by myself, and I
always have.

And I think when I was a kid I actually
liked to play by myself a lot.

And that's not saying I don't need
people because I do.

I love the quiet of walking into my studio

and looking at my work and then painting,

and it just feels like of a piece with
my whole life in a way.

Having my kids has made me part of the
world as an artist and as someone

who works in a lot of isolation it's
really made me deal with life in

a way that I absolutely wouldn't have.

It's made me have a life, and take my
mind off myself.

That's what they've done for me.

They'll be more honest with me than
anybody else will.

They'll tell me how they feel.

And not everybody does that.

DAISY: Which one do you want to talk
about?

MURRAY: What, honey?

MURRAY: This one, yeah.

So, what I want to know is, I'm trying to
decide whether to put this in the show.

And I want to know, just tell me exactly
what you think of it.

I just made some big changes in it.

The drawings are different but this is
what sort of comes out from the drawings.

SOPHIE: I like it. And I think if you-

MURRAY: Of course what I wanted you to
say was it's great,

it's good, don't touch it, put it in the
show.

DAISY: But Mom, even if you couldn't, even
if you were going to

leave everything the way it was you
couldn't because it's not like

nothing except for that and the chair and
the door, it's nothing, and the sun,

none of it is done.

I think, I think that it all just- it
isn't a bad thing you just,

the surfaces aren't finished.

SOPHIE: Are you bored with it?

MURRAY: No, I'm very interested in it.

DAISY: Because you don't ever leave
things like this.

MURRAY: Yeah, no, I'm going to just keep
working on it.

SOPHIE: But maybe that would be
interesting not, just leaving it.

MURAY: No, I can't do that. Daisy's right.
You're right, you're right, you're right.

MURRAY: I think that what I have to do is
take out the bloopy forms and re-

and just, maybe they will come back and
maybe they won't, but-

MURRAY: I think I got to take these out
for awhile.

SOPHIE: It might just be nice to see what
it looks like when it is just,

you know, blank.

DAISY: It might be that they are too
much like the curves in the smoke.

SOPHIE: Oh, yeah!

MURRAY: Yeah but then, yeah.

SOPHIE: I love the smoke.

I think the smoke is my favorite thing.
I think I like this red and the pink.

MURRAY: But what about the marks inside
the roof tops, the triangles.

It just feels like, it's very
descriptive.

The triangle then becomes the roof,
you know what I mean?

It's a representation.

SOPHIE: I mean that's what it is.

MURRAY: Yeah, ah-hah.

SOPHIE: That's the chimney, that's
the smoke coming out of it,

that's you know, the little people inside
of it-

MURRAY: Be quiet!

SOPHIE: Of course there is room for
interpretation I mean that's what your

work does, but you know there is the
little people inside that are talking,

and that is what they are saying
inside are little speech bubbles.

MURRAY: Cartoons, speech bubbles. Ohh,
ok.

DAISY: I thought it was a path.

SOPHIE: You thought it was a path?

DAISY: Hmm-mmm.

SOPHIE: Oh, it could be a path. See Mom?
We still don't know what it is!

MURRAY: Ok, that's really good. That's
really helpful.

I think every artist has this, you leave
it at night and you come back in

the morning and it's gone, like it looks
awful.

And that's sort of when I think, "Why did
I go on this journey in the first place?"

What am I doing this for?
It's just, it's so painful."

And then you know, the next morning you're
back at it bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

like trying again.

MURRAT (SOT): Ok, so let's move this
painting over here.

MURRAY (SOT): No, don't even hang it up.

My fantasy is that I would get to a
certain point where I would know

what I wanted to say, where you were
either on this straight line or a road,

you would never swerve.

You would just do your work then.

And that's not the way it is at all.

You know, get off the path and then
get back on again for a while

and you trip along and suddenly you
stumble and then you're back on again.

And I don't think that process ever ends.

MURRAY (SOT): And that height is good.

More over to the right, center it on the
wall.

MURRAY (SOT): Let's switch this with this.

MURRAY: When I really know certain things
are working for me,

they make me laugh.

Like oh, this is really silly.

And I just enjoy that.

And I think for myself it's part of what
gets me through.

I think it's really very similar to how a

kid plays.

You know, it's like you are in your
playroom

and you are just picking up these

different shapes and throwing them on the
wall and then putting them together

and seeing what kind of a game you can
make out of them.

I think that's pretty explanatory of what
it feels like to make them,

and very close to the kind of feeling that
I want to get out of them,

and I think I want you to get out of them
too.