Category: Creativity Q+A

Traverse City painter Justin Shull “knew, even in high school, that I really wanted to be making visual art in some capacity.” And, that’s the course the 41-year-old artist set: a 2004 BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College [Hanover, New Hampshire], followed by a 2009 MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University [New Brunswick, New Jersey]. But road blocks, and side roads, and other impediments got between him and total studio immersion. Now, he’s free to practice, and this is what he has learned.

This interview was conducted in January 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Justin Shull

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What is your work?

For the past three years I’ve worked full-time as a fine artist. Prior to that, my last role was product manager for a video company, Riot Games.

Any male, age 12 – 25 has heard of the game [he worked on]. It’s called League of Legends. It’s an online multi-player game, kind of a fantasy-based capture the flag with very deep strategy. I joined the company in 2011 when they were small — about 100 employees — and the company grew to about 3,500 employees world-wide, and had about 350 million monthly players at one point. Quite a large game. Very popular.

How did your formal training affect your development as a creative practitioner?

I knew, even in high school, that I really wanted to be making visual art in some capacity. But I thought then it was something I did along side or parallel to whatever profession I’d choose. At the time I was in engineering, then pre-med. I explored a lot of different directions and ended up studying studio art [undergraduate studies], and then going back after some time in the work force to do my MFA. I thought I wanted to teach, and be in higher education, and surrounded by that environment and be part of that community. What I enjoyed about undergrad, graduate school and teaching was the ability to explore visually, wherever your creative sensibility took you — there’s no market pressures in that. A good portion of my creative journey has been within that context, and it has only been in recent time that I’ve been trying to make work that connects more directly with a market.

What did you take away from school that you now see is part of the way you practice in your studio?

One of the dominant mindsets coming out of the academic environment is to focus narrowly, and in a very rational, research-based approach. I’m still deciding if that’s the right way for me to work. Very often, it doesn’t seem like the right way to work because I have found I tend to work on multiple series in parallel, that are only tangentially related, and that actually have to develop on their own over time. Having to describe them up front as [an academic] thesis is not the right way to arrive at the best work. That’s one thing that has taken me years to figure out in terms of what was the dominant framework for working in academia — versus creating a work flow and an approach that works in the studio. That was really important because how you structure your approach to work, and how you constrain or not constrain yourself, has a big impact on outcomes over time. I want to say I received a lot of technical, hands-on education around how to use the media, and I did not. Most of the programs are much more focused on the conceptual side, and they leave it to the students to figure out the medium.

Why do you think that is?

I think it’s a pendulum-swing reaction to the over-emphasis on a singular approach to the medium, which defined academies for centuries. There was a really strong reaction to that through Abstract Expressionism [to the present time]. There are programs that really stress how to, for instance, develop your facility with oil paint. But a lot of programs do not.

Do you work in oil, or acrylic, or both?

In undergraduate I worked primarily in oil paint until I developed a severe sensitivity. I’ve been limited in my ability to use oil paint since then. I only work with it outdoors now. But there are a couple of painting that I’m working on [in the studio] that are going to require some oil paint. As a medium there are certain things I can do with it optically that I can’t with acrylic. I tend to look at whether I’m using acrylic paint, or oil paint, or another medium in part [determined by] what that medium allows me to do visually, and in part what’s contained in that medium from an historical context.

Give me one example of what you can do with oil paint.

Because oil paint has a longer working time, you can use soft brushes to achieve very subtle gradations and blends that you cannot with acrylic. There are more recent developments with the open [acrylic] paints that let you begin to approximate that; but there is something about the way the oil blends materially and optically that lends itself to certain applications.

Describe your studio.

I work in a live-work space in the Tru Fit Trouser Building in Traverse City. In total, it’s about 1,300 square feet. I have about 700 square feet of that set up as a studio. I’ve been in this space for two year, and I specifically wanted to work out of this space because of its tall, white walls. There’s really a flexible track lighting system with high CRI [color rendering index] lights so I can approximate what larger work would look like hanging in a gallery. For me, that was part of the process of working up in scale, and developing studio work — not just landscapes rooted in outdoor observation.

You’re able to bring the landscape ideas inside, and complete them in the studio — as opposed to confining yourself to plein air painting.

Yes. Plein air painting is a great exercise in staying calm, collected, and focused on translating my experience of the space around me in real-time, navigating changing light and sometimes challenging weather conditions, and maintaining the mindset that my primary objective is to observe and translate spontaneously in a way that ultimately will be inviting to re-discover later (both for me and any other viewer) versus falling into the trap of going out to “make a good painting” or to “make a painting that will sell.”  Everything I learn while painting en plein air filters into my studio work, but for me the studio is a place where ideas can unfold at a much slower pace, sometimes even over the course of years. I might develop a digital sketch over the course of a few weeks and then return to that idea a few years later to make a painting based on that sketch and the painting is then able to unfold into its own self and perhaps push some of those ideas even further. And more recently in the past year, branch out from landscape altogether into a more figurative, allegorical series.

You have been known as a “landscape painter.” You exhibited a piece in the GAAC’s 2023 Swimming exhibition that suggested you were trying to get out of the landscape silo, to explore other themes and subjects. How hard is it, when one is known as one thing, to start moving in other directions?

I’m still learning that. There’s a couple of different axes on which you can answer. One: It can be quite easy, if you’re just talking about making work. I can go into the studio and make something completely different. That part is easy. But then there’s the question of how it’s received? How do meet expectations, or not meet expectations, and how do people respond. That’s the part I’m still figuring out. Much of work from the last year I have available on the web through a couple of private viewing rooms, but I haven’t posted it my website yet. That’s one of my big project this year, to decide how I want to integrate, or not, those different bodies of work. There’s value in looking at historical examples of how people had multiple, diverse bodies of work versus a singular body of work. But then, I can decide that even if that didn’t work for someone, I’m going to make it work this way.

You paint landscapes in lots of lovely, luscious color. You’re also painting landscape in winter in a primarily black and white palette. Usually, when people paint the landscape that do that when it’s sunny, 70 degrees, and the world is in bloom. You, however, are finding something very paintable in a starker landscape. Talk about that.

The root  of that is I don’t actually see myself as painting the landscape. What I see myself doing is painting my response, my representation of my experience of the world, which manifests in different ways. One is interaction with a landscape. One is interaction with various media, technologies. I always look at the landscapes I paint as metaphors for some other state of being, or mindset, or philosophy, and that creates a lot of space for working with different [seasonal] lighting conditions, subject matter within the landscape that might not be there to celebrate the sunny day, but be there to speak to our human experience as we move through the world. That’s how I come to the landscape. And then, of course, the audience will take different things away as well. That’s the beauty of it — there’s always room for a range of interpretation once the artwork is out in the world.

What’s your favorite tool?

My favorite tool is my projector. It allows me to accomplish a lot more than I would otherwise accomplish. In the history of larger-scale public painting there’s always the question of transfer, and how one scales their design — work at a small scale to work at a public scale. Digital projectors are amazing. I can make a drawing, a collage, an iPad drawing. I can combine them all. I can take that to an 8 ft. x 8 ft. canvas. I don’t have to sit there and grid out — for hours and hours and hours. In that way, it’s a productivity tool. It also helps you see things in a new way very quickly. And, I try to be really upfront that I use a projector in my work. When you start to talk about tools and methods, artists can very quickly start to splinter into ideological camps. I like to have that conversation with people who might not like to embrace photography as a source, or certain technologies. I’m happy to talk with anyone — especially people working in the Western traditions, the centuries of utilizing optical tools in the studio.

The distinction I hear you making is this: The machine isn’t doing the heavy creative lifting. It’s helping facilitate your expression of your original work. I think that’s where the conversation begins to get into “explain yourself” territory.

To our point, the bigger theme is the conscious choice as to which technologies we use, and to what extent efficiency is the goal. There are times when efficiency gains are really useful. And there are times when being in the middle of something, and having to make a decision with your hands is very useful.

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal? What tool do you use to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I have a couple spiral bound sketchbooks. One of them I use to do color tests with paints. One of them I use to sketch out ideas. Then, I also will physically collage materials together — one-off pieces — that I collect and put into a photo portfolio at the end of the year. And, I also have a digital sketch pad.

You’ve created murals. You’ve worked as part of a video game start-up, and you’ve taught visual art at a number of universities. When did you decide to jettison these kinds of work, and commit to working with serious intent as a studio artist?

Coming out of undergrad I already felt that, if I had the choice, my priority would be maintaining a studio practice as a primary pursuit. It was a question of financial practicality, which it wasn’t [for Justin] for a good 15 years. After a few years of teaching through the financial crisis in 2008, 2009, my mentors [at Southern Methodist University (SMU) and Texas Christian University (SMU)] who were going to be retiring, chose not to retire, and they gave the feedback that if I couldn’t sustain myself [as an adjunct instructor], I should do something else. That got me out of teaching. As far as working in the video games goes, it’s difficult to work at a start-up part-time. It was really, for many years, all or nothing. I [eventually] tapered off to a part-time consulting role [with Riot Games], and then was able to paint. I’d stopped making art. It around 2017 I started painting again, and I knew it was going to be a few years, minimum, before I could produce work that I could bring to gallery. Coming out of the financial crisis, a lot of institutions decided to lean more heavily on adjunct instructors, and begin tapering back and eliminating tenured [positions]. The whole model and ecosystem of tenured-track positions changed dramatically.

How did teaching cross-pollinate with making your own work? And, how did teaching get in the way of you making your own work?

What I like about teaching is you have the opportunity to always be learning something new about some method or software or conceptual approach — if you want to. There’s this ongoing embrace of curiosity and learning that can cross-pollinate, between students and educators. There is an atmosphere of possibility in the classroom, with younger students. Those are things I really enjoyed. In reality, the world of an adjunct instructor is pretty difficult. You’re teaching two-three times the course load of an associate or tenured professor, and very often trying to find additional income — just from a practical standpoint — on top of teaching. When I was teaching, I was teaching six classes a semester, and also had a part-time job. As you can image, if you want to be making work, or if you have any aspirations to have a family life, those things can quickly come in conflict. The practical application of the current [teaching] model is that it does not create space or time or ideal energy to make the best work. That’s just the reality.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

There are different roles the visual arts play in our lives, as creators and as audiences, and a lot of people can engage with the visual arts and benefit from the creative process and how it affects their day-to-day approach to navigating their lives. And then there’s the question of: What role the visual artist plays in attempting to reach a broader audience, and be part of a broader conversation. That’s always up for debate, and always evolving. In the best scenarios, those individuals help us to understand what it means to be human, and to understand what our value systems and belief constructs are; and help us think about how we’re navigating the world. That’s pretty lofty, but I think, at best, what the visual arts, what other arts, can do.

You’re not creating work that attempts to be photographic in its precision. You’re creating work that provides people with a visual of how you’re interpreting the world. Lots of times, people who work in the visual arts see things differently, or see different things, and give viewers an opportunity to think about, for instance, the start beauty of a black-and-white landscape in the winter.

There is a certain satisfaction or joy that comes from being able to replicate a photograph. My goal is not to replicate a photograph. Photography and optical image projection, for me, are all tools. The image I ultimately create is a personal reflection.

What parts of the world find their way into your work?

Personally, one of the principles guiding my choice of colors, is the physiological effect color can have on us. Very often, the reactions a viewer is having to the colors in my work are connected to the types of experiences I’m trying to reference in the first experience of a location or a place. It might not be initially evident. Another thing that comes into a number of my landscapes is this idea of the intersection or interaction of our ordering of the world around us, and the natural logo or structure it pushes back with, and the dynamic balance — or lack of balance — between those two. There’s so many different ways to get at that.

On your website, you talked about direct observation: “ … my studies with Stanley Lewis at Dartmouth College and Chautauqua School of Art instilled in me the importance of direct observation, and introduced me to the amazing range of potential expression within this tradition.” Elucidate.

We can create space, and a sense of place completely from our imagination. Or, through strict adherence to shapes and colors that we observe directly. One of things I appreciated about Stanley was his commitment to going outside every day and working on a painting for two months straight, through changing weather and light conditions, and attempting to bring that experience into a single image — that was this condensation of time. My first exposure to folks going outdoors to paint was the Impressionists, and a lot of that work was really quick. To see this range of folks going out to experience the landscape directly, to capture their experience of it directly, for me that was a real revelation.

Why is there benefit in directly experiencing something?

I see value in personal, authentic, individual processing of then world around us rather than consuming what we’re told to consume.

How does Northern Michigan inform and/or find its way into your work?

I moved to Northern Michigan in 2018 from Los Angeles, and I arrived here with really fresh eyes. I wasn’t familiar with the landscape. I wasn’t familiar with the light. I wasn’t familiar with the history of [the place] and how the space had built up. It was a real joy, and it has been a real joy, being here, responding to that, taking it in for the first time. I’m actually noticing now, as I become more familiar with it, that’s become harder to do; and I’m going to have to change my approach in some way to keep the work, or the way I respond to it, fresh. But that took a good five years or so before I began to feel that. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about moving to different parts of the country, and seeing different parts of the world over the past 20 year, each time you land somewhere, you’re able to look at it with fresh eyes. I’ve found that that’s really important to learning how to look honestly. For me, it’s about true discovery, and authentically analyzing, thinking about, and interpreting in a way that is often unexpected, [as opposed to] digesting something in way you’re told to digest it.

Who has had the greatest, and most lasting influence on your work?

Oddly, or not oddly, Frank Stella. I discovered his work in high school. His work, formally, I admired; but also, the lasting impression comes from the very dramatic way his work evolved into different pursuits over time — starting as a formal minimalist working his way into something of a maximalist and working from very flat images to 3D sculptural work. Just as a role model, with the variety of work an individual’s career over time can embody — that’s stuck with me. That ties back to the question of: What do you do when somebody knows you as doing this thing, and you start doing that thing? There are some people, from an early age, I admired in their ability to follow their pursuits authentically even if it meant confusing expectations.

To whom do you go when you need honest feedback?

I’m always trying to expand the range of people I can get honest feedback from. I tend to lean on the friends I went to grad school with, and mentors who I studied with, and close friends. Those tend to be the people I can ask, Take a look at this, what do you think? Ask me some tough questions. Or, let me know when you think something is not working. I enjoy when a good friend will call out that they don’t like what I’m doing, or it doesn’t work. I usually respond to that better. It’s a challenge to articulate why I made the decisions I made, and to figure out if I’m going to push further into that until it’s doing what I want it to do. Or, abandon something.

What is the role of the exhibition in your practice?

In the ideal world exhibiting artwork is, selfishly, a way for me to get real-world feedback from people about how they’re reacting to the work, and what they get from it. Sometimes that happens. I get the best feedback when I’m in-person with the work, doing a gallery walk-through and giving people additional context about the work. You really only get that through an exhibition space. I have my studio set up partially like an exhibition space, but there’s a lot more variables having your work out in the real world not knowing whose going to come into the gallery or art center and see it.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

I try to expose myself constantly to other people’s work, and keep it dialed in so I’m not overwhelmed, but able to challenge myself through other people’s work as much as possible. The other thing I’ve found is really important is making sure I make time for other things — physical activity, athletics, just getting outside and wandering and giving myself time to not have to talk to other people. Just being in your head and letting yourself wander are important aspects of being able to foster creativity.

What drives your impulse to make?

I think it’s to find shared meaning and shared understanding. At it’s core, that’s the impulse to make — which is to put something out into the world, and find someone who says, Oh yeah! Or: I didn’t see it that way. At the end of the day, it’s a social activity, even if done in isolation.

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Learn more about Justin Shull here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

Jil Johnson, 63, is an outsider artist: no formal training, works in a naive style, wants to make beautiful things by hand. She lives in Traverse City. She wants “to live to the fullest, and that means being authentic, and that means knowing who you are.” She does.

This interview was conducted in December 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Jil Johnson

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Describe your work.

Technically, I’m an outsider artist, that is: somebody who has no [formal] training.

You work in 3D, sculptural forms.

Not always, but it seems to be what I’m currently doing. Sometimes I’ll make a painting. Sometimes it’s sewing. Sometimes it’s fiber. There’s not one answer, but for the most part it’s 3D work that involves some woodworking; there’s always paint involved.

Outsider art — and I looked to Wikipedia for this — is art “made by self-taught individuals who are untrained and untutored in the traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds.” What parts of this definition accurately reflect how you view yourself, and your practice?

All of it. Every bit of that.

Do you use found objects?

No. It’s important to me that I make everything by hand. So, it depends on the found objects. If I wanted to embellish something with raw diamonds, or a meteorite, that would be something I’d use that I did not make.

Why is it so important that you make every element that goes into your composition?

There’s this idea that I’m cheating if I don’t make every single thing on there. I’m sort of a purist. But there’s more to it. Everything I feel — energy, vibration — goes into that. There’s so much value in a handmade stitch. Or laboring over a tiny leg of a doll I carved myself. I feel there’s something I’m putting into the piece by doing that. It’s really important to me. There’s so much alchemy in that.

You’re your own art supply store.

I go to art supply stores. I need paint. I need brushes. There are a lot of things that I’ll find there that I will use: google eyes, because they’re funny to me. [Generally speaking] I don’t like something that’s fresh and new. I want my hand involved in every bit of [the creation].

What draws you to this work?

It’s some sort of pathology, no doubt. It’s something that I absolutely have to do, and a lot of it has to do with repeating objects, putting things in a row. I have this thing about lining things up and repeating a pattern over and over and over. I don’t want to put a negative slant on it, but there’s some sort of obsessive quality to it, but that’s part of the Outsider artist label, which makes me an Outsider artist as opposed to a folk artist.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

No.

What kind of work did you did before you threw yourself body and soul into your practice?

I have a hard time being and staying employed. It’s random stuff. There’s not one thing that I did. I would do the thing until I couldn’t stand it anymore and move onto other things.

How long have you been focused on your practice as your primary activity?

Twenty-five years ago, I stopped drinking and doing any kind of drugs, and then it all came out again. I’ve always been an artist, but I just pushed it away. It wasn’t anything I ever considered doing as a job until I sobered up. I thought I’d be a tattoo artist. The first thing I did was put together drawings of some tattoo [designs] I was going to take into a tattoo parlor, and then it became a painting, and then I brought it into a gallery [the now-defunct Watermelon Sugar Gallery in downtown Traverse City, Michigan], and it sold. I started doing more and more and more, and I haven’t stopped since.

Describe your studio/workspace. 

It’s my bedroom, with a big architect’s table in it. I also have an outside area — a woodworking area — that I don’t paint in. I do a lot of assembly work there.

Are you a hand tool or a power tool gal?

I like Dremels. If I’m carving, I’ll use hand tools, but for the finer, detail work, I’ll use a Dremel tool. It saves my body.

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work?

That’s tough. Sometimes it’s a visual image I want to repeat, a pattern or a shape. A lot of times it’s a feeling I want to get out. Sometimes it’s a straight-up inspiration: I get a picture in my head I need to reproduce, and that’s easy, and fun, and I love it when that happens. That’s a field day. But when this is your job, you can’t wait for that. I want to keep my hands moving at something every single day. Lately, I think: What can I make for somebody that they will love, that will be very special? And then, with that, something just happens. My hands tell me what I want to do: Do I want to paint? Carve? Hammer nails? Push clay around?

What part or parts of the world find their way into your work?

I’m very inspired by the city, and I don’t live in the city anymore. I’m in my own little bubble here. I’m not influenced by what’s going on in the outside, but I was — very much — when I lived in the city. Chicago, for instance. Very inspired by the grittiness. Landscapes don’t inspire me. Nothing inspires me. It’s all coming from the inside.

You talked about the city’s “grittiness.” Is it a vibe?

It’s a vibe, for sure. It seems like there is a certain patina that’s found in an urban environment that’s not seen here on a regular basis. It feels like when I walk down the street I can look at the side of the of a building, and see a pattern, a patina, that’s been sitting there forever; the side of a wall with old stenciling on it, or an old window. I just don’t see the same thing here that much. There’s an edginess to a city that’s not here. This place is very pristine, very clean, and clear, and fresh. But I love it here.

What’s your favorite tool?

Sand paper. It adds so much life. It changes things profoundly, in a way that is very satisfying.

Sketchbook? Art journal? Do you use anything like that to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

Rarely. If I’ve got a commission, I have to write down ideas, for sure. That takes research and homework, which I write it down, and make lists. Sometimes, if I get an idea, I’ll write it down, but I don’t do a lot of that.

Your work is deeply hand-built with lots of moving parts and mechanical novelties. Talk a little bit about how you make your work?

I guess it depends on what I’m making. There’s so many different types of things I make, but I’ll say this: Oftentimes, unfortunately and inconveniently, I’ll have something made, and then I’ll get a new, how-about-this? idea, and then I’ll have to back up. I have to almost create my work backwards. I don’t have it planned out in my head. I’ll make something, let’s say it’s a horse that I’ve already stuck onto a board, and I’ll say, Wouldn’t this be cool if it were mechanical and could move? So now, I have to figure out a way to engineer that without removing the horse from the board, or ruining it. It’s all backwards, and makes it very difficult. I’m often having to carve around things, or paint underneath things, and I can’t mess it up.

Do you know when to stop?

Yes. Definitely.

There’s nothing ambiguous about that? You know when you know.

Right. But so much of the work just creates itself. I start with something, and then it starts creating itself, and I go, I wish I’d known this sooner before I’d screwed it all together.

Why is making-by-hand important to you?

It’s very fun. It’s also challenging. I love the challenge of excruciating work that requires hand-eye coordination of a surgeon. The tinier, the more articulated, the more I have to struggle to make this thing work — that’s really, really satisfying to me. The process of hand work is very satisfying. It would not even be interesting to take something I’d found, and stick it on a board. I have to do something with it. And, once I think it’s done, I’ll find something else to take [the process] even further and further. How far can I go with this? How much unnecessary work can I put into this? How hard can I make this for myself?

I like that you give yourself permission to go back in and work on a piece after it’s “finished,” even after the piece is affixed to the substrate.

Oh absolutely. There’s no “breaking” it. I made it in the first place. I can always fix it, and any kind of fix or repair just adds to it.

That’s very freeing.

I look at these things [on which] I’ve spent a lot of time, and think, It’s just not special enough. It’s just not interesting enough. It could be better or more. So now I’ve got to wreck everything I’ve done by doing something outrageous to it, and it always works out for the better. It is very freeing. I’m always glad I did it. I’ve never been sorry when I’ve “wrecked” something that wasn’t really speaking to me.

I think about that as the gateway to more interesting ideas that are just waiting to be birthed.

One-hundred percent true. That’s how I figured out my process, how I figured out what I like, by making mistakes and wrecking things. I did a painting once. It was enormous, and I hated it. So I took it outside, sprayed it with a hose. I took a brick to it, and had a tantrum. I ripped it apart into tiny, little pieces, and then I used all the tiny, little pieces as mosaics to create a whole new image. It was amazing, and so much fun.

Why does working with our hands remain valuable and vital to modern life?

This is such an important question: It’s how you access the soul. It’s a way to authentically connect with people. It’s such an important avenue. It’s utterly meaningFUL as opposed to something being meaningLESS. It’s everything. It’s a way to keep things alive, and vital energy flowing in the world.

Anyone who looks at your work can’t help but understand that it’s intensively hand built. Does it take people by surprise? Are people estranged enough from handwork, in our modern times, that they find your work a mystery? Or an amazement? What’s the perception?

It’s assumed that [her work is made of] found objects. They’re not. I have to say that many times. I get that a lot from people. They seem to be amazed that I’ve made all these little things.

What role does social media play in your practice?

I use Facebook a lot. And, I’ll put pieces of art on it, which sometimes sell. I like Facebook. It’s a social outlet for me. I’m home. Alone. I don’t know that I use it for [inspiration for] my work. I feel like the art is coming from something inside of me. It would behoove me to promote my work more on social media a lot better than I do. I should have a website. I should have an Instagram. I should be promoting my work all over for financial gain. I have no interest in that. But the owner of the gallery [Shanny Brooke of Higher Art Gallery in Traverse City, which represents Jil] does, so I’m happy that she does that.

Talk about why you don’t have a website.

It’s not what I want to do. I’m not interested in being a businesswoman. I’m not good at it. It doesn’t speak to me. Marketing doesn’t interest me. That’s a whole other job. I sell my work through galleries, and they get half of my money, but they’re doing all that stuff for me. And Shanny has a beautiful website.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

Depends on the visual artist. There are millions of answers to that. Some people have a message to send. Some people are political. Some people want to change the world with their ideas. Some people want to share love. Some people want to entertain.

You seem very clear on that.

I am.

How do you think you get so clear? Is it all that quiet time alone?

I’ll tell you why: I want to have a great life. I want to live to the fullest, and that means being authentic, and that means knowing who you are. That’s my priority, every day, all the time.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

I don’t know that it has anything to do with living in Northern Michigan. I would be the same no matter where I was living.

How long have you lived here?

I don’t know. Thirty years?

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice? Somebody you’d consider to be a role model.

Both grandfathers. One grandfather did beautiful landscapes with oil paints. Self-taught. The other grandfather did some painting, but he sewed clothing for his children. He had another job. He was a pastor, so [painting] was a side hobby. My father was an opera singer, it was his full-time job. He sang all over the world. My father was instrumental in helping me navigate, psychologically, what it means to be an artist, that struggle, how it’s OK, and how you came out on the other side. It was difficult for my father. He was married, and he had a full-time job at Avon, and a family, and a house in the suburbs [Glenview, Illinois], and children, and a wife not loving that he wanted to quit the full-time job to go be an opera singer.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

I want to say God. That’s my answer. Either that, or it’s my mother. My mom was always pushing me to be an artist, as a job. She was very supportive, and enormously encouraging. The God answer: “God” is a generic term for some sort of universal energy that flows through me, and inspires me.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

I don’t need feedback. I know if it’s good.

Have you always had that level of confidence about your work?

Yes.

And when people come up to you and say, “You should …”, you think what?

Sometimes it’s a good idea, but otherwise I’m polite and accept they have an idea. It doesn’t happen very often. If I get a “you should,” it’s usually about doing a better job of promoting myself. It’s never about the work. It gets me every time because they’re right. I know who I am, so it’s OK. I can’t produce a lot of these things. It takes so long. I don’t think I could have a bigger business. If I had a website, I don’t think I could keep up with the work.

In some ways, exhibiting is a form of marketing. How does exhibiting your work fit into your practice?

This is my job, so if I want to sell it, I have to exhibit it somewhere. It’s very practical. The work is not for me. I never want to keep any of it. It clearly has to go out somewhere. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

You know the book The Artist’s Way? The “artist’s dates” — where you take yourself out somewhere, and walk around deliberately looking for inspiration. I haven’t done it a lot lately. I know what’s going to sell in the gallery, and I make those things. Inspiration hits. I don’t have to work that hard to come up with something new. I already have something I know will sell, and I enjoy making those things. Anymore, I just go with the flow, and don’t sweat it too much. I don’t have to work so hard, and try so hard. There are other, easier magic tricks. If want to be inspired, I can sit and do a little mediation about being open to some new inspirations, and boom: it happens.

What drives your impulse to make?

There’s a practical answer, and that’s: money. There’s an obsession: I have to do this. But then, there is something more artistic: the desire to create something really, really beautiful. That’s the artist’s answer: I’m feeling something inside, and wanting to put it out there because it’s going to be beautiful.

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Jil Johnson is represented by Higher Art Gallery in Traverse City, Michigan. Directly experience Jil’s work there.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

 

 

Traverse City painter Katherine Corden, 33, has “a short attention span when it comes to [her] painting.” Hard to believe given the extensive, practical evidence of her steady focus: on her process, her making, and the many ways she lets the world know about it. In depicting her favorite subjects — groups of people gathered, long undulating roads — her approach is to favor gesture, light, and color, then leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination.

This interview was conducted in November 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Katherine Corden

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Describe the medium in which you work.

Right now I primarily work in acrylic paint on wood panels. My work occasionally will embrace mixed-media elements, so I’ll use pencil, charcoal, pastels — often on top of my acrylic paint. I frequently paint in gouache. And something I’m hoping to experiment with this year is oil painting. Always trying new things.

Why oil paint?

I have a very short attention span when it comes to my painting. I just want to continue moving onto the next phase of it — in that way, acrylic is really nice because it dries so quickly. In the way I want to embrace a looser depiction of my figures or subjects, I think oil paint has those softer edges I’m looking for. Also, oil paint colors have a more intense vibrancy to them. It’s hard to achieve that in acrylic paint. It’ll be an experiment. We’ll see.

Do you need someone to help guide you through the basics of oil painting? Or, have you had some experience with it?

I’ve had a little experience with it. One of my studio mates, Alyssa Smith, had an oil painting workshop in our studio last year that I attended. It’s nice to have friends I can [ask questions of]. The daunting thing about oil paint is it is more hazardous, and you want to make sure you’re using the right materials to minimize your toxic exposure.

Where’s your studio?

In downtown Traverse City [Michigan], at the Tru Fit Trouser Building. I feel so lucky to have found that space. I found it shortly after we’d moved here [from Wisconsin] in 2019. I’d been going to Vada Color to get print reproductions of my work, and VADA Color is located in the Tru Fit campus. I met Eric Gerstner, who owns and renovated the building. The old Habitat For Humanity ReStore was moving out, and he had this enormous space available. That was way too much space — I think it was about 9,000 square feet. I told [Eric] what I was looking for, and we came up with breaking up the space into a casual studio set up — our walls don’t go up to the ceiling so we can talk with each other across the wall.

In your November 14 blog post you wrote: “Like most of my paintings, the photos in this folder are from scenes found in my life (often mundane, but occasionally novel, for me at least …)” Talk about that a little bit.

I’m not unique in that I draw a lot of inspiration from my personal life. Today, we’re so lucky because we constantly have a camera with us, in our smart phone. Living in Northern Michigan, I feel lucky that we spend a lot of our time outside. What I gravitate toward, and what I’m most known for, are my beach paintings. I spend a lot of time on the beach in the summer, and feel lucky to do that. On the beach you have this perfect set-up — if you enjoy painting figures, which I do — that creates a still life for you. The sand is a neutral backdrop, you have this amazing light source with nothing obstructing it, and you get these interesting shadow shapes created on the uneven [surface of] the sand. I’m very inspired when I’m at the beach. It’s usually just people sitting on towels, or talking to each other, or shaking a towel out. I find the movement and the change in light and the patterns [cast] by everything you bring with you to the beach to be really interesting — both from a color theory standpoint because you have all these interesting colors and values going on; and from a composition standpoint because you have people sitting down and standing up, and there’s not really any other time in your day-to-day life that you’ll find that many figures [in the same place] unless you’re at life-drawing class. I used to live in Chicago, and I’d sketch people sitting on the L train; but at the beach you’re lucky that most people are in their swimsuits. You get really good light on the bare figure.

That is closer to the life-drawing context.

Yes. There’s not so many layers of clothing [at the beach]. It’s the perfect place to be looking at the figure if that’s what you’re interested in. Lately, I’m trying to explore some of those concepts of color and light; I’m taking a break from the figure. I’m looking at buildings [and other artifacts of contemporary life].

In your November 21 blog post, you featured a painting that is going to be hung at Farm Club in Traverse City. That painting is a good example of what you’re saying about reducing the elements of your painting to shape, and color.

That’s something I’m always working on. I haven’t arrived there yet by any means: I enjoy the process of painting so much that it’s hard for me to step away. What I probably need to be doing is to work on multiple pieces [simultaneously] so I can take a break, and let something breathe, then come back and reassess it.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the figures you paint is that, facially, there’s no information: no eyes, there’s a shape of a nose, of a mouth; but for all intents and purposes, the face is a blank canvas. When you remove those things, you’re asking the viewer to pay more attention to other things. Your figures’ gestures give the viewer a lot of information. In one of your paintings, Extended Family, a figure is standing, and there’s a connection between her and another figure, and that said a lot. Talk about the absence of information in the face.

I’ve talked to so many people about this because it’s a common comment people make. Everybody has a different take on it. This isn’t why I’m intentionally leaving the face out of it; but a lot of people have connected with my work because it is easier for them to imagine that they might be one of the people [in the painting]. I [also] think about how the gestures are really telling the story. When I’m just figure drawing with charcoal my favorite kind of figure drawing is gesture drawing. I love trying to quickly capture the essence of the person in the gesture. I find the looseness of

that to be a little bit mysterious. Something I’m more interested in than the anatomy is the colors I’m using. I’m trying to create more of a story with color. The intent is not to get distracted by details. Something I’m always trying to challenge myself with is: How can I achieve what I’m trying to achieve with less detail? It’s a tricky thing. I’m always trying to edit. I’ve heard this from writers before, and it sounds awful: You have to kill your babies. You have to be willing to get rid of your best line in your story, or your best mark in your painting in order to move the piece forward. Sometimes you get so hung up on a detail you thought was so brilliant, and then the rest of your painting suffers as you work around it trying to make this one detail work. If you look at my work up close, you’ll see there are a lot of layers, which I end up liking. I often will be figuring out my final composition, [then] end up painting over an entire section of work because it’s too much. It’s like taking off jewelry before you leave the house.

What makes the figure a compelling subject for you?

I’ve always been fascinated with the figure and human anatomy — perhaps this also explains the pull to my first career as a physical therapist. I really enjoy the challenge the figure offers the artist: always changing, never the same. Finally achieving a likeness of line and weight is so satisfying. I love the release of quick gesture drawing and also the meditation that comes with longer painted portraits. It is a fantastic canvas to explore color and light, two things I find endless inspiration in.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

I grew up with a mom who is an art teacher. From an early age I was exposed to art class, and art work, and we had lots of art in our home. I’m grateful I went through a public school system [in Grosse Pointe, Michigan] that had really fabulous art teachers. I graduated from high school in 2009. In 2008, when I was applying to colleges, I was fearful of applying to art school. I grew up in a community where there weren’t a lot of role models that would have shown me what a career in the arts would look like. I had my mom, who was an art teacher, telling me that it would be hard to get a job as an art teacher. Between my own fear and the adults around me, I thought I’d just continue to do art as a hobby, and study something else. I ended up going to the University of Michigan, and became a physical therapist, which I did for six years. When I graduated from physical therapy school, I started painting again. Obviously, I didn’t have a family yet, and I didn’t have to study anymore, so I had time to do what I wanted to do after I came home from work. I started sharing my paintings on social media. I made a website. It was fun, and I made some extra money. It worked out that Chicago — where I went to grad school — had a lot of art resources and programs to attend in the evenings. I met some other cool, young women who had started their own careers — it was the first time I’d met people who didn’t have traditional careers, and that really opened my eyes. I continued to work as a physical therapist, and paint in my free time, for a long time before I felt confident enough to stop my work as a therapist.

What was the light bulb that went on in your head that told you to leave physical therapy behind, and jump into this other thing?

One of the blessing of working as a physical therapist is that it’s very flexible. [Kathryn moved with her new husband, also a physical therapist, to Wisconsin and began to work part-time.] I knew we weren’t going to be living in Wisconsin forever, so I told myself I was going to take the next year to really figure out if I want to really do this art thing. Am I capable of doing this as a career and generate a living from it? I invested in teaching myself how to run a business, and that was daunting. I didn’t have any education in how to run a business. I joined some online communities that were teaching just that. It was an impactful year. We moved to Traverse City [and she worked part-time at Munson Hospital]. I covered maternity leaves, and worked [in her studio] on the weekends. We didn’t have any kids yet, and I found the [Tru Fit] studio. I was making enough money from my art; but I was fearful of letting go all the work I’d done to become a physical therapist. Having kids helped. It was clear it didn’t make sense to be doing all of these things. I slowly took less and less hours at the hospital, and painting more and more. My last day of work as a physical therapist was in 2022.

How unusual is it, amongst the people with whom you hang, that you’re not just artists but you’re also small business owners?

That’s a good question. Most of my friends understand because they followed my work, and it’s something I talk about fairly often — the business side of my work, my job. I find when I meet new people [it’s a challenge] to describe what I do. An artist friend gave me a piece of advice. When she tells people what she does, she says that she owns a small art business, and she’s the artist.

I think that’s indicative of how few people have an understanding of creative work. We all know what a dentist looks like, and how that work works. I wonder, though, if the perception of  people who do creative work is that they sit around and wait for a lightning bolt to hit, then there’s a frenzy of activity, and at the of it — wah lah! — there’s a masterpiece — when what creative people are doing is work. A job.

That was honestly one of the hard things during my transition from physical therapy, was telling people that I’m an artist. “Physical therapy” is an easy answer, and then you can move on. When you tell people you’re an artist, they go, Huh? One of the things I’ve had to practice doing is trying not to imagine what their thoughts are, that they’re thinking I’m so privileged that I can just paint all day and not have to worry about making money; but I don’t know what they’re thinking, and it’s none of my business. If they have questions, I’m always happy to answer them.  The dentist’s office is a perfect example. A dentist’s office was the first place I ever told someone I was an artist. It’s a very low-stakes place where [the hygienist or dentist] is making small talk with you, and I decided that I was just going to go ahead and see what happened. They are usually so interested in [her answer] because it’s so different from what they do.

Let’s talk about the business end of the work you do.

With my work, I have to think ahead an entire year. I do work with several galleries [in Northern Michigan, and Alabama]; but I have a good-sized audience and quite a few subscribers on my email list, so I’m able to represent myself. The thing I found challenging about working with galleries is that you need to have a steady supply of work, inventory. I am often able to sell pieces on my own, through my website, which is preferable because I get to keep 100 percent of the proceeds. I also have had shows at my studio in Traverse City; but most of my sales have come through my website. As my kids [ages 4 and 2] get older, and I’m able to produce a larger volume of work, I’d love to work with more galleries to extend the reach of my work, and find new audiences. The other part of my business is I license work in a couple different ways: through a couple online galleries that curate reproduction work by artists; and then, recently, I licensed my work for a book cover, which was a big dream of mine. It comes out in January.

Talk about one of the bigger projects you undertook in 2024.

The mural is at Bryant Park in Traverse City. It’s on the restroom building, a good-sized brick building [16’ x 30’], and I painted three sides of it. I was chosen through the Traverse City Arts Commission. A friend of mine sent me the application. She knew the building was on the beach, and I paint a lot of beach scenes. And, it also just happens to be two blocks from our house. The idea I pitched was I wanted to make a beach scene that appears as though you’re  looking through the building. You’d see the horizon line in the background; but the focus of the painting would be the people who frequent the beach. There are little kids playing, and bigger kids tossing their towels, adults in the background skipping stones or walking. The fun thing about a mural is that there couldn’t be a lot of details; it would be too much work at that scale. That forced me to edit. I used a limited color palette, which was a fun challenge — I was trying to re-purpose the same Sherwin Williams color as well as for someone else’s face. The colors are very much inspired by the color seen at the park.

And you’ve done how many murals on the sides of buildings?

That was my first and only mural.

Having it be a much larger “canvas,” but a canvas that’s three sided, how do you take what you know about painting and transpose it to the surface and that format?

A lot of my paintings on wood panel are larger. A common size is 36” x 48”. For the mural, I used a strategy I’ve used before. I created a grid [on the source sketch], and then gridded out the mural with sidewalk chalk, and then I took it square-by-square and enlarged the image.

What’s your favorite tool?

My spray bottle. I’m constantly spraying down my palette [with water]. This is one of the reason why I think I’ll like working with oil: I like a fluid consistency with the paint. I also use a palette scraper I couldn’t live without.

Do you use a sketch book?

I do use a sketch book. I haven’t been able to travel; but when I do travel I love bringing a sketch book with me. It’s a great way to do a little plein air work. I have brought my sketch book with me to the beach before; but in this phase of my life I’m at the beach with toddlers. I need to make the time to get to the beach by myself.

When you’re at the beach — or, wherever — are you more inclined to use your camera to record an idea?

Yes. I think if I was by myself I’d use a sketch book; but right now it’s so much faster for me to use my camera, and then I can put my camera away and be in the moment with my family.

How does social media fit into your practice?

Social media is a tool for marketing my work, and connecting with people who are interested in my work, connecting with other artists, connecting with businesses that might want to work with me. It’s both a networking tool, and a marketing tool. I also find myself inspired by by all the artists locally and around the world who share their work on social media. I think that social media has so many terrible things about it; but one of the nice things is if you’re looking for inspiration, you have access to people you’ve never heard of. In terms of pursuing this career, I’ve been motivated  by watching other artists flourish on social media — either because I’ve become friends with them, or they’ve been a role model; you can watch them and see how they’re doing it.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative work?

As I’ve mentioned: painting the beaches here. It informs my subject matter in a lot of ways. The community up here has been very supportive, mostly because there are so many people I’ve met who are around my age, who are doing similar work. That’s the real-life version of what I was describing on social media. There are people who I’m becoming friends with, and people who work in my studio with me who are artists, or writers, or making music. A lot of people who live up here work for themselves — there’s not a lot of industry — and that has been encouraging, that support and network of people who can help each other, answer questions, motivate each other, inspire each other. Hopefully, the area is getting recognized for that, and people are supporting the artists up here, because there’s a growing number of them.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

I don’t know if I can pinpoint a single person. Because of the expansiveness that the online community gives you, I think there have been a lot of women, who are older than me from around the country, who have done really impressive things with their career that inspire me. Sarah Madiera Day from Maine. There are a bunch of artists from South Carolina who taking their work to levels I don’t think people thought were possible. And, one of my mentors, Emily Jeffords had a big impact on me. Many of these people are moms, which has become more and more important to me. I look to other working moms to figure out how they do it. Often it feels more and more challenging to balance everything. I have a good collection of books. I love looking at the work of Fairfield Porter, Matisse, Richard Dibenkorn. I just got a book by Josef Albers. He’s been inspiring me to focus more on color, and see where that takes me.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Because my mom is an art teacher, I always feel good asking her questions. She gives me honest feedback, and it feels like a very safe space because she’s my mom. My good friend Brianne Farley has a studio in the [Tru Fit Trouser] building, and we’ve been working next to each other since 2020. She has given me good feedback. Our work is very different. I’m a large-scale painter and she’s a children’s book illustrator, but she did go to grad school in art. I have a group of three girlfriends who are artists, living in different states, and we meet on Zoom about once a month. We critique each other’s work, and talk about what we’re struggling with — any business or art thing we’re going through. We have a text thread, and that’s very valuable.

Sisterhood is very powerful in your practice. You have a whole range of female people who are friends and mentors, and they all feed into your practice in one way or another. Is that intentional?

I don’t think it’s intentional; but one of the big, big blessings of my life is I’ve always found really good girlfriends; from a young age, I’ve had really good girlfriends. I think I’m just naturally trained to seek their help when I need it. That also has been a theme in my work in the past, too. A couple years ago I did a collection where I asked a bunch of my friends here to meet up at Farm Club. I took photos of them having drinks together, sitting and talking to each other. I used those photos as reference photos for paintings. The collection was titled Fika, which is a Scandinavian term for enjoying a drink or treat with someone without distraction. You’re fully present, enjoying that time together. We were trying to tell a story of female friendship, and being present, and the importance of that.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

I just went to a talk last week with Kate Korrock, and we talked a lot about this at the discussion [November 13 Caffeinated Conversations program sponsored by the Northwest Michigan Arts and Culture Network]. One of my takeaways is there are so many purposes art can have, and to limit art to having one purpose would be such a disservice to the practice and expression of it all. There’s a place for having art that makes people uncomfortable, and questioning their beliefs, wanting to explore new topics. I think art has a powerful way of helping people escape, or feel grounded, or calm. In general, [at the November 13 program] we talked a lot about how art helps us make sense of the world around us, that it’s a reflection of the world through that artist’s lens. But then the viewer is interpreting the art through their own life experience.

Is the maker’s role in the world to be a provocateur, or a storyteller, or a bringer of beauty?

One of the nice things about living in the time we do, all of the above is needed. I think it’s important for museums and larger communities or cities or people who are going to be investors in the arts to sponsor or encourage more provocative art. In terms of having an artist producing purely provocative art would require that the artist be privileged. You’re running a small business, so you constantly trying to balance your perspective with: How am I going to make a living from this work? How am I going to make artwork that I enjoy, and I think other people will put in their homes? As [one’s] career grows, and [one has] more security and feel more loyalty from a wider base of collector, then [the artist] has more privileges and freedom to explore more provocative work. It’s important to have beautiful work that people can escape into; but people need all different types of art.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

Something I’ve found really important is exercising, and getting outside to exercise. That helps everything in my life, and it definitely helps my creativity. My preferred form of exercise is probably going on a run, which I’m not always able to do. When I’m running or on a walk outside is when I’ll get ideas, and have more energy to execute said ideas.

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Read more about Katherine Corden here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.