KIMBERLY

Welcome back, listeners. Thanks again for tuning in to this week's episode of Art Uncovered. This week I'm so honored to be here with Genevieve Cohn, who is currently in Boston. Genevieve, thanks for joining us. 

GENEVIEVE

Thank you so much for having me. 

KIMBERLY

It’s exciting, before we pressed record, we were bonding over an audio book that we're apparently both obsessed with called All Fours [by Miranda July]. If any of our listeners are interested in audio books, we highly recommend. So we already have great energy started so I'm just going to ask my first question about your paintings. 

So your paintings often depict, women or communities of women. Oftentimes they're engaged in some kind of work, whether it's hanging clothes or foraging food. I noticed a bit of yard work or farm work or something like this. But what I find really interesting and spectacular about your paintings [00:02:00] is that despite their engagement with work, they don't seem like or in pain or miserable. They actually seem quite content, like they are in a utopia. We don't associate work with that.

So I'm wondering if maybe you could talk to us a little bit about the mind frame of the subjects in your paintings. 

GENEVIEVE

Yeah. That's a great question. I hadn't really thought about that too much before this question. I think [the women are content] because they are present in the moment. They are engaged with the environment that they're a part of.

I'm imagining this community of women where they're taking care of each other. They're relying on each other. I can imagine like in a future scene that we're not [00:03:00] witnessing in the painting, that if somebody needed to rest, somebody would pick up the slack.

So it's this idea of the community taking care of both the natural world they're a part of, and also the members of the community. [With community] they're able to alleviate and balance and turn to each other and lean on each other, but they're all working towards a shared goal. 

It’s maybe less of a utopia because I don't imagine these worlds as perfect, [rather] they're in progress, working towards something better. So there's this forward momentum. Like you're never really going to get there and that's okay as long as you're still engaging, like an ongoing act that will go on for forever. 

I think of that while teaching, actually–oftentimes students often want to make perfect work. Like they want it to get to this point where there's nothing wrong. [00:04:00] And I think through teaching, I've really realized that's the least interesting version of the work and that if you're striving for perfection, you miss everything along the way and all the possibilities along. 

KIMBERLY

You mentioned something interesting a couple of minutes ago. You said part of the reason why your female characters don't feel pain is because they're in the present moment of what they're doing.

That sounds like philosophies or ideas that I hear about in yoga classes. In regards to meditation and being present. I'm wondering if that's anything that you think about either in, in your work or your own life. 

GENEVIEVE

I don't have an explicit meditation practice or yoga practice, but I think that [00:05:00] painting shows up in that way of just coming into the studio every day and doing the work and getting to a place where you're both present. You’re aware and not aware. Like that sweet spot of you're still engaging, you're still thinking about it, you're still trying hard. And also you're responsive and so there's a little bit of a lack of control. 

KIMBERLY

Is it hard for you to be present?

GENEVIEVE

It is.

KIMBERLY

I read in an interview on Juxtapose magazine that you often listen to audiobooks. Is that a way to stay present in your practice? 

GENEVIEVE

Absolutely. I have the chatteriest brain of all time. And I also have a really critical brain. I'm really critical of my own work and process. And so I found that when I listen to audiobooks and the language part of my brain is occupied, that I'm not  [00:06:00] talking back to myself. I can actually just do the work.

I actually discovered this I was in grad school. I was really self conscious AND having a hard time working through my paintings and getting into the flow state of just working through things. And I started listening to Hamilton. The musical. It was the first musical that I've ever really listened to and it just broke my brain because all of a sudden I was painting for hours on end and not stopping and I think having a narrative to follow and having, yeah, the language part of my brain occupied just allowed me to be kinder to myself in the studio too, I think, which was really helpful.

KIMBERLY

I could relate to this so much. I'm working on a textile based project at the moment that involves a lot of repetitive motions that don't involve much brain power. And if I don't have an audiobook on Yeah, I just [00:07:00] start thinking about things that make me and it's really not a great place to be in and I would assume that the work would show all of those emotions, soak them up.

So you listen to audiobooks, are there any other techniques that you use to stay present in the studio? 

GENEVIEVE

Yeah, I think transitioning into studio work. So actually right now I'm up in Vermont. I'm heading back to Boston tomorrow, but my main studio is in Boston and it's a live work studio space. And so coming up with transition techniques where I'm moving away from like my home life, my teaching life, my clutter is important. [To do this] I like to read, usually a short story before I go into the studio.

And that's my cue to self that I'm transitioning [00:08:00] into studio work. And then I have like little nuggets of feelings. SOme of the short stories I read are magical realism, so I might have a little, like a sensibility when I go into the studio. And I think, yeah, like sometimes there's just an awareness that some days are going to be harder than others and learning when is it time to push through? When is it time to step away? When is it time to work laterally? Am I stuck with a painting and I just have to keep going or I need to try something different or I just need to keep at it or is the best thing for the practice actually to go take a walk or to call a friend.

KIMBERLY

How do you know which one to choose?

GENEVIEVE

It’s intuitive. And it's imperfect. And there are times that I fight in the studio all day. And at the end of the day, I'm like, I really should have just gone for a walk. Like I really should have just stepped away. But I think even those [00:09:00] kind of imperfect decisions are all information collecting for the next time.

And even if I spend a whole day fighting with a painting and didn't get anywhere and then go to bed, when I wake up the next morning, something has shifted. I think it's just a forever process, learning how to sense the longer arc of the creative process. And I think that's really difficult because there's so many parts of our practice that are less obviously productive.

Like when I have a day and I can see that the painting is in a different place than when I started in the morning, like that feels really good. And that's how I know I had a good day of painting. And It's less easy to see if I read some books, went for a walk, called a friend, and I might leave that day being like, Oh my God, I didn't do anything today

But that's part of the work that needs to happen to support going back into the studio and making the paintings. It's all part of the same ecosystem and they all need to get cultivated and taken care of [00:10:00] in order for the work to be healthy. And for the practice to be healthy so that the art doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Like it comes from life. And the constant reminder that life needs to keep happening. And I need to keep like filling myself and filling the work in different ways 

GENEVIEVE

And research is such an important part of my practice, reading is such an important part of my practice, community is such an important part of my practice that all need to happen in order for the paintings to happen.

KIMBERLY

That's so interesting because the subject matter of your paintings have a lot of those sensibilities also, right? Like we mentioned, community and storytelling. I didn't mention it, but it came up in one of your answers briefly–You described your subject as being stuck in a moment and then we could imagine what happens in the moments that follow.

I'm wondering if maybe you could elaborate a little bit more on your interest in storytelling and how that manifests in your paintings. 

GENEVIEVE

Yeah, absolutely. I think [00:11:00] I've come to realize that I will be working with themes of women and community in nature.

Like those are the big picture curiosities. It's why I paint. But there are also questions or feelings or wonders that I have about each body of work, which have smaller themes. I think of them like little short stories almost, and in the way that short stories are, maybe, a little bit more poetic.

They don't give you all of the information, right? It's not like a full novel where you're getting all the nitty gritty details, but you're left with a feeling at the end that almost gives you more questions than answers. And that's how I like to imagine each body of work. 

KIMBERLY

There was one [00:12:00] arc that I made note of and it was a reference to the night sky. I’m looking at  Tracing Shadows. In one painting here there is a female figure who's hunched over holding up a children’s moon-shaped mobile or something like this. And in the background is a large circle that I assume is meant to represent the moon. Can you talk about your interest in the sky and the moon?

GENEVIEVE

Yeah. Absolutely. So I think there's a few different ways that I'm [00:13:00] thinking about it. The first is the big picture: I'm interested in the scale shift of thesetightly focused moments in relation to, space, the sky. There's like really large scale overarching forces. I’m interested in the way that we're pulled between being present in the moment and what that means to be part of this like grander scheme of things.

But this body of work in particular, Tracing Shadows, cumulated in a solo show at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York City in 2022. And I was really excited about this exhibition because the gallery is set up in two rooms. And then there's this long hallway that connects them.

And I was thinking about how I could develop an exhibition that actually is in conversation with the space.

So I was reading Italo Calvino's the Cosmic Comics at the time, which is a collection of short stories [00:14:00] where he starts with a historical fact and then goes on to write this like bizarre, beautiful short story about how it can show up in a different ways in these other worlds.

But this particular exhibition was catalyzed by my favorite book called Einstein's dreams by Alan Lightman. And the entire book is a collection of short stories where time exists in the world in a different way. There's one story where you only live for one rotation of the light. And so you only experience each time of day one time. And so I was thinking about that.

So yeah, I was thinking about Italo Calvino's the Cosmo comics which also are these interpretations of Space and history and [00:15:00] nature and evolution and also thinking a bit about Plato's allegory of the cave about what is truth? What is knowledge? Like, how do we come to know the worlds that we're a part of?

And so for this body of work, I imagined that there Two imagined communities of women, one born during the night and one born during the day. And all of the women are trying to avoid the light that they know before it passes. And yeah, so they're tracing shadows. They're measuring the tides. They're becoming keepers of knowledge. And I've imagined that in this idea of community that they would be keeping records to pass along so that each new generation of women born at different times of day are able to build upon the set of knowledge. I was also thinking about what it means to be a woman and have experiences of truth and knowledge within a patriarchal society or any marginalized group within a system.

KIMBERLY

Prior to knowing your inspiration behind these paintings, my interpretation was that they were mapping shadows for the sake of something to do with foraging for food or farming.I guess like the specifics of their actions didn't really matter to me, but it seemed like they were doing this as a mode of survival which I think is related to what you were talking about in regards to how short stories are told. It’s not the fine details that matter, but the overall feeling or mood.

The next body of work I’d like to talk about is titled Drawing Down the Moon. What were you thinking about or what was your inspiration behind this body? 

GENEVIEVE

Yeah.So this was with a solo show with Monya Roe Gallery in New York City.

So for all these [00:17:00] bodies of work My favorite part of my practice is that once I get an idea or an overarching theme, I'll bring together a group of women and we'll discuss the research and what I've been thinking about. I'll invite them to get dressed up in floral clothing and overalls and workwear and then we actually go out and act out the different kind of themes of the painting. Then I'll document those and those will become the categories for the paintings, eventually. 

So I brought together a group of women we met up in Southern Vermont and talked about ritual practice and made up some imagined rituals. It was in the autumn so we're just talking about seasonal transitions  and things like this. But again, it's ambiguous. I's not important to me that it's super clear what the women are doing. I like that it's not clear because  it doesn't really matter what they're doing. It's just important that they're doing it and that you trust their conviction.

KIMBERLY

The [00:18:00] series that we just spoke about–Tracing the Shadows–did you get women to pose for you for that series also?

GENEVIEVE:  Yeah. And it's so beautiful and gets me really excited about being a painter because it started with just my closest community of my best friends and I'd make them into the woods with me and play.

But it's slowly grown where now friends bring friends and my mom comes and she brings friends and that has just become this ever inclusive community of people. 

And so the ideas that are present in the paintings are actually manifested in real life. And then they get embedded when I go back into the studio. You know I spend so much time alone working, but I'm able to reference these real experiences of community and collaboration and it's amazing. I think it feeds me.

Like I had an open studio party this past week and a lot of the women who had been part of the [00:19:00] photo shoots came to the opening and it just it felt like family.I like that now they all know each other and  the work. It gets to be a reason for people to come together. 

KIMBERLY
We're nearing the end of the interview, but I  would love to learn how you came to develop your style.

I'm not sure if this is the right word to use, but it was the word that was taught to me when describing the work of Gauguin. That word primitive. I'm wondering if that is the word you would use to describe your work?

GENEVIEVE

I don't think I would consider my work primitive. I actually don’t like the use of that word. 

KIMBERLY

I know I don't either. It feels uncomfortable. 

GENEVIEVE

Yeah, and like colonialist and appropriative, which, is part of the [00:20:00] history of art and especially, Gauguin. But, and I think there are definitely stylistic similarities, but obviously coming from very different sources.

And I kind of appreciate the opportunity to do a kind of feminist reinterpretation of like big women in space and nature, that can be in conversation with Gauguin while still being critical. 

But yeah, my style happened slowly over time. I've only ever really painted women. Even when I was in high school and I took my first painting class, I always painted girls. So I used to be a sports girl until I tore my ACL and I couldn't play soccer anymore for a season, so I just started painting and I did a series of portraits and I just painted all of my best friends.

And even when I got to college. I didn't really consider myself a painter until the end of my senior year, but when I would make work, it was usually either self portraits or portraits of my community. And so I think just slowly over time as [00:21:00] my research deepened and I got more clear about why am I actually making these paintings? What kind of world are they a part of? It just slowly shifted where especially in the end of my senior year, like when I applied to graduate school, I was making fairly representational paintings. Like they were my own body, self portraits and much more realistic. And then as I realized, I was like, oh, I actually want these figures to be a part of the world but I don't really know what the world is yet. And so I had the figures making the worlds that they were a part of. They were actually sculpting and building their worlds. 

It's important to me that the figures take up space and the way that the composition or the way that I compose is shapey and strong that it feels like every shape in the painting is integral to holding it together. But then I'm working through these really transparent layers where I'm building the surface up slowly over time so it has a sense of like luminous, like openness and airiness.[00:22:00] 

You can see the layers of paint underneath so there's both a kind of contradiction of like it's really solid. And also. I think it's important to have that duality that those things happen together and they support each other, even though they're contradictory. 

KIMBERLY

Do you have any upcoming shows? You mentioned that you had one [00:23:00] solo show in 2021 and then another solo show in 2022. Yeah. That's quite remarkable. Are you still in that produce-a-solo-show-a-year routine?

GENEVIEVE

It's been busy, yeah. So I  just had one in 2024 in February with Mindy Solomon Gallery. And the last few years have been so busy and so full. I've realized that I need a little bit more space around the work to do the reading, to do the walking, and I also teach full time. And so I never want to get to a point where it just feels like I'm producing. And so this next year I'm in a group show with It's called Hashimoto Contemporary, which is in response to a residency that I went on in March through Hashimoto Contemporary and an organization called The Jaunt, which is sends artists on trips.

So I went to Washington State with three other amazing painters that work with Hashimoto Contemporary and one of the gallerists, and we [00:24:00] spent the week together in the woods for five days. We didn't actually make work while we were there. We just ended up talking for five days straight. 

KIMBERLY

Cool. 

GENEVIEVE

Which was amazing. So we're, the four of us are having a group show in December in San Francisco.

And then I have a solo show next May with Fashion Modo Contemporary. I'm spending the year just working on those two shows and trying to make the work as strong and honest as possible. 

KIMBERLY

Amazing. We'll definitely [00:25:00] follow your progress.Thank you so much for chatting with us today. 

GENEVIEVE

Thank you so much for having me. What a treat.