Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
SPECIAL ISSUE
March 10, 2025
Emily Sussman
Interviews
Hannah Tilson

The City Speaks to Her, 2024
Pigment in binder on paper
108.6 x 75.6 cm
(Donated to Whitechapel Gallery’s Art Icon Auction. All proceeds support their Education and Public Programmes)
Courtesy of the artist and Cedric Bardawill Gallery

Emily Sussman: Hi! How are you? Is this the new flat?

Hannah Tilson: It is the new flat! And I’ve just had the genius realization that I can air fry the cookies I’ve made.

ES: That’s exciting!

HT: Yeah, I just haven’t been able to cook for the last year because I’ve been with my parents and their kitchen is [quite small] like one person can cook so I’m enjoying that.

ES: We’re going to try to throw a cookie swap party in a couple of weeks-

HT: That sounds fun. What exactly is a cookie swap party, what it sounds like?

ES: I’m hoping people will actually bring things but basically yeah people make cookies and then I’m going to get boxes so people can make little Christmas cookie boxes and bring them home.

HT: That’s so nice. Oh I love that. That’s a great idea.

ES: It should be cute and fun. Would you like to get on with it?

HT: Absolutely.

ES: Your process starts with a video. Do you see a link between performance and your painted work? How do the videos (if at all) impact your work beyond source material?

HT: So, I’m a musician as well. I’ve played trombone since I was and have sung so I think the idea of performing definitely comes naturally to me. The videos are [the] kind of things that I never really want to show. Not at this moment in time anyway- It’s funny because making work of yourself, painting yourself is very personal, but the videos are another level. If they were to be shown it feels like the magic would be gone. Sometimes you might not see that there’s a face in the painting, you might not immediately have the representation of a figure there but then it might be like, okay then, that’s that.

ES: Maybe there’s more liberty in the anonymity of the who figure is in the paintings, unless the viewer knows it’s you- in the videos it’s clear that it’s you.

HT: That’s one of the reasons why I paint myself-and that’s one of the conversations I have with a friend of mine who has a studio across the hall in my new studio, this idea of painting a face and as soon as you’re painting someone else they look at it and think, “Oh okay, well that’s not what I look like”, or, “You made this [points to chin, eyes, nose] look big, you made this look small,” and there’s an immediate difference there. Whereas it’s the same with the film- I paint myself so I don’t worry about having to ever get a likeness of someone. It’s an avatar, a vehicle for painting rather than it being me. It also helps me feel close to it [the act of painting] convenience means I can always kind of make a new film; a new body of work. Thinking about the music side of it, artist who have painted stage sets, opera sets. I like that history, behind world, because obviously painters build their own world but I like the physicality of actually literally building a world and painting from it and then kind of referencing that.

ES: Yeah. All of that makes sense to me, especially because the work as it is now is very tableaux in the way you’ve set it up and how the fabric and the patterns really encapsulate and contain the space- there’s something to that design language that I think really connects the two, set and painting, performance.

HT: Thank you. Did you see the piece I did on the Plop residency?

ES: Yes!

HT: So, I think for me that was- and now I’m going to skip to your last question [ed. Note- the last question was, where do you want to go with your practice?] thinking about where I wanted to go with work, that Plop piece and thinking about the act of installation work, making a sculptural 3-D work out of something that was initially sculptural and 3-D and then became a drawing, and then [the drawing] became a painting is so interesting. I like that idea of the constant cycle. People normally make a drawing before a painting but I’ve been drawing from paintings and I quite like the idea of something starting as a sculptural set turned into a painted world and then that turning into a painted set version.

ES: It’s interesting to see one idea morph across mediums. It’s similar to the concept of difference.

HT: Exactly like that and then the painted suits come into everything. Everything is that. It’s like Sonia Delaunay making paintings and making clothes and making drawings- everything is all encompassed with the world you’re creating.

ES: Talk me through how pigment, and more importantly making your own paints, impacts how you view your work.

H: It was a technique I learned when I was studying at The [Royal] Drawing School. I’d been working in watercolor before and immediately just fell in love with this way of making. It felt kind of raw, because obviously literally it’s a raw material, but also the whole process of occasionally having to grind up pigments, being very hands-on worked well for my brain. I felt very close to it, it felt immediate, I could be in control of it I could kind of make it as watered down as I wanted while also having really opaque areas as well. It’s a versatile material. It felt like one of those moments where I thought, “Oh! okay! This is the material”, I don’t know- it’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime feeling of, “I can do what I want to do with this”. So, that felt really exciting and it just was right.

ES: To me it really links together this new work to work from the [distant] past, because I don’t know how many contemporary artists are making and using pigments to inform their paint process at this point. I’m sure there are some—

HT: No, for sure and that’s what’s fun about it, thinking you’re going to the store to get something that would have been on someone’s shopping list like, 300 years ago. That’s really fun. It changes with the world, there’s a green I used for that drawing school show and I have like [pinches fingers together] this much of it left but you can’t find it anymore because the acid in the ground has changed so now it’s a bit more yellow so it’s stuff like that.

ES: When you’re making these pigments and you find that you lose a color how does that impact how you think about making the work. Do you find yourself wanting to replace it or replicate it- do you write these things down—

HT: Yeah, I have a crazy book, like a mad book of colors for every painting I have I have a little book that I write the colors down in inspired by my friend who does similar things in pottery- he has a glaze book. I saw it and I was like, “Why don’t painters have this?”. Paint changes. So now I write everything down but in the classic way as soon as you start to really get into something that’s the one where you don’t write all the colors down and then you’re there lamenting “the one, the one!”-

ES: The one that got away! Improvisation clearly plays a major role in your work, as seen through your experimentation with pigment. Because you play with a variety of mediums, how does that experimentation effect the outcomes you like best?

HT: Rachel Jones did a great talk with I think it was Eileen Cooper (RA) and they were both saying that there’s a moment when painting you’ve messed it up, you’ve added something that doesn’t work but then you’re free and it becomes exciting. It’s like you’ve by accident done something that’s thrown you off the path you were originally on and then that moment means you’re able to do anything. That’s the exciting thing with pigment as well; I learn from them but I also feel like a mad scientist which adds a bit of fun to the day.

Pulsing and Shifting, She Dissolves , 2024
Pigment in binder and Lino on translucent fabric
70 x 55 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Cedric Bardawill Gallery

ES: More to that improvisational point do you find that there are outcomes that you’re happier with than others or do you like all of the outcomes in their own way?

HT: I think definitely all in their own way, and as you’ve seen, I have to be working on more than one thing at once I can’t do one piece- my friends do that- one piece, they take it off the wall it’s done. I can’t do that. I’ll make a drawing it’s a drawing, I’ve got a show coming up like, ok that’s a good moment to leave these and sit for a moment and maybe paint a suit; they need to all coexist as a happy family for me to thrive, if that makes sense.

ES: I kind of love that because it really allows you to focus your attention on so many things and really see the outcomes of everything individually at the same time.

HT: For sure otherwise I think I would just feel- every process works differently for everybody of course, but I think I would just feel overworked and because there are so many layers in each piece, and they’re not that forgiving (you can wipe it away but you’re wiping “it” [all of the work] away). It’s not like, “oh no, there’s a bit of orange on the surface, I’ll wipe that orange- like, okay I’m on the wooden board now.” The layers mean I have to not overwork.

ES: For those who may not know your work very well- do you find that there’s a difference or key difference between the work on paper and your work on velum, plaster etc.?

HT: For me no, I think I’m always trying to use the same language and work out the same ideas on each material. Obviously with the see-through muslin-y pieces they have physical layers to them so there’s this three-dimensionality and so the idea a of kind of seeing and revealing is more apparent because you literally are. Certain bits are just being hidden whereas on paper I’m having to create that veil myself. There are ways for me to explore this world.

ES: Perfect feeder into my next question which is about transparency and opacity; they’re really crucial to your work, visually, but is there something to the figure revealing itself or hiding that is also pertinent to the core of your work?

HT: Yeah I think so. The stuff I was making previously at Slade on my BA- the cut-out doll figures, were my way into figurative painting. I was always afraid of painting figures – I don’t know why, maybe because Slade was very figurative and was like, “I want to do this but it has to feel like me “ so I was painting these ghosts- of – figures with no bodies. Then it was going to The Drawing School and having to do life drawing the whole time that made me, as well as Covid, since I was doing a lot of self-portraits during Covid, that was the line that led me to painting myself. For me there’s always that kind of liking of the history of the Ghost paintings and the fact that having a veil in front of the face can kind of make the viewer question what’s there, if they’re looking into something or if they’re encroaching on something. Vermeer’s curtains at the front of paintings invites in the vulnerable- it’s where the vulnerable side of the videos come into play. It’s that idea of, “well this isn’t being seen but it comes from what is”. The curtain kind of helps with that staged dreamlike world.

ES: Fashion and pattern is also critical to your work- I’m still not over your use of that “wicked green” Ganni ensemble, for example. When building out your compositions, what kinds of fashion are you drawn to for inspiration?

HT: What’s fun about that piece is that it wasn’t really Ganni it was a dress I bought online I think cause it was Covid, and everything had to be delivered to you. That feeds into the idea of the Slade suits I painted into the LV ones which played into this tongue-in-cheek idea of not affording the real LV ones so just painting it yourself, as the artist’s outfit. It’s always come intuitively. I’ve always loved clothes. My granny- my mum’s mum who comes from a farming family in Aberdeenshire she taught me how to sew when I was up there for Christmas. She made all her own clothes- not in in a fashion guru way but in a practical way. That’s what you do! It’s always been a love of mine that’s been there.

ES: I’ve noticed some of the pieces you gravitate towards are vintage which gives the work itself a timeless quality as well.

HT: Thank you, yeah, that feels important. I like the idea of- some of the Covid works had facemasks and so that was the marker of its time but I like that they’re not pinned down. It’s not like “Hannah this year was wearing flame suits” because I was but that doesn’t have to be in the history books.

ES: You also have painted on clothes as part of this circular process. Are the patterns you make meant to feed back into your practice writ large, or do you find them to be separate pieces?

HT: All the pieces inform each other in a backwards way. I taught this summer course in Saltzburg at the Summer Academy, it’s a printmaking course and after teaching that course I was like, “why don’t I do this more?” It was that kind of a reminder that it was something I was teaching and I should really do it more in my own work. After that then the lino sort of came into my paintings, before it had been a project I had done for a friend who runs a gallery/dinner/supper club called the Amber room, and they have artists who make the cutlery and the plates, and she asked me to make some napkins. Everything kind of happens in an upside-down way. I’m doing a project which should come out soon, with Drakes, just one shirt with one of my patterns. It’s a nice crossover collaboration with them.

ES: Which painters of the past do you feel have best served you as inspirational, why?

HT: We’ve vaguely touched on Sonia Delaunay, it feels like the all-encompassed world of an artist with her work; clothes, textiles, paintings, everything is kind of – her world is camouflaged with her. Her brain and world are very much her brain and her life. It’s like when you see an artist’s house and you know everything is their language. Dominico Gnoli – classic, I missed his show in I think it was Rome a few years ago which was really really sad, but anytime I see one of his paintings I’m always blown away. Peggy Guggenheim’s gold bedframe, have you seen that?

ES: Yeah I have it’s so so good.

HT: It’s like this cyclical all-encompassing thing, that’s just the dream.

ES: How do you feel your relationships with other artists have impacted your practice?

HT: I’m super super lucky that I’m apart of this energizing and kind and supportive group of artists. London feels like a very safe space- supportive- it makes a huge difference. Like I said earlier about my friend painting a face and not wanting a specific likeness, you have to be able to have those conversations or you feel very alone because otherwise you’re in your studio by yourself.

ES: What are the best studio snacks and tea?

HT: Hmmm so I love food. I started this conversation by telling you I was air-frying a cookie *laughs* I came to the sad realization, because I got this air fryer actually for my studio because like I said I wasn’t able to be making stuff at home, that you can’t really have a big lunch if you’re a painter. So now I’m really sad because I want every meal of the day to be as solid as possible but you get tired so I think best studio snacks, maybe just crisps, like whatsit crisps. Normal [black] tea, I try not to drink too much coffee, because it makes me feel insane sadly though I love it. Then maybe grapes. What about you, what are your snacks?

ES: Oh my snacks, I try not to snack but we just got a bunch of crisps and those little cheese puffs–pirate’s booty.

HT: Oh yum yum. To be fair, Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels, [gestures] that wardrobe is full of them.

ES: Yeah America does provide some good things, once in a while.

A Fold, A Shift, 2025
Pigment in binder and Lino on wooden panel
61 x 52 cm
(Donated to the Christie's Auction in benefit of the Great Ormond Street Hospital)
Courtesy of the artist

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 10
March 8, 2025
2025
Rob
Ober

Rob Ober’s studio
(Courtesy the artist)

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

Rob Ober: I’ve enjoyed working on a new series of paintings that all point to the early childhood influence of Russian icons, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the Orthodox Church experience, especially the music. I have been painting with oil since September. I’m excited about the results… the texture, light, feeling and mood. Acrylic will always have a place in my work, but the oil has been a nice fit for the more religious or spiritual paintings I have been working on.

(Courtesy the artist)

GB: What is your dream response from a viewer of your paintings?

RO: When I was twelve years old, I pulled back the shower curtain in the changing room of an indoor swimming pool at a hotel in Moscow, USSR, and looked up at a beautiful, naked French woman showering. I froze. I could not speak or move. I stood there and stared.

The artist’s father’s icon painting that the artist grew up with.
(Courtesy the artist)

GB: What is the one painting you are absolutely obsessed with (yours or someone else’s) and why?

RO: Odilon Redon’s Angel of Destiny. I don’t know why. I just cannot stop looking at it. It has a mysterious hold over my soul.

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 9
March 6, 2025
2025
Sarah
Gamble

The Origin, 2024
Oil on canvas
60x48 inches
Courtesy the artist

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

Sarah Gamble: I'm having fun with amazing Old Holland paint, layering and mixing glazes to get different color combinations. I've been thinking about a glazed layer as a form of time, and that's interesting to have a new process match an idea. I have also recently discovered liquid based water colors, and have been making quick works on paper with them, trying out ideas without judgment, and that is cool to see what new things can appear. I just had a solo show that came down a few months ago, so I'm starting with some new work.

Forest Bathing, 2023
Oil on canvas
58x40 inches
Courtesy the artist

GB: What is your dream response from a viewer of your paintings?

SG: For someone to see my painting and then have a long bright light beam out of their chest.

The Hedge, 2024
Oil on canvas
48x72 inches
Courtesy the artist

GB: What is the one painting you are absolutely obsessed with (yours or someone else’s) and why?

SG: The number one painting I am obsessed with is Max Ernst's In Praise of Freedom. It's so mysterious and beautifully dark. I can imagine being there. His landscapes from this series are up there with Corot for me. But more like The Dark Crystal, I love them!

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 8
February 26
2025
S
Klitgaard

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

S Klitgaard: I've gotten some paintings finally running and gotten into new weird spots. I’ve gotten into a motion of new ways of storytelling through a series of ghost paintings. Somehow using these ghosts my paintings' narratives are direct and not hidden under layers of theory and knowledge of art history.

I’m also excited about all the collaborations I’ve been doing! I did a bunch of thick, gnarly and violent abstract paintings for a character in a horror film that was really exciting to create. Painting them threw me into places I would never normally touch, which I’ve now thoroughly explored. I’m also working on a play with my best friend about painters. It’s been so fun pretending to be a different type of artist and then discussing art from that type of lens. I think I’m just excited to even be in the studio, how lucky you have to be to be able to create something!

Bad Things Come in Threes (courtesy the artist)

GB: What is your dream response from a viewer of your paintings?

SK: I guess my dream response, if I wanted it to be outrageous and silly, would be similar to how Lee Krasner responded to Guernica: she was shocked and had to walk around the block 3 times before going back to look at it. Just fully knocked out from it (how could you not though? It's a massive painting).

I want my paintings to make the viewer pause. To have them look at it and have questions. I want them to be curious but not feel stupid or like it's painting for painting sake. If someone's been looking at my painting and something new occurs to them: a new idea, a question, an emotion, then I've succeeded.

Headed Home (courtesy the artist)

GB: Is there anything you’d love to talk about that you never get a chance to talk about?

SK: People don’t ask me about what parts of pop culture I find inspiration from. I think folks sweep it under the rug and think, I only relate to art history and cartoons: easy and obvious to the viewer. I do wonder if folks are afraid that if you discuss pop culture in even the slightest of ways you’re instantly labeled a pop artist. Or worse you’re just making paintings with no relevance. If you want it to use pop culture, it has to be smart and it has to be something super obvious like a painting of Spongebob on a rocket launcher. I try to make it relevant without making it obvious by taking mythology from pop culture. Some examples of that would be how ghost emoji means ghosting, and unicorn emojis on dating apps should be avoided at all costs. (It does not mean queer and special or unique. It should. But it doesn’t). I take insults used by the Real Housewives or moments of tension, and think about what visually is happening to create that tension. What’s the moment of real visual discomfort when Rachel *raquel* discusses Sandavol to Arianna? Is it positioning, or the body motion, facial expressions? I love using pop culture to help me find cues and clues to help my painting, and find ways to bridge it to art history.

Nessie (courtesy the artist)

GB: What is the one painting you are absolutely obsessed with (yours or someone else’s) and why?

SK: Honestly it would be easier to ask which ones I'm not obsessed with. Since I can’t name them all, I’m tied between two paintings.

The first is Faith Ringgold's American People Series #20.

The motion, the horror, the honesty, and then just the fucking good painting. The first time I saw that painting I had to take a seat. The legs that cut off at the canvas or that are jutting into the scene, the layering of bodies. It creates a dizzying effect. The violence that’s crowded around the two children pressed together, watching in abject horror. It’s visceral, it’s horrific, and it’s a powerhouse painting.

The second is The Witches Sabbath by Goya. I think it's the weirdest, smallest thing and yet the biggest. He’s packed so much space into this tiny canvas and it breaks my heart every time. I have no idea how he made something so eerie and still hit a sweet note.

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 7
February 13
2025
Susan
Carr

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

Susan Carr: I am trying to push my paintings right now and I am excited and nervous about how far I can propel them to another state another experience. I am working on both paintings and ceramics. Pushing the work forward means trying new things. I am working bigger and I am trying to infuse the work with ideas that are meaningful to me. As artists we are on a long road home to the very core of ourselves. Each painting holds within it the history of all that we are.

Weeping woman 12x12 oil on canvas (courtesy the artist)

GB: What is your dream response from a viewer of your paintings?

SC: My dream response to my work is if my work makes someone happy and excited to have it in their home. Joy is a political act and I am trying to infuse the work with a kind of joy that people can respond to.

The mystic 11x14 oil on canvas (courtesy the artist)

GB: Is there anything no one ever asks you about that you’d love to talk about?

SC: I have done many talks where I tell the story of my work and how it’s come about. I have said mostly everything there is to say but some things remain private. I want the viewer to tell me what they see and how the work makes them feel. The work always hides something from me that only the viewer can see.

Zen mountain 12x12 oil on canvas (courtesy the artist)

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 6
January 10
2025
Patrick
Carlin
Mohundro

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

Patrick Carlin Mohundro: Procedure. Meaning, I have developed a set of rules and materials for working and now I am performing the rules with the materials in a procedural manner. This way of working–calm, methodical–is helping me keep a level head. I guess this keeps me from being too excited about anything!

Patrick Carlin Mohundro, Leotard, 14 x 11 1⁄8 inches, stained glass and porcelain, 2024 (photo courtesy the artist)

GB: What is your dream response from a viewer of your paintings?

PCM: Surprise. I always like when a viewer believes my painting is just that—when, despite the material choices, the viewer is convinced that my painting is an ordinary painting.

Patrick Carlin Mohundro, …a glimpse of you in Heaven, 11 1⁄8 x 14 inches, stained glass and porcelain, 2024 (photo courtesy the artist)

GB: What is the one painting you are absolutely obsessed with (yours or someone else’s) and why?

PCM: I am never obsessed with painting–not in that way. Here and there a painting will catch my eye and I'll think about it for a while or want to reproduce it somehow (maybe have it printed on a towel or bath mat). Chang Sujung has been making these plein air paintings on the inside of shirt sleeves that she sews. I suppose that I am necessarily obsessed with those, being her spouse. We spend a lot of time talking about the work and I'll sit in Central Park with her as she makes them.

Patrick Carlin Mohundro, Three Types of Light in One Day, 14 x 11 1⁄8 inches, stained glass and porcelain, 2024 (photo courtesy the artist)

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 5
December 4
2024
Michael
Gac Levin

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

Michael Gac Levin: The thing I’m most excited about in the studio right now is rest! The ability to just take a moment after an intense period of work and regroup peacefully and slowly.

GB: Can you share some of that reflection about your current show at My Pet Ram (NYC)?

MGL: Object Relations resulted from a slide into thinking about marriage and partnership after spending years thinking more about parenthood in my work. My wife is a parent-educator whose focus also shifted over the last few years towards thinking about parents and the dynamics of parent relationships. All the conversations we’ve had about that and are still having started coming through in my work early this year.

I try to let forms evolve naturally, even thoughtlessly in my pictures. The apple and tree started as peripheral elements around a tombstone shape during a period where my mind was occupied on mortality. I’d had the realization that once my wife and I decided to stop at two kids, our time as parents to infants was already behind us. That had a big impact on me, the visceral knowledge that major episodes in my life were already well behind me and wouldn’t be coming back. That got me thinking about my parents, about death and ending more generally.

That work around the tombstone image effectively gave birth to the next body of work as the apple and tree went from being peripheral to being central, and became a pair absent the tombstone.

Those changes are guided really by impulse and desire. When I want to draw the apple and the tree more than I do the tombstone, I do. Then new things start to happen around that. I try not to ever say to myself “this is what it’s about” until after a chapter of work is definitively closed. Like, now that Object Relations is up. If I do, the work freezes in place for a bit, that evolution stops occurring, and it’s hard to pick it up again.

When I’m keeping my thoughts at bay and favoring my impulses, I find after the fact that my pictures pose a lot more complex and thoughtful questions about what I’m going through at any given time than I find I’m able to verbally. More importantly they have enough of a symbolic texture and ambiguity to allow a viewer to interpret them according to their own experiences.

GB: What is your all-time favorite work of art and why?

MGL: I’m really bad at picking favorites! I think the “all-time” feels too permanent. I don’t have any tattoos. But here goes: my favorite artwork right now is a Saul Steinberg drawing from a series he made called “Cousins”. It’s a drawing of a little boy in a clock shop. There’s clocks and watches everywhere and they’re all surrounded by tick and check marks that fill up the space. The boy’s ears are abnormally large and he has a blank expression on his face. There’s a man in the lower corner, presumably the father, working on watches through a jeweler’s loop, totally indifferent to the child and the psychological drama that imprisons him. It’s so full of empathy for the child, but also of strangeness and estrangement, and it’s drawn so playfully throughout. Without much respect for rules of composition, perspective, and even good pencil use—but it all comes out beautifully.

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 4
October 14
2024
Dominic
Terlizzi

Gideon’s Bakery: What are you most excited about in the studio right now?

Dominic Terlizzi: Right now I am excited about 2 projects: a group of mosaic paintings in development and also some large scale foot stamp paintings. These 2 projects have very different approaches to scale and labor.

The Scheme of Grand Things, Art Cake, Brooklyn, 2024 (back room).

GB: Can you talk more about the mosaic paintings and foot stamp paintings? I want to know as much about them as you’re willing to share!

DT: Long story short: I had an interest in bread as a medium. This led to mice and mold. So I preserved the breads in bronze while working at a Baltimore foundry during off hours. Bronze casting led me to casting in paints which led to mosaic cast paintings. I created public sculptures for communities in Baltimore and was impacted by community consensus tending towards geometry and soft edges. I began to draw using geometry and soft edges. Narrative images emerged. I returned to NYC and stamping images evolved alongside the mosaic painting as a way to explore faster leaner drawing. Stamping led to stomping feet in the snow to map out large images. Snow stomping led to recent large drop cloth slipper stamping with paint.

Short story long: starting with what could be called mosaic paintings, this approach combines several skill sets together and allows a scaffold large enough where my cycle of impulses toward material and image can exist simultaneously. This approach clicked in after I worked years on a series of bronze low relief panels that were made through lost wax and carbonizing burnout of bread sculptures with found materials. During grad school I had run toward bread for a number of reasons including the figurative qualities, cultural overlaps, baselessness, dumbness, humor, sincerity, ephemerality etc. Post grad I returned to my position as a foundry finisher which had begun just after graduating from Cooper with you. In the midst of completing huge public bronze works for other artists, I asked why not my bread sculptures? These were just waiting for mice and mold but by encasing them into gated ceramic shells and incinerating them, a void for pouring bronze and preserving them existed. I would work after hours on casting works at the price of materials used. This was by the generosity of the foundry owner. What I learned from the castings was that I was drawn to process and material approaches that create multiple areas of content simultaneously often contradicting their own existence. My impulse was to introduce color into the bronze which led me to retool my operation to cast paint instead of bronze.

I think the first attempt at making paint relief casting began around 2010 while attending the Triangle international residency in dumbo. I brought the unfinished bronze up from Baltimore to use the residency time for chasing, cleating, and patinas. I also felt the need to begin exploring methods to replace the bronze with solid cast paint. After many attempts I made some progress and cast into paint many of the objects previously cast in bronze. I then arranged them and attached them to canvas to create the first paint mosaic reliefs. This process over the years has grown to include a large collection of textures and as I fragment the texture and objects a mosaic quality arrives and allows for the presence of larger image mapping. This opens up so many associations toward image building outside a narrow scope of painting.

Black Sun Run, 2024

Alongside the exploration into casting my metal skills were called on by community groups in Baltimore seeking sculptural landmarks. Creating public sculptures for these communities was a collaboration with stakeholders and involved multiple maquettes before a design was agreeable. I was impacted by how strongly community consensus always tended towards geometry and soft edges. This agreeable area for stakeholders was an area I began to question. If geometry and soft edges are acceptable then in theory any image in this agreeable style could be acceptable. I began to draw using geometry and soft edges after this realization.

In recent years I began a stamp drawing practice as a way to explore images quickly by using stamped symbols and stamped images of objects. These found stamps are an extension of found objects in my paint castings. On a snowy day in Maryland at my family’s farm I decided to walk out an image and see if the snow could combine stamping and casting. This experiment stuck with me and recently I was called upon to fill the huge gallery at Art Cake in Sunset Park. The only solution I could find was to walk out images in paint on drop cloths.

Foot stamp painting set-up under the BQE, New York.

GB: Is there another artist you’d like to talk about who maybe influences or inspires you, who maybe you don’t understand but think about a lot anyway, or some thought-feeling-idea you didn’t already elaborate on that you’d like to dive deeper into?

DT: Here is a story of two different ideas I have encountered about painting and the relationship it has to forms of music. These ideas have stayed with me because I find value in each of their truths and the conflict between them. In my retelling I am most definitely misremembering exact details.

The first idea is from Brian Eno who gave a lecture at the Chelsea School of Art and Design in London around 2002. He was exploring algorithms to create soundscapes that evolved and never looped the same way twice. He proposed that visual artists/painters should explore the same notion of evolving in real time with the viewer as a new way of creating. His line of inquiry was in regard to the way visual artists through history have forced their vision on to mediums in a tyrannical way. For example revealing a preconceived statue from within a rock or painting an image in a direct line of moves ending in a completed image. He explained this as an outdated god complex that aligns with creationist myths where the world is built in a fixed period of time. He wanted to know why Art had not drastically changed with ideas about evolution and Darwinism. What he questioned is why we have not found ways to create scenarios for creation that mimic how we developed as humans through evolution and natural selection. Why do we continue making through an outdated idea of the creative process? What does it look like visually if we adjust the creative process to align with Darwinism? The best answer he could lend at the time was screensavers. Those early clunky ever changing digital screens were arguably more complex than paintings because the compositional components continually competed to become the image. Whether this could be considered good image making or painting was not the primary concern. It was for ideas of what painting could become. Just as he was searching for new types of songs in his audio work he was proposing new types of paintings by exploring new ways of creating.

This way of thinking about painting is the elimination of a controlled narrative and all the mechanisms that have helped paintings hold a specific meaning. Also arguably the power of painting is in the efficiency of reading fixed sensory data without any changes occurring. There is something at stake with a fixed image that a moving image avoids entirely. I also encounter this process of an ever changing painted image as a developmental phase most painters will experience as they try to develop a painting practice with multiple failures along the way. For most painting students it may never become a fixed final image until it is abandoned or finds its way to a dumpster.

Many years later around 2015, I encountered a counterpoint thought about painting and music. At a round table of prominent academics, painters, and poets the recent history of painting was discussed as well as a vision for the future of painting. A parallel was drawn that good painting should be generic like a basic 4/4 measure rock and roll song. I am loosely recalling the argument here that a good rock song does not depend on who the musician is or on a process taken to create the song. Once a listener hears that the song occupies a generic space that feels good they approve of it as something authentic. In this regard it was argued that good painting behaves as one should expect it to and delivers on the expectations of the viewer. Good painting plays the known song and the known chorus. In their opinion any deviation from this is trying too hard which automatically becomes a purely academic exercise.

I think they are right in one way and wrong in another. A good song is a good song. But is a generic cover spin off automatically good? In this way of thinking, where does new territory come from? How could jazz evolve or ab-ex painting begin? I imagine not by leaning into comfortable territory. If I align this to painting I can’t imagine any notable painter intentionally making images equivalent to generic songs. Imagine trying to emulate generic qualities inherent in painting. Maybe there is something there. In fact maybe upending discovery and demystifying the arrival of art is a wise strategy. I’m curious though how the musician or painter gets anywhere new with this line of thinking.

The Scheme of Good things, big room.

Maybe this idea has less to do with the initial ethos of making rock and roll and more with the consumption and selling of rock and roll or in this case paintings. Maybe it’s about fetishizing the knowledge of the forms of music and painting and desiring the greatest hits of either. This approach asks for what we already know and declines the challenge of reinvention.

Imagine making a generic spin off image, claiming it as original, and getting applauded for it. Or worse imagine having insurmountable student debt and this generic cover song approach toward painting is the strategy offered by industry experts to help save you. Even worse yet, imagine that it works and your entire career is full of generic spin off cover song paintings. Imagine keeping it up until interest disappears. Who among these painters will afford the risk of going their own way at any point? Who will be willing to add a drum solo to their work? I think in Brian Eno’s proposal for creating you may never know when a sound might arrive, for better or worse.

I am not sure how to reconcile these ideas and so they have both stuck with me. Perhaps they tell us something about ways to value the origin and cultural absorption of images at a given moment more than about what painting could be. To bring another idea into the mix from Dave Hickey’s ghost, if alive today I could imagine he would argue both ideas are dead on arrival in 2024 because Art should offer what culture has taken away for our human experience. In the current state of things technology is generating moving images in infinite ways and can make infinite versions of derivative rock songs or derivative paintings. With screensavers all maxed out and generic rock songs overflowing there is still painting. So in conclusion, and from considerable disharmony…keep on painting in the physical free world.(™, ®, © )*keep on painting in the physical free world is a phrase created for this question response and is not intellectual property or lyrics associated with any generic musician or painter.

Apples and Oranges, 2024

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 3
September 10
2024
Pol Morton

Gideon’s Bakery: What’re you most excited about in the studio lately?

Pol Morton: I think this is an incredibly intricate question that masquerades as a simple one. I don’t think there is one answer.
A big thing right now, would have to be how the art that I make, that I conceive of, that I do almost every part of, continues to surprise me. Like HOW?!? I made it, how can it surprise me? But it does. And I think this is a shared artistic experience that I’m so glad we don’t grow out of.
New materials have always been one of the major catalysts for me in the studio. There’s a discovery high that comes with creating, and when I use only one material I lose the drive. Something about being in a time-restricted process (often with materials that will dry and you get one chance to get it right or the piece is ruined) allows me to break out of any potential preciousness. I made giant bike helmets for my upcoming solo show at Olympia. Before this, I had never used purple insulation foam. I had never used aqua resin. I had never used fiberglass. And I had never really used spray paint. Not to mention I had never carved at this scale and I had never carved anything hollow or with holes in it. Each stage in making these helmets was a series of choices that irrevocably affects every following step. This newness and steep learning curve balances well with the ease I feel when painting.
On a more basic note, I’m unreasonably excited about my studio dehumidifier and the sink that the Monira Residency provides us in our studios.

Cane/Can, 2024

GB: Can you talk more about your show at Olympia that opened last week (the artist reception is Thursday, September 12 from 6-8pm)? We would love to know more about what goes into making a show (vs making a work)? How do you think/feel about that difference (if there is any)?

PM: At the moment I am at the Monira Residency in Jersey City where I am deeply grateful to have a huge studio. Several of the individual paintings for this show, however, were in their nascent stage in my previous studio–the paintings are 7’ tall and would barely fit when raised off the ground to work on them. Being in a space that barely held the work created a non-consensual maximalism. Just by making large work in a small space, one creates an environment. There’s a beautiful claustrophobia to it, and a play with scale. Things shift in perceived shape and size depending on the space they inhabit.
When Olympia invited me to show with them, I was so excited. The show basically already knew what it wanted to be (at least in my head it did). These paintings and sculptures were living in my head long before they were made. I had envisioned making the bicycle helmets (“Accident 1” and “Accident 2”) for a year, but hadn’t had the opportunity to create them. I immediately knew I needed them to be in the show.
Creating a final curation and installation at Olympia was a beautiful collaborative process with Ali Rossi and Chantal Lee. There is a magic to having someone else’s eyes on your art. And it is an honor to get to work with two people who really see the work and understand it.
Each individual piece is incredibly meaningful to me, but the ways that the works talk to each other and being in person with the work is equally important. Being immersed in the vocabulary brings new connections and excitements that end up being the inspiration for the next piece I make.

Artist Zoom Self-Portrait courtesy of the Artist

GB: Ali and Chantal are really great. We cannot wait to see your show! Last question: What is your all-time favorite work of art and why?

PM: Oof. That’s a hard question. And I would say an impossible one to answer. I can, however, for a fact say that there’s an artwork that has been living inside my mind wiggling its fingers, and that’s Paul Thek”’s Untitled (Hand with Ring)” which he made in 1967 as part of the series “Thechnological Reliquaries”.
The first time I saw it in person (at 125 Newberry in September, 2022), I literally cried. Crying on the subway is one thing, and crying in an art space is another. I see a lot of art, and if a piece makes me cry normally it’s because of how beautifully it’s crafted, or the color, or the scale. And often, I’m crying through a smile of discovery. In this case, I was taken fully off-guard. I was moved. And I didn’t have words for how or why. The piece felt familiar even though I’m sure I’ve never seen it before and somehow hadn’t even seen an image of it. Something about the gradient arcs of purples and pinks on the nails, like a deathly rainbow. I’m often contemplating the beauty in my own injury or illness. The ways that the colors of angry flesh still look perfect on a palette. In my own work I try to find ways to talk about queerness and illness in myself, as two things that are true simultaneously. And Thek’s hand felt like it was just perfect. I knew basically nothing about him, but felt and found shared moments through the art and not from some printout by the front door. That’s the power of art.
Thek also changed his name to Paul (though I spell mine differently) and passed (1988) a year after I was born (1987). These two last facts have little to do with anything real, but they feel like a magical little connection in my heart.

“Get Well” installation image courtesy of Olympia.

Pol Morton’s “Get Well” opened at Olympia (41 Orchard Street NYC) September 5th and runs through October 5th. A reception for the artist will take place on September 12th from 6 to 8 pm.

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 2
June 13
2024
Sarah
Alice
Moran

Gideon’s Bakery: Do you plan your finished paintings/drawings ahead of time? If so what does the planning look like, why do you do it, can you imagine not doing it? If not why, can you imagine planning your paintings/drawings and what does that look/feel like?

Sarah Alice Moran: I plan enough so that I can let go when I’m painting. For me that means, figuring out the basic composition and color direction, so that I can allow my intuition to take over once I start. I make small sketches - maybe 2 x 3 inches - where I work out the composition. I also gather images that inspire the idea for the painting or will help me figure out what something looks like (how DO tigers sit?). Sometimes those images are art historical references, sometimes it's a cartoon, a vintage photo or even a stock photo or just things that catch my eye on the internet. I also take photos of myself if I need to figure out a pose or I can’t find an image online or in art history that is doing the thing I want it to do. I like to print all these things out so I have the images on paper all around me when I’m working. I also think about the palette. Do I want this to be a cool painting or a warm painting, is it nighttime or daytime? Then I force myself to mix colors before painting. That’s hard because I’m usually excited and want to jump right in, but I know if I have to stop and mix a lot more in the middle it will slow me down - and once I get going it goes fast.

Thirst Trap (Zebra), 2024
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 60 inches

GB: What is your best fantasy response to your work from a viewer (or Guston’s “looker”)? (We had the shared experience of that woman running into the gallery to tell you a painting she saw from the street is beautiful, that’s pretty good!)

SAM: You mentioned when we were together at my recent show, Thirst Trap, at My Pet Ram - the gallery has big windows on the ground floor of Hester St. It was exciting to have people walking by who were not on a mission to see paintings, and probably weren’t expecting to see paintings, feel a pull from them to come into the gallery and spend a moment with my work. I surprised them.
The images tend to be an intuitive distillation of my research, education, interests and experiences. I describe my paintings as magic paintings because that’s what they feel like to me. Making a painting - when it works - feels like this wild magic spell. So I just want each person to take some of that magic with them, whatever that means to them individually. I don’t have an agenda per se, I certainly have opinions, and I think my perspective comes through in the work, but that’s just me. There’s never one side to a story.

Moodboard collage by the artist.

Thirst Trap, Moran’s first solo show in New York, at My Pet Ram, ran from February 23 to March 24, 2024.

Gideon’s
Bakery
Volume 1
Issue 1
May 7
2024
Heather
Drayzen

Gideon’s Bakery: Tell us about your process—what’s a day in the studio like?

Heather Drayzen: During the school year, I teach full-time from September to June. I used to paint in the mornings before work, but now I’ve shifted to enjoying a bit more sleep and drinking a pot of Stumptown coffee before starting my day. lol.. I try to do my daily journal and sit in my home studio and look at my paintings. I love this quiet time with them. I often look at pictures of my paintings during my commute, playing around with different edits like mirroring them or converting them to black and white, all while contemplating my next moves. When I get home, I unwind by spending time with the pups, chatting with Josh, and painting either before or after dinner.
Once a month or so, I prepare a large palette and store it in butcher trays in my studio’s mini-freezer to keep the paint fresh for extended periods. Throughout the week, I dedicate varying amounts of time to painting, depending on my energy level. Weekends are reserved for longer painting sessions along with chores and other tasks. And mercifully I get some public school holidays to paint as well. I typically have several canvases in progress simultaneously, some in the drying stage after oil grounding, while others are in the underpainting stage. The underpaintings vary from quick base coats with a few colors and I draw back into the wet paint with a brush to more elaborate ones where I work wet-on-wet, incorporating spontaneous elements as I go along. I use a projector to maintain the composition. During the work week, I am generally working on the canvases with dry underpaintings. When possible, I add ephemeral touches like prism or window light, inspired by the ambient lighting around me.
For a long time I wouldn’t listen to music because I felt it was influenced by painting too much but now I really try to bring these feelings into my painting and work with them. Listening to music and painting make me feel more alive and in touch with my inner voice. Give me some Cat Power or Elliot Smith and I feel at home. Sometimes I’ll watch a show if I’m really into it to keep me going longer. When summer comes, I get to sleep in and then paint and then go to the pool. Then nap. It’s wonderful!

Prism Light, 2024

GB: Who are your loves of art history and how do they influence your paintings?

HD: I love a deep dive on artists, and hearing about artists and their process gives me gas in the tank to keep going. My love list could go on for several pages and there are many artists I nod to in my current show including Bonnard, Morisot, Munch, and Vuillard. Pierre Bonnard has been my main source of inspiration in recent years. His paintings transport me, and I feel deeply connected to them. He once wrote, “I should like to arrive in front of the young painters of the year 2000 on the wings of a butterfly.” As I write this, I’ve recently begun painting a small canvas based on Marthe in the bath but placing myself in her role in the tub and his role and as the painter simultaneously. I’m thinking about transformation and how water, light, and daily rituals play into this while also nodding to the influence his paintings have on my own. The light, sensitivity of touch, and feeling in his work are incredibly moving to me. I’ve read some criticisms about how he objectified her, but all I see is love when I look at those paintings. I recently saw three of his bath paintings at the Kimbell Museum in Texas. He began the last painting before she passed and finished after she died. I don’t believe for a second that those works could be painted that tenderly without real affection and connection and longing. He was able to spend more time with her through painting and that is so moving to me. All of my work thus far is diaristic in nature, but I continually nod to art history, thinking about how I can relate my life to the paintings that I love and then paint the people I cherish and moments from my own life as tenderly and intimately as I can. I think about light and glow and how this can make a painting feel transcendent across time.

GB: Can you talk about how you came to focus on your subject matter—zoomed in portraits and domestic scenes of family, friends, all deeply personal, intimate, and vulnerable—

HD: My artistic journey is deeply entwined with my life experiences stretching back to childhood. In high school, I made a series of self-portraits for my AP portfolio, focusing on the psychology of self and life cycles. At 38, not much has changed on that front! I met my husband, Josh, at a young age; we were 18/19, which means I’ve been drawing and painting him and his sister/my sister-in-law, Sarah, for over two decades now.
Recently, I’ve consciously embraced vulnerability depicting not just the good moments but also the raw realities, like with my own health scares. Looking further back, my father died of lung cancer when I was very young. This shaped my fascination with family photos, I would spend a lot of time staring and stitching together fragments of our lives visually. Despite the darkness of loss, my upbringing was filled with love. These memories shaped my viewpoint very early on and looking back, I can see how these experiences set the stage for my past and current work to paint my own life.
In terms of zooming in, taking a Crit Club class with Clare Grill was transformative for me. Clare encouraged me to be more specific and to pinpoint the exact moment or feeling I wanted to convey and then amplify this in my work and composition. It was also during a drawing class with Langdon Graves that I began to seriously consider the power of cropping and zooming in to enhance intimacy in my work.

GB: What is the larger role painting plays in your life?

HD: I need to paint to feel like myself. If I go too long without painting, I start to feel off-kilter and I get cranky. Plus, painting has also helped me make a lot of friends–like you, Matt!! I love sharing ideas with other artists and feeling like I’m growing as a person. Painting gives me a feeling of forward momentum and helps me process my emotions and experiences. If I’m going through something tough I can always think about how I might paint it and that helps me get through it. On a daily basis, I notice things more and the world is more beautiful.

GB: How do you feel about sharing your work with an audience?

HB: I make these paintings for myself and at the same time I’m excited to share this work with people–I do get pangs of terror for full disclosure! Back in my 20s, I was more focused on teaching and figuring out life and I wasn’t painting as much. I didn’t show too many people my work beyond close friends and family. Now, seeing my paintings hung on a wall is a dream realized and I know my younger self would be super proud. Overall, I believe the more personal my paintings are, the more people can connect with them on a universal level. And that connection and shared understanding is incredibly rewarding.

Drayzen in her studio.

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Vol 1. (May 2024—) About Contributors EmailInstagram ©2025 Gideon’s Bakery

Vol 1. (May 2024—)

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