Katie
Hector
June 25, 2025Volume 2
Issue 3
Gideon’s Bakery: what do you like about painting?
Katie Hector: I'm addicted to the flow state I can access while painting. Where decisions feel intuitive and intentionally impulsive and when the image of what I’m working on is abstracted by the process of layering paint. I think tapping into that zone as much as possible enriches my life greatly. What happens to a work after its complete is a matter of context but I’ve always cared about the making the most.
GB: Did you play sports at a high level?
KH: I did, I was a swimmer growing up. I think it greatly influenced me in terms of discipline, endurance, commitment to consistency, and being able to generate motivation. Swimming is a funny sport because it’s a team effort culminating from solo races; head in the water, in your own lane, unable to see your opponent or hear the crowd. When I paint in the studio now all masked up in a respirator (due to the airbrush) I get a laugh thinking that I’ve trained for this since I was six.
GB: Louise Fishman visited Hunter while I was there and talked about her youthful love of basketball. Because her childhood was pre-Title 9 she couldn’t continue playing after a certain age. Her love of basketball manifested at the edges and grids of her paintings and spoke to her keen awareness of the boundaries of the court. She spoke to this for a while, the relationship of her body as a player and being in and out of bounds, how to play the edge of the court. It was fascinating to see it in the work. I had a feeling with your talk of a “flow state” you had a similar relationship to sports. Consistency is an interesting topic and it’s wild to think about your time spent swimming as training for painting. How does this thread, swimming to respirator, affect the content of the work? I’m thinking also of the act of making it, I’m not sure I have a question here maybe just a thought, that you can bear witness and participate in the making but no one else could bear witness unless they, too, masked, but of course they wouldn’t have your breath training and wouldn't be involved in making to it'd be very different.
KH: I think the sensory deprivation allows me to access a flow state in the same way being in the water used to when I was a kid. It feels like putting on blinders and being able to hyper focus for short bursts at a time. I typically paint in short yet energized 15-30 min bursts at a time. Katie Hector I think the toxic nature of my process (the need to wear a mask while painting) makes me think a lot about a dystopian future. I think it deeply impacts my choice of color, an acid hyper saturated pallette. I envision my subjects as beings from a toxic future, shellshocked.
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
Acrylic on canvas
22 x 22 inches
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
Erica
Newton
June 12, 2025
Volume 2
Issue 2
Gideon’s Bakery: what do you like about painting?
Erica Newton: I like the way it gets me to look at the world, like I'm active listening/looking. I like the space it offers me to kind of worldbuilding and dialogue with myself and my memories and fantasies. I like the mystery of it and the surprise. I like the all-at-onceness of painting, there is no order for how you are supposed to receive the information. I like what that does to our sense of time and space and order. And of course, I like the materiality of the whole endeavor.
Oh and I also like the problem solving aspect—there’s always something to be worked out.
GB: Can you say more about the materiality of the whole endeavor? How did you come about using the materials you use in the way that you use them?
EN: Well I didn't pick up oil paints until I was an art model at the New York Studio School (which is where I got my MFA). I would be sitting there for hours watching other people mix paint and imagine what it might feel like and entertain myself by thinking about how I would mix a certain color in the room. So I kind of craved them from afar before I took the plunge. I also have the studio school to thank for the plaster. The school does these intensives for two weeks between terms that they call marathons and I started taking sculpture rather than drawing ones (Marathons are also how I started out with oil painting too because they are open to everyone). I was introduced to plaster in one of these marathons and had so much fun with it. The quality of plaster when it's wet is enticing and the possibilities feel endless and then there's this big reveal moment where you don't quite know how it will turn out (at least the way I do it, hah). But I was also so immersed in painting, image, and color, so I thought I'd try making plaster slabs to paint on and it was immediately exciting and experimental. I am still getting surprised by what paint and plaster can do together so that's probably a reason I have kept with it. I also like immediately being involved in making the actual art object, which the plaster part of the process definitely is. It's sort of funny, but I don't have much patience for stretching and preparing a canvas and don't especially love the quality of the surface. I want to get right into it and I want something that talks back. Though this wasn't a conscious intention (and still isn't really, though I'm more aware of it) I guess I'll just say there's something intriguing about walking the line between a painting and a sculptural object. Something about the presence of it.
GB: How does the materiality affect the content? If it doesn’t, why do you think that is?
EN:My counter to you might be what’s the difference between materiality and content? I’m not sure I can totally figure how to draw the distinction. It’s all metaphor and it’s all itself simultaneously. Image and the senses engaged by the material get interlocked in the making. For me, there is no content without material, I think they’re inextricably linked.
My less esoteric answer is that, in terms of process, often the plaster offers something to respond to and build an image off of. Sometimes when it’s setting I start playing around or composing with something in mind but often when I get the first pass of paint on something else happens other than my original intention. So I guess what I’m saying is there’s this oscillation between what elements are directing the unfolding of the work. I don’t try to foist an idea onto a material, there’s always a dialogue.
Erica’s work is currently on display at Ruby/Dakota (155 E 2nd Street, NYC) in a two person exhibition “Stretch Marks” with Ellen Hanson through June 28th. You can learn more about Erica on her website and instagram.
oil and plaster on wood
11 x 9.5 inches
Photo: Rosie Lopeman
Photo: Tyler Mathew Oyer
Spray paint, plaster, paint skins, oil paint, burlap
5 x 6 inches
Photo: The artist
Adrianne
Rubenstein
June 5, 2025Volume 2
Issue 1
Gideon’s Bakery: what do you like about painting?
Adrianne Rubenstein: I like how paintings look and feel, and the depth of experience.
GB: Could you describe a painting's look and feel and depth of experience that has a special place in your mind and heart? Yours or someone else's painting, doesn't matter, or maybe both?
AR: I like to see rebellion in a painting and a contrast between assumed or accepted realities and fantastic ones, and for the space in between to be the revelation. I like paintings that take down power structures. Decisions can be a code into the raw and sometimes painful experience of the artist. I think painting and looking at painting is basically the same thing. I think super smart people like Dana Schutz are able to make paintings that tell enormous long stories of time and detail and that dumb funny painters like (Georg) Baselitz can make grand overtures about humanity with one crooked gesture.
GB: On the spectrum of "super-smart-painters to dumb-funny-painters" where do you place your work and could you talk about the stories or overtures you are making--not necessarily what the stories/overtures are literally unless that's what you'd like to do, but more what it feels like when you're about to start a painting, when you're in the middle of it, when you've decided to stop painting that painting, etc.?
AR: I think I’m on the dumber end. The paintings i make are exactly and only what i am able to make, i don’t think anyone else could do them and i don’t think anyone’s ever going to hire me to do highly skilled labor in a dot factory, but I think the extent that I love and admire painting us very very evident in my work and conduct as an artist. people always say that my work looks fun to make but actually a lot of the process us fighting and just forcing myself to do it like anything else that you’ve somehow made yourself responsible to. So, when I’m making a painting i am mostly coming up with subtle mind tricks to trick myself into doing the stuff I like looking at which needs to be not overly thought about. I think there’s an element of covering tracks and also trying to give “a lot.” When the paintings are finished, I’m not really sure, but it could be a lot of points earlier or later than they are, but the thought process might be like: I’ve gotten at the essence of something and any more would be taking it away, but I also like to be able to ruin my paintings and experience them dying so I can make sure it’s a part of my process not to create finite things.