Beau Gabriel interviewed by Emily Sussman

Vol. 2 No. 13 October 10, 2025

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Emily Sussman: Walk me through your career thus far—how did you come to be an artist?

Beau Gabriel: I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember—my very first artistic things that made me excited were the TinTin comics and those N.C Wyeth illustrations of Treasure Island in the Robert Louis Stevenson Books. I didn’t study art, I studied Russian Literature, and at the same time I was venturing into classical music, I played the Oboe – It was really after university when I ended up in Paris working as a paralegal, which was a move. Looking back I think it was the time spent in Paris and in much closer proximity not just to the works themselves and the very illustrious European tradition but in the sense close to the physical spaces and the mentalities that I could imagine had originally produced this type of work. After a few years there I realized in a serious way what I wanted to be doing so I went back to school for art and ended up in London to do an MA at the Royal College there. There was one painting that made me want to become a painter—the Pontormo deposition (ed. Note The Deposition from the Cross, Jacopo Pontormo, 1528-1528) this work made at the peak of mannerism which I saw in Florence and it had just been restored after centuries and centuries of accumulating soot from candles and slowly yellowing after yet another coat of varnish, it finally had a complete clean and it had these colors to it that were to me completely unexpected.

ES: How did you develop this show, Beau Gabriel: Blackberry Rondo (ed. On view at Carvahlo from June 13-July 26, 2025)

BG: This series all takes place in Corte Medera which is a town in Marin County in the Bay Area just outside of San Francisco where my mom grew up. Originally it was her grandfather who moved there- it’s a place that’s always seemed at the heart of something very personal [to me], I think through my mom. Though she has spent much of her adult life on the east coast she remains very connected to this place – it figures perhaps more prominently than anything else in her idea of herself and of the world in general and I think much of that was passed on to me and to my brother. Over the past two years the paintings have increasingly sought out some sort of connection, some sort of meaning between European art which has been so inspirational to me and serves as the model in so much of what I do, and then also my own experience, my own memories, my own system of what I hold dear and find beautiful and what provokes a sense of searching in me.

ES: Yeah, looking at these I’m very struck by the similarities between the baroque and renaissance landscape, particularly the northern landscape and the landscape in California.

BG: It’s very true the landscape of Northen California, especially when you get into west Marin with these rolling hills which in the summer kind of birth to this golden brown color, and that of Tuscany and Sienna, are very similar. For this series in particular- I was drawn to an earlier era of Italian art. Pontormo and the mannerist still figure prominently but over the past year, and I was very lucky to have spent two months last year in Sienna at a residency and had a show there, I’m more and more finding that this earlier mode of Italian painting, and the questions those painters were setting out to answer, at the end of the day these paintings are about some type of search. Searching through the medium of painting and drawing to find some nugget of meaning, in my personal life and in life in general. In those earlier paintings there’s a remarkable and moving tension between an increasingly powerful formal ability to depict the natural world and then something more spiritual and perhaps psychological that comes with that, which places the painter in the midst in all this meaning.

ES: It’s interesting you situate your work currently in the mannerist tradition, because when I look at it (and It’s not that I don’t see that, I obviously do), I still see a lot of Baroque, late Renaissance like Gentileschi. I’m curious about this portrait in particular (Woman with a Thistle,2025, Oil on panel, 40 x 30 cm.) which feels much more situated in an earlier renaissance oeuvre.

BG: IT’s the great privilege and fun of drawing on these traditions here and now. The painting that inspired the series was this one that was the result of looking at Ucello and even more specifically at his cycle of frescoes in Florence at S. Maria Novella which are about the life of Noah so the depict the biblical flood and are also painted in this rather limited palette, like he created his own pink—

ES: For me it’s the Lippi cycle in that cathedral but to each their own. (Laughs)

BG: (Laughs) Oh yes, that also for sure. The series before took place in Maine and was all Ghirlandaio. We are now the vessels that carry all this imagery with us. This work is very closely modeled on a tradition that was all the rage in late 15th century Florence- the profile portrait often with a more abstracted background. So here, there’s one of my favorite paintings in the National Gallery in London by Alesso Baldovenetti – [as inspiration]. This figure is who is portrayed here is a very old and dear friend of mine named Madeline who grew up in the same part of California and whose mother and my grandmother were best friends as young brides who found each other in this community just after the second world war- and so each generation of our families has formed friendships. She appears throughout as an allegorical figure who represents in some ways the essence of the place, and also my connection and her connection to it which is increasingly based on memory. The thistle that she has pinned to her shirt actually comes from the show I did in Sienna last year which was called, “Roadside Thistles.” In which the thistle, by virtue of being a quite exquisite and previous thing but also one that will of course, prick you.

ES: In most of the portraiture of the renaissance, particularly of women, the symbols all kind of indicate one’s virginity and purity, loyalty, piety you know all those fun catholic things.

BG: Yeah I’ve had this conversation with friends and even my own mother about this. Recently there was an exhibit here in New York the Sienna- I don’t know if you-

ES: The Siena one—It was just at the National Gallery.

BG: Right it was at The Met and then the National Gallery—I think you know for some people it can be difficult perhaps, I mean you can appreciate those paintings just for the sheer beauty—their beauty as objects especially with all the gold and precious pigments–

ES: Sumptuous objects.

BG: That are on them. But I think yeah when it does come to this sort of perhaps catholic imagery and symbology, it has the potential to form a bit of a barrier because it’s obviously a bit of a different world from the one we live in today—

ES: Yeah.

BG: And yet at the same token I mean I think going back to what I said earlier about painting as a means to ask questions and understand something more about yourself I think some of that stuff doesn’t really change.

ES: It does stay somewhat consistent.

BG: To endow a figure which in this case is half real half imaginary with attributes that represent something that is at the end of the day something meaningful I think it made sense here, The relationships which are at the bottom of this series, to my mother, in general of people to a place which is where they’re from that feels like home. There’s something quite fundamental and age -old to these ideas. A lot of my painting at this point is much the same of any figurative painter working today you know there’d be sort of these big themes that drive what we’re doing one obviously being that of constructing this sort of personal identity, I think the other being this often tongue in cheek relationship with history.

This era of painting is at once so recognizable and unownable and I do think for certain artists and a certain public maybe that’s the more interesting way of engaging with it. I feel quite like I’ve arrived at a different approach, one that feels you know, almost tapped into certain impulses as to reasons why this art was created in the first place, that also feels very necessary and urgent for my own self.

ES: You’ve mentioned that this figure that you pointed out earlier is based on a real person but are the figures in your work typically real or imaginary or an amalgam of the two?

BG: All the models are real friends of mine- my partner, so in terms of the process they all start with very real people who at one point or another have either come to the studio to pose or we’ve been out walking in the park and I’ve asked (laughs) if they can hold still for a moment—

ES: (Laughs) Nice!

BG: in the right line, or what they’re’ wearing is you know, I can see it being a painting. That being said yeah there’s a point where I wouldn’t consider any of them portraits –I do think though, I’ve sometimes in the past compared what I do with these paintings to the idea of putting on a theatrical performance with a group of friends – a pageant of sorts, where you kind of think up what or how a person can be transformed into a figure that represents something that of course has very real elements of what they are and my relationship to them which then at the same time belongs purely to the realm of imagination. I think there’s a parallel in that to the way I relate to places like Marin county and my mother’s home. A lot of it, especially as a life takes you away from it, increasingly becomes something that perhaps is in a way more real for me through imagination.

ES: Sure, memory is such a complex beast in that way. In prep for this, I looked up if Russian literature had any connection to memory and I came up with some weird results, apparently, for example War and Peace is full of instances. I came across this more recent book “In Memory of Memory” by Maria Stephanova came up in my research, it’s quite new—

BG: War and peace, actually, this painting at the far end of the night was initially the spark started the first sketch, was a direct connection to war and peace which I read as an undergrad. I had this distinct memory of a scene in which there are two characters (I can’t remember actually if it was from “War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina”) are in the midst of an existential conversation as they more often than not are in these book, but they’re crossing a flooded river as night is falling and there’s this very vivid description of the evening sky being reflected in all of the pools that have been left by the receded waters.

ES: How do you feel about narrative playing into the work? Huge theme in Renaissance work as well.

BG: Of course! And its something that for a while, when I first got started painting I avoided for a while. There’s an idea perhaps that narrative is either slightly old fashioned or antiquated approach or perhaps more than that I felt I didn’t have a story worth telling. I think that’s true with any mode of painting- starting out as a painter so much of your work is trying to get a correct grip on technique, on form, finding a style and a way of actually using paint that works for you, but I’m all for- I’m thoroughly in the narrative camp now so much so that I’m considering the next series of work- and I think that will very much be a part of it.

ES: That kind of leads into another question I had where I think that these works are really interesting because they so aptly combine the current (whatever that is, even if it’s really the past) and the longer arc of art history. I was curious where that kind of painting will be in the future (the combination of the traditional and the modern), or where your painting will be in the future?

BG: (laughs) that’s an interesting question

ES: Tough, yeah I know.

BG: it’s hard to say, I think, I guess there are painters who think about the future of their works. I will confess that, my work has always been about taking, scooping something out from the present and looking backwards with it. I think that for me that’s kind of enough at this point. I’m quite proud of how these paintings have emerged and stand right here right now as evidence of me and where I come from I leave the projection into the future to someone else. Painting, especially a series like this- as a painter you’re constantly trying to figure stuff out – there have been some interesting things that have emerged that make me excited about things to come. Some of them are very technical- a rose matter pink, a terre verte green earth (points to colors), You know compositional, compositional forms – here you have this perhaps contrast between this painting in its composition which is perhaps mannerist or pushing against the threshold of baroque (Points to center piece I can’t find the title of yet) against something (points to Willows , 2025, oil on panel) linear and owes a stylistic or compositional debt to the likes of Botticelli

ES: Certainly in the way you’ve made the S curve of the bodies as well.

BG: I do find that in some ways this older period of Italian painting has elements that increasingly strike me as very American.

ES: Could you extrapolate on that a little bit?

BG: Yeah, I think in the stylization and in the abstraction of certain elements whether that’s landscapes or its in what people are wearing, by painting perhaps more the idea or even the idealized essence of something rather than every particular detail of its so-called- realness you actually are creating something quite expansive in an image where you suddenly have the room for a lot of projection and imagination to come in an fill these spots where you’ve left—

ES: Sure.

BG: half empty as it were and I think back in the 15th or even 14th century a lot of that was done because so much of the world was a mystery. As Americans we – just the vastness of our physical continent but also the vastness of our great enterprise. Peter Shjeldahl, who has a really great essay, I think it was a review of one of the Whitney biennials, describes Americans as “Water droplets skittered about on a hot plate.”

ES: I can’t believe that stuck with you for so long.

BG: It’s quite a memorable image—It’s the idea of something unrealized which creates excitement, it creates tension, perhaps its more foreboding at times but to then, as Americans, to then pin our own sense of who we are onto something so vast I think is really so interesting and in the sense that European traditions have been working within very well—established geometric confines. Florence and Sienna traded and had interactions with people from all around the world remained a very discrete bit of land as did dogmas of political power and church power. I think for Americans it can almost be too much at times.

ES: It doesn’t feel that dissimilar. Which of the works did you start first?

BG: Good question—I believe it was this one—(The Flood, 2025, oil on panel) the larger compositions are a result of a very specific and traditional technical process- they start off as drawings, very small-scale sketches trying to figure out composition and relationship between figures and then culminate in these drawings called cartoons which are full scale drawings and are especially useful for nuances in drapery

ES: I can’t believe you made cartoons!

BG: Yes, so these ones are—you know they’re always a bit piecemeal you’ve got you know, you start to put these figures together and then you cut them out as you realize they’re not quite right—but then yeah they’re traces and traced onto the panel which you can still see.

ES: Yeah I can see some of the pencil work.

BG: Lines, which, yeah in the past I’ve used kind of a traditional black chalk to trace.

ES: that is very traditional, yeah.

BG: So Aisha, my partner works at the British museum and the prints and drawings section is really an incredible – it is funny there are very few of these full scale drawings which actually survive. They got chewed up in the process often if you know a painting was really popular they’d reuse the cartoon to do different versions of it. Just by nature of being used in the studio-

ES: If they were used for a fresco they were gonners.

BG: Yeah exactly, they end up on the ground they end up tattered but I think this one- I always knew this image of the flood- it’s based on actual events which is when my mom was growing up on the farm they used to when there was heavy rainfall the pasture would actually flood. She told us when we were growing up the stories of canoeing around the pasture of you know, over the fence, with just the fenceposts were sticking up—

It’s remarkable how some of these images, when you look at Ucello there’s someone floating by in a barrel, there’s the little people and animals who’ve sought refuge on the remaining dry spots of ground. There are a particular few Marin things—the mountains in the background is Mt. Tamalpais it kind of towers and presides over the whole area—that tree (gestures to tree) is an actual tree that’s still on the farm that’s the chicken coop floating by in the distance.

ES: What I appreciate about this work in particular is that all the other works are somewhat grounded in reality and this one is a little fantastical, a little bit more biblical.

BG: It’s funny because it is in theory the one that’s the most real- it’s based on a real event – This one loosely, this group of women are going to plant willow trees – you can get a cutting from a live tree and if you stick it in damp soil it will eventually grow into a new tree which is something – my grandfather died when I was young but it’s one of those things I have a memory of doing with him. In a way this one is kind of - even though it’s the most based on an actual historical event it is perhaps the most fantastical at the same time.

ES: It’s an interesting line to walk.

BG: Yeah, it’s also in your imagination, especially if these things were never lived or seen with your own eyes like in the night- this structure in the background is the remains of the railroad track (This is the painting in the center of the room).

ES: Apparently it used to stand at the entrance of this farm for years and years.

BG: Yeah back in the late 19th c in Marin the railroads were very important and they built a lot of these trestles out of redwood which at the time was the cheapest and most plentiful material

ES: And now it’s like you can’t ever touch one.

BG: It’s a fun little story there—my mom has memories of this trestle, I don’t it was torn down long before I came along but I actually wrote to my uncle who’s a contractor, a builder and asked if he could

ES: Whip up the plans?

BG: in a simple sketch reconstruct this trestle and he went up to our local railroad history museum in Sacramento and found the original kind of surveys and he sent me these very beautiful very detailed plans- if I wanted to I could have rebuilt the thing to scale with all the original hardware

ES: That’s hysterical.

BG: Also in terms of this painting, is very much about the passage of time and the end of one thing and the beginning of something new. She sits on this trestle and represents something that’s been destroyed or lost but at the same time the willows that the other lot have planted are starting to grow again and the constellations are actually an exact map of the stars on the very early hours of the day my mom was born. Feburary 18, 1955—

ES: Very specific!

BG: It’s very personal symbolism.

ES: Who are you reading right now? Any favorite authors?

BG: Yeah—I actually went back to read a book that had a very profound influence on me. I actually first read it as a Russian major. Nabokov’s Speak Memory

ES: There you go!

BG: It was one of the last things he wrote I think before he died but it’s mostly concerned with his you know early life in Russia. HE talks a lot about this idea of time and memory and the things that make a place that has been long – places very much in your past and how they still live within you. If you’re an artist of some sort.

ES: Quickly while we’re in this corner (I point to the grandpa and Beau painting) is this your granddad?

BG: This is—yeah so this painting is a special one its unlike anything I’ve ever done it’s based directly on a photograph of actually me and my granddad taken not long before. he died but it is – yeah it’s one of those photographs where I sometimes feel, I have my own memories of him and the way my mom talks about him and my grandmother did before she did, but this photographs constitutes such a large part of my own idea of him and memory of him.

ES: This also feels the most modern.

BG: Yeah, I mean it’s you know, it was painted and the way that it’s cropped is the plain of the original image, it’s not like these other painting s in which these figures have been very much constructed and designed in a way to represent something but I do think that the emotions in it or at least the emotions it conjures for me are completely of a piece with the others .

ES: There’s also the way that you’ve rendered the face in a way to me is so true to memory – in so far as memory is infallible and imperfect and there’s something to that abstraction.

BG: The thing with this is that it has to exist in this somewhat unfinished state because that’s the nature of memories of someone who you loved very much and who loved you. At a certain point with this painting, I realized I couldn’t go any further.

ES: Yeah, of course.

BG: I guess it’s also a self-portrait of two- or three-year-old Beau there. There’s this painting by Hurvin Anderson of this I think it’s a mother and daughter on a frozen lake which I think he painted from a postcard – the idea of these two figures in the abstract.

ES: Are there any other contemporary painters you’re looking at right now that you’re excited about?

BG: Kerry James Marshall is someone who to me is perhaps the best living painter today um I think his subject matter is very much of America. His experience is very different from mine but I do think he – there’s a lot in his approach to symbolism of America and how it relates to a historic tradition – one that’s perhaps not very American that I find really interesting. I think also there’s a great sort of – there’s something extremely sophisticated and intellectual in how he composes his work in the layers to it and at the same time there’s this extremely sort of , there’s this extreme sincerity and beauty that’s completely unlabored—

ES: And speaking of artists who work within the narrative tradition.

BG: Absolutely I think he’s really inspirational as someone who has married his great love for knowledge of the history of painting with something very pressing and important from his own experience.

A lot of David Salle of this—it tipped me over the edge of becoming a painter especially with these tapestry paintings he called them. Someone also did mention Cecily Brown which is funny because—

ES: I mean she’s formidable in every way.

BG: Yeah she’s one of those people where when I first saw a show of hers it really made such an impression on me but since then I’ve gone back and forth [on it]. I always go back to her earlier work which is much more directly involved in locations.

ES: Yeah and Holbein and Flemish painting—I Always finish questions with what’s your must have or favorite studio snack.

BG: Studio Snack!? Whoa! That’s a very important question—cuts to the quick. I started making polenta in my studio this past year.

ES: How?

BG: You get the instant version you boil water in the same hot plate you use for—

ES: And then you boil an egg at the same time?

BG: Nah it’s very easy—I also love the what are they called? The petite ecolie?

ES: I do love those.

BG: There’s the genuine article and then lots of knock-offs.

ES: The biscuit with the chocolate on top.

BG: Yeah the butter biscuit with the layer of chocolate and the scalloped edge.

ES: I did a summer program in France when I was a teenager, and every time we stopped off at a gas station my roommate and I would buy tons of those.

BG: They don’t last very long in my studio.

Willows, 2025
oil on panel
61 x 76 ¾ in
155 x 195 cm
All images courtesy of Beau Gabriel and CARVALHO, New York

The Night, 2025
oil on panel
86 x 61 in
220 x 155 cm