“Waiting for the image to tell me what to do.”
In 2019, Barbara Takenaga’s installation Looking at Blue transformed BMAC’s Mary Sommer Room into what Chief Curator Mara Williams called “a space of awe and wonder, where the enormity of a universe with no edges or boundaries can be not just imagined but felt.”
Our friends at DC Moore Gallery have launched a new series, “From the Studio,” exploring how artists are faring during the coronavirus pandemic. The gallery has graciously permitted us to reprint their recent interview with Takenaga here.
Takenaga holds an M.F.A. and a B.F.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her artwork has been shown in solo installations at the Neuberger Museum of Art and MASS MoCA and in group exhibitions at the National Academy Museum and the American Academy of Arts & Letters, among many others. Her work is included in the public collections of The Library of Congress, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the United States Embassy in Algeria.
From the Studio: Barbara Takenaga
I hope everyone is safe out there. My life seems suddenly full of disinfecting—my keys, door knobs, and phone have never been so clean.
As artists, many of us are finding the lockdown solitude oddly familiar, as we often spend so much time alone in the studio. I love my time there, painting and listening to audible books. I’m lucky to have my little dog, Andy, with me as I work—as Edith Wharton wrote, “…a heartbeat at my feet.”
I have a lot of work in progress, paintings that are just started and others that have been “finished” for months/years but sit there, still needing a little as-yet-to-be-found something.
That drawn-out end time reflects my process—a lot of waiting for the image to tell me what to do. Learning to relinquish control when I’m a control freak. Learning to adapt and accept randomness when I hate change. I know, who knew? All of this is the underlying, invisible aspect of my work, trying to go with the (paint) flow in a mindset that adamantly wants things to stay still and structured. A very apt dilemma in these difficult days, when everything is in flux.
So in the PDF are a few details of large paintings rather than the full image. It’s a preview but allows me to avoid putting half-baked work out there that may haunt me online. Letting go and holding on.
And a few small ones.
Also, details of the studio. My view of my shoes and my stash of used paint cups. The work table where I write down random notes that get abraded and fade away over time, like a loosening memory.
Visible there, a quote from the writer Hilary Mantel, “The evening, dove-like, is circling itself to rest.”
This interview was reprinted with permission from DC Moore Gallery. Read more interviews in their “From the Studio” series to learn how other artists are “continu[ing] their practices to create new works of art, while sharing perspectives of their current, everyday lives.”
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