INTRODUCTION
From his studio in Santa Fe, Milo Santini interviews artist Paul McLean via web app. They discuss the color, forms and texture in the paintings in the show “VALUBLE OBJX,” and much more. The two have been friends for many years. In his unmistakable style, Santini in post-production edits the conversation “for content” and re-sequences it, all but stripping the exchange of extraneous context. In this format the original looses its linearity. Milo believes this procedure clarifies the content. His critics disagree. Let the reader decide.
McLean’s introductory remarks:
When I sit at the easel, except on rare occasions, I have no idea which color I will select. Nor do I think about the next, or the next (color). I study the painting, and it indicates the following move. One begins to notice patterns that guide consequent action. In this respect my painting is more or less spontaneous. I don’t work from preliminary sketches or studies. Painting for me is not a conceptual exercise. I do not adhere to a strict Hegelian concept-to-object program. I am responding to what is happening, what emerges, on the canvas, one mark, one color to the next. The process is very labor-intensive, requiring me to remain focused the whole time. Any sort of slip of the hand or mind can feel like a catastrophe. I don’t wish to sound melodramatic, but this is how it is. I would or could not have attempted the type of painting I am doing now at any previous time in my career. Unfortunately, at my age, the eye and hand become tired, and my sessions at work are limited by this practical reality, these physical limitations. Mentally, too, the exertion is strenuous, which maybe sounds ridiculous to a person unfamiliar with the task and its requisite effort. I don’t care about those external perspectives of studio practice, and really never have. My work is not a miner’s, nor is it a banker’s. That’s fine with me. But what is it I do, really? These days, it is a challenge to find artists with whom I can have a good technical conversation about it. Certain kinds of artist talk bring energy to one’s own artistic endeavors. Coming up in Santa Fe, and moving through LA, New York and many other art and culture nodes, it was possible to sniff out these exchanges, informal networks for art’s peculiar oral tradition. What one finds online is a simulation, and has its own merits, but is not the same. Things change. People change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. For me, what is consistent is the nature of my own painting, which has become sufficient in itself, over time. Metaphorically, I could say I am in a dialogue with the surface of the painting, which encompasses its subterranean or hidden prior version(s). But that is not quite right. The entire enterprise is solitary and non-verbal. After all, I am basically an isolated person working at a painting in the studio. I find nothing romantic in this. Few people are suited to it. Being a painter is a strange vocation. You have to be something of an odd bird to stick with it. Fortunately, I have always felt confident as a painter. I have sympathy for those plagued with doubt, some of whom are great, and persevere in spite of a negative mindset (I don’t know how). Learning how to quiet the mind is for me essential. That inner silence expresses in the art. It somehow brings one closer to color, to shape. It helps one discern what makes one arrangement succeed and another fail. With color, my choices are instinctual, but those choices are informed by a reservoir of experience and research. When I am done with an area on the canvas, small or large, I believe I will know what to do next, and it turns out to be true. I don’t understand why, and I don’t need to. I am indescribably happy, still, when everything comes together, the same as I was in the beginning. As for influences, since the early days, I have kept a running top-10 list of my favorite all-time artists. The first five more or less remain consistent. The second five change sometimes. I won’t share those names here, because I am over arguing about whose assessments of quality are correct, although I admit such arguments can be delightful and informative, and point one in new directions. The opposite is also true. I am a devoted student of art history, and my paintings reference those artists whose work inspires my own. That study for me does not end. An artist never really graduates. I am, thanks largely to the internet, always discovering some artist I should have known about long ago. Just this week I discovered that one of my favorite philosophers, Jean Baudrillard, was a brilliant and accomplished photographer! He will not go on my shortlist — he is not a painter — but his pictures have affected the way I think about color and composition forever. What a gift! Once I began to research Art and artists, I came to understand I belong to an ancient lineage, a community of practitioners, whose craft, innovation and realization inform my own, without dictating it. This sense of belonging helps, when one becomes disenchanted with the art world today, such as it is, the dominance of markets, the trends with which one feels no affinity. These days, I can, let’s say, resort to my own devices, for something to spark my work, a catalyst or connection. I can search my own archives. As an advanced painter, through years and practice, I have assembled or cultivated a large library of techniques and ideas from which I can draw to solve a painting (speaking as if it were a puzzle or riddle or equation, which is only half-true). For instance, from a recent deep dive into the archive, I noticed that contact sheets I digitally manipulated in the early 2000s to create images directly relate to the structures I built in the compositions of the “EVENT” Series of paintings. This series also relates to paintings I made in 2001 for the “Culture” series for Polifilo (Nashville). If I hadn’t engaged with the catalog for a separate project, I doubt I would have connected the earlier work with what I’m currently doing. One can reflect on things, and that exercise is either dangerous or rewarding. Artistry is not a mechanical enterprise. It is complicated, and part of the complexity is, for lack of a better word, psychological. Or, to come at from another angle, via Hegel, Art is where the Mind and Spirit converge. Philosophy in general has become an incredibly useful resource for me to address my thinking about Art in its totality, more than History, as time marches on. Especially, over the past decade, philosophical research at European Graduate School has been key to my continuing development and evolution as an artist, providing new perspectives on many facets of creative life, from inside out. Philosophy has proved to be a vital complement to studio work, for me.
That said, upon reflection, I never, in forty years of art-making, needed inspiration to paint. The studio has for me always been the one space or place in my life, where I know - believe with certainty - that my time spent will be worthwhile. A session in the studio, short or long, will fill me with the awareness of and gratitude for being alive, for being an artist instead of anything else, in the moment, here and now. No matter what else is going on in my life. I wish everyone had a place to go like this. That’s how I feel about my studio.
∞
“EVENT #3 (Detail #1) | Paul McLean | Vinyl on Panel | 2021
1
In the VyNIL Cycle paintings by Astoria-based artist Paul McLean, the color is to an extent determined by the medium, the Flashe Vinyl paint. The artist found the initial Flashe set of hues very appealing. “The colors had interesting titles like ‘Breughel Red’ and one got the sense the manufacturers were trying to mesh a traditional or Classical palette with this modern industrial material. Their experiments were quirky. There was a ‘Citroen Yellow’, but also the colors one associates with European landscape painting or portraiture. Colors like ‘Burnt Sienna’, Vermillian Red’ or ‘Payne’s Gray’ belie an antique aesthetic. Lefranc & Bourgeois (manufacturers of Flashe) also offered iridescent paints, which I tried, and fluorescents, which I did not like, having spent nearly a decade prior (2007 - 2017) working with hyper-bright pigments and unorthodox mixtures of all sorts of artist paint media. When I am switching to a new (to me) paint medium or manufacturer, if I can, I will buy the entire line and test everything. With Flashe I was able to do this, and for the most part, since adopting it, I have had almost all the colors on their list available to me in the studio. A lot of my choices regarding color had to do with shedding habits and methods from previous phases of my studio practice in mid-2010s. Starting over, refreshing. This involved reconfiguring my ideas about painting and the viewer’s desires or interests in art. It is necessary to note the timing of the transition, the context. The scenario in which it occurred was infused with political polarization, consumptive technology, social confusion, civil unrest, economic inequality and then, disease, the Pandemic. I decided to recede from all the negativity and toxicity, and focus my creative energy on making paintings that were joyful, not fearful or angry. Color was an essential part of the calculus for manifesting the VyNIL paintings. I wanted them to be very deliberate. I was willing to let the process be slow. I wanted my art to exist outside of command or control structure, to be positively resistant to external pressure. To contain a lesson about freedom which in no way is an imposition on the viewer, but more a suggestion or inference. I wanted the surfaces to be playful. Therefore, I embraced bright, concentrated color. The compositions obviously result from logic and discipline, but these are internal to each painting, or within a series. There are no rigid rules, or insistence on a specific outcome. While the edges within the frame are tightly executed, the borders of the paintings are open or closed according to principles of flow-design, not as a sign of aesthetic conscription. No shape or color is a prisoner within the painting and its system. That system is never more important that the elements operative within it. You can probably guess I was also reacting to the effects of mass, ubiquitous tech and networks.”
I ask the artist if he has a theory of color. McLean replies: “For an artist’s palette, several factors come into play. These include: 1) the technical profile of the paint; 2) what I would describe as the theoretical or conceptual interests and approach specific to the artist, and 3) the environment within which the artist operates, which affects the choices the artist makes in selecting this color over that one for application in the painting - if the artist decides to allow his art to reflect his condition, his surroundings. Over the progression of the cycle of paintings, the viewer can track my usage of Flashe with these several factors in mind. As for my ‘theory of color’ I defer to Science and Chemistry, in which a theory is a starting point and a conclusion, but also Nature, which does not rely on theory for its existence. Science and Chemistry do their best to explain color as a phenomenon, and a very, very complicated one. What is Red? I have devoted much study to the answers provided by Science and Chemistry on the phenomena of color, on its visible spectrum and so on. To an artist, many of Science and Chemistry’s explanations amount to non-answers. Theoretical color drifts toward metaphor, and eventually, poetry. “A Rose by any other name…” When an artist is learning about pigments, he realizes this is a mineral mixture. When manufactured as a paint for fine artists, it is luminously beautiful. Like Cobalt. In another industrial application, Cobalt is dangerous, a poison. Such a contradiction! If one goes on to learn about the various mediums into which the pigment is mixed, he will realize the process of assembling the parts into art paint is like cooking. For some dishes, it is best to strictly adhere to a recipe. For others - like gumbo or chowder - each dish can be its own experiment. I got my sense of wonder about the paint business from a master, Art Guerra. But paint, even after Ab-Ex, is still only one ingredient in art, which, extending our metaphor, is potentially a sumptuous feast, much more than a meal, or sustenance, or a combination of ingredients, parts.”
How or when do you know whether your painting, your art, has met your expectations, or done what you want it to? I quiz McLean about his standards, his idea of conclusion in art. “First off, if I weren’t satisfied with a painting, I would not sign it. If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t let it out of the studio. If I want to know whether my art experiment works as art, I watch a viewer reaction and listen to what she says. This is the case whether the art hangs in a house or gallery or museum, or it is still sitting on an easel. I have my own artistic criteria, and it can evolve or change, but I respect the viewer as a vital participant in the art life. That does not change. Without a viewer, art means nothing. And the viewer always comes to the art on her own terms, at least to a degree. She is where she is in her life, and my art may become for her a temporary, even brief or momentary experience, or she may choose to begin a relationship with the art that can endure a lifetime, and beyond. Art can become generational. One never knows. Of course the environment or architecture within which art is seen affects the viewer experience, but again, only to some degree. The greatness of art, though exceeds the parameters of a single viewer’s experience, or even mass appeal. Taste is not a true measure of what art is great or not over time. We know this, because art is an ancient tradition, and something of its phases and cycles is commonly understood. Ultimately, what makes art great remains mysterious. All that is sure about it, is that great art is rare. Who knows why a certain color in a painting can cause a person to weep or exclaim, ‘Wow!’ I tend to think of alchemy and art color as relatives, belonging to the same family. Both demonstrate our curiosity, aspiration and awe. And maybe our darker impulses, too, if we become susceptible to worldly temptation through the supernatural imagination. Both art and alchemy are obscure, and their obscurity breeds misunderstanding. Behind their mystery, though is the presence of our shared mortality. Both art and alchemy are conduits for man’s hunger for immortality. This hunger incorrectly assesses the nature of art, and natural alchemy, too. There is a blindness that attaches to a person who desires everlasting life, and that blindness is both physical and mental in its essence. Art impersonates both Time and Death. An artist who understands this can create art whose impersonation is profoundly beautiful and true, even pure or sublime, but it still holds onto its mystery, its secret. An artist who understands this can easily become mad, too. That is a real thing.”
“EVENT #3 (Detail #2) | Paul McLean | Vinyl on Panel | 2021
2
I wonder about the the artist’s learning curve and approaches with new art materials. Also whether McLean’s moving from East Coast back to the West Coast affected his art, and how. The artist explains: “I’ll address the second question, first. I began the VyNIL series in Brooklyn, and continued working on it after moving to the Pacific Northwest. These places are so completely different in so many ways, but they also have a few areas of overlap. These congruences are important. One congruence is amazing atmospheric light, due to Bushwick and Astoria (OR) both being located close to the oceans and large bodies of fresh water, the rivers. Another is historical, and John Jacob Astor is but the avatar of this linkage. Is that relevant? No, but it is incidental, and points one to other likenesses. In the Big Picture, I think of such interrelations as evidence of an immaterial mesh, which I try to represent in the paintings and their constitutional elements, like color. This is the dimensional method. Flashe Vinyl in its appearances does well in either the big city or small town, and, again, I think this has something to do with the matte finish. As for the first question, I would suggest that there are levels of prowess in any craft. Over the course of a studio artist’s trajectory, rarely in the modern era does an artist learn and refine a single technique or medium over a lifetime, with absolute specificity to that way of making paintings. In the contemporary era, there are resonances with the old traditions, but most of these pertain to market demand and, specifically, order-fulfillment. So, experimentation is usually built into the arc of an artistic progression, nowadays. As with any technical system, one’s confidence in one’s capacity to adapt and adopt to new methods, media and materials, improves with time, problem-solving and practice. Good instruction or mentoring along the way is a big bonus, and I have been blessed with that. The Internet on this count (for quality instruction and practical information) has been a total game changer. Almost instantaneously, one can access a wealth of info on almost any matter of artistic consequence, and some of the data is excellent! However, in the studio, nothing beats direct knowledge derived from usage. For example: With practice, I learned that Flashe paint chemistry varies from color to color, and other peculiarities of the product. I had to be careful about making sure the lids on the glass jars containing the paint were secure at the close of a session, because, if not, the contents would dry out in short order, or become harder to apply, and so on. Certain colors were more transparent and fluid than others. Some, like the ‘Verdaccio Green’ brush on canvas or panel beautifully and are particularly opaque. Etc. In short, the material aspect directly affects the techniques one applies to the project. I learned through trial and error which brushes worked best with the paint, and how much usage any brush could handle, before wearing out. I go through brushes now pretty fast. The tips of the mostly small brushes I use fray in the course of my completing a single small work. To bring Flashe to the level of opacity that I prefer requires layering, sometimes similar to watercolor applications, sometimes like house paint. For the viewer the effect is visceral, when the paint is applied with concentration, to the point of opacity. That is a strength for Flashe, particularly with a color like Ultramarine. The intensity of the color is experienced physically for the in-person viewer, and increases at closer proximity. The Flashe on multiple levels is an absorptive media. The hues draw the viewer towards the painting, and this attraction is somehow accentuated by the matte quality of the paint in a peculiar way. The pigment intensity pulls at the viewer, but when she draws close, she finds the matte finish flattens the surface, to put it in a clunky way. I explored this feature extensively in the Network and Work Net phases. I brought in substrates that had preexisting textures — some very extreme — on which I built the new VyNIL paintings. The results could be shocking, from a technical standpoint. The further from the painting a viewer stands, the flatter the surface appears. This realization informed the compositions and techniques I used in those series. By the time I started the Event series, I wanted to work only on very flat, pre-prepared substrates. Which had an obvious effect on the appearance and composition of those paintings, down to the brushwork. Theoretically, I see a connection through the lens of medium, to our interactive relationship with media technology, between the organic and the artificial, in post-contemporary life. The conceptual interweaving with the objective arises in the course of studio practice, as the series progresses. For the most part, though, I have maintained a consistent approach to the colors for VyNIL. Color has been like a control factor in a lab experiment. One pretty major shift did occur when the Flashe manufacturer made some significant changes in the line, circa 2020-1. They reduced the number of hues and got rid of some of those I liked most. Now there are only a few reds, yellows and oranges, a lot of blues and greens, etc. As a consequence, out of a kind of necessity, I started mixing my own color, and this is apparent in the EVENT series. The paintings are quite different visually from the earlier ones. But because I am still applying paint straight from the jar in concentrated areas, and using the familiar shapes along with new forms, the whole body of work is still comprehensible as such. Color operates at the level of instinct, first. This dynamic is observable. Flashe excels at bypassing the critical mind of the viewer for a brief moment to access the optically-activated pleasure centers. Interpretation, comparison and association comes after that initial hit. I like this aspect to the paint, for my own reasons, because I view it (critical by-pass due to the paint’s materiality) as I mentioned above, as a correlate for our current social or collective situation, especially pertaining to media and data, and network communication technology. Life exceeds its mediated version at the point of encounter. I want my reasoning, deductions and preferences to not necessarily determine the viewer experience of these paintings, for the viewer experiences to have autonomy inherent in their framing on both sides. Don’t strangle the triangulation, I say!”
“EVENT #3 (Detail #3) | Paul McLean | Vinyl on Panel | 2021
3
Many of McLean’s VyNIL Cycle paintings demonstrate through an idiosyncratic set of forms in composition the artist’s pronounced awareness of visual order. However, I would argue that McLean’s order has a non-conformist flavor. His comments seem to affirm my argument, although not explicitly so. The artist dances around the issues of the systematic, programmatic, and settling of order, as opposed to an unfolding of the sequence, or its revelation, or unpacking. “The shapes in the paintings are valuable to me for several of their properties. Their appearances are generally simple, but how they work within the composition, and establish it by being in it, is a rather complex, dimensional phenomenon, or combination of phenomena. The ‘Meta-elements,’ as I call them, invite association at the same time they resist equivalence. In repetitive arrangements they infer patterning, excess, and the mechanical. Yet no two iterations are exactly the same. I do employ design or visual tactics that encourage the viewer to “read” the shapes as solid and/or shadow, in front and/or behind, above and/or below, and so on. But those appearances are not verified by the “physics” of the pictorial field contained within the painting’s edges. Another foiling glitch for the interpretive mind has to do with how these shapes refuse to “do anything,” such as advancing narrative or ratifying an inclusive or total 3D illusion. They exist in the art as unproductive units or entities, or if they have any utility, it is only to provide the viewer pleasure, on the most basic sensory level. Nonetheless, each element does contribute to the unification of the pictorial whole. Each shape embodies function on a number of perceptual levels, none of which are reliably consecutive. That is to say that the order within the painting is not numerically logical. Further, none of the shapes are assigned a name or title for identification purposes or any other, within the body of the image. They are not labeled, scheduled chronologically or “typed” as such. Superficially, they may resemble common familiar and organic shapes: a pill; a bean; a feather; a swoosh; a sperm; a bowl. This is intentional. I do not end the confusion, ambiguity or ambivalence and admit, ‘That is what it is! Of course!” I might concede that some shapes are roughly geometric: the rectangle; triangle; circle; the line. Then I will remind the viewer none of these geometries are tool-made, measured, or meant to represent any geometry of exactitude, perfection or the Ideal. Quite the opposite! Mine is a flawed geometry, hand made. Others shapes reference digital design for fabrication and visualization, such as the icon. I think of this kind of shape as representative of plasticity. The viewer may gather in such shapes I am establishing an associative complex merging or converging my “abstract” painting composition and the structural illustration of data flows. That correlation or paralleling is also intentional, on the basis of a derived, or post-priori concept. That all these concerns or stipulations can be merged in a visual plane is indicative of post-contemporary reality, and also indicative of the potential still inherent in painting. I think of this painting method as a means by which the artist can situate a very complex and dimensional phenomenon within an artistic domain that stretches from the distant past, through the present, and into the future, and simultaneously within the context of post-contemporary media theory. I am using forms to establish a mode of representation, yes; but I am concurrently suggesting a new realism, for accessing contingent discourses involving art, things, technology, identity (i.e., ideas of Self and Collective), communication and Nature/Artificial as a string of obsolete binary constructs contained in a Live Matrix. On this basis I contend that painting is still viable in juxtaposition with a project like Metaverse. In fact, I would argue that painting remains a much better creative receptacle for human input (Mind & Spirit) than virtual simulacra. If this seems a tall order for basic shapes, I would argue that we tend to underestimate the potential, the power, inherent in the most simple things. After all, in the background, we can always point to the Atomic Bomb for confirmation in the modern world. The most elements and particles contain devastating destructive force we have discovered. The VyNIL paintings together establish a ‘universe’ visible only through the paintings themselves, which in that sense operate as windows to an imaginary world.
McLean defines art in the pretext of a riddle: “When is a thing not a thing? When it is art! I believe our fetish for objectivity is a mirror for our own immersion in the ever-changing circumstances of living. Our universe is not static. My art questions permanence by objectifying the question in subjective formality. As a visual strategy, the conflation of forms (e.g., Natural v. Artificial) is semantic. What if I insert a disclaimer into the viewer’s interaction with the art, playing the part of Negation, in a Surrealist pantomime paraphrasing Magritte? I would proclaim: ‘That is not a bean! That is an ellipse, bending, in motion, moving through space or liquid!’ Then my negating assertion would operate as an overt distraction from the viewing experience. Why should anyone require contextual data to define the content of the image? I like to assume the best of my viewer. A tactical position is conclusive or not, depending on its effectiveness. Art is the abandonment of efficiency as a maxim. The Artist is by definition unmanageable. He must strive to be ungovernable, while always being in negotiation with the collective, embodied in the viewer. The triangulating exchange that binds artist, art and viewer is art’s most precious gift. This is why the artist must be disciplined in relation to the viewer. The point at which the artist must decide whether or not to try to govern the interpretation of the painting in the mind of the viewer, is the point at which free speech sprouts, as a seed sprouts in fertile soil. This is also where the divergent line between art and communication media blurs. Art is not a speech-form, it is an incitement of the Voice of Humanity. One choice I have made as the creator of these paintings is to do everything I could to disconnect the Object from Text. Art is not an object, anymore than text is a language. My shapes are not an Alphabet, and do not comprise any ‘language’ — my paintings are not to be mistaken for language. I argue the two have no 1=1 equivalence. Emphatically, I reject ideas (e.g., Walter Benjamin’s) that stipulate a hierarchy of expression, which positions one over the other, as in philosophy or linguistics over art. If anything, I would argue their relation is synthetic. The experience of art is synthesized in the viewer, and by extension, the collective. I selected forms that would be common and immediately recognizable for most people, regardless of their background or visual literacy. Why? In order to balance exuberance with, of all things, humility, neither of which (exuberance or humility) I possess in great measure, natively.
“EVENT #3 (Detail #4) | Paul McLean | Vinyl on Panel | 2021
[Excerpted from an edited interview of the artist by fellow artist, critic, collector and friend Milo Santini, for The Imaginary Art Box Podcast (June, 2023)]