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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Activist and Painter Mary Lovelace O'Neal's New Chelsea Gallery Show
00:21:12
Activist and Painter Mary Lovelace O'Neal's New Chelsea Gallery Show
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- [00:02]
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- [00:29]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Let's go.
- [00:31]
McDonald's Advertiser
I' ma put you on, nephew.
- [00:33]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
All right, unc. Welcome to McDonald's.
- [00:35]
Marianne Boesky
Can I take your order, miss?
- [00:36]
McDonald's Advertiser
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
- [00:48]
Marianne Boesky
If your small business has a problem, you could say just my luck.
- [00:53]
Kusha Navadar
But you should say like a good.
- [00:55]
Bix Soleil Glide Razor Advertiser
Neighbor, State Farm is there and we'll.
- [00:57]
Kusha Navadar
Help get you back in business.
- [00:59]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
- [01:04]
Marshalls Advertiser
Oh my gosh. Have you been to Marshalls lately? They have all the brand name and designer pieces you love, but without the jaw dropping price tags. Alright, so here's the should never have to compromise between quality and price. And at Marshall's you don't have to. Marshall's believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff and that's why their buyers hustle around the clock. To make it happen for you, visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online@marshalls.com.
- [01:40]
Kusha Navadar
This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart, who's on medical leave. Artist and activist Mary Loveless o' Neill has sustained a decades long career in the art world. She's known for her big and bold lamp, black paintings, prints and drawings. Now she's got a new solo show of all new work in Chelsea coinciding with her inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial. The show's called Echo on Mexico Amano. That means made in Mexico by hand. The show features eight pieces created entirely in the last three years at her studio in Merida, Mexico. All of them are huge. The largest on view is a 20 foot wide painting. Some of them include colorful characters and gestures across black canvases. And in each P piece she uses a unique visual vocabulary that's both personal and political. She draws on minimalism, abstract techniques and expressionism to reflect themes like race and gender. The show is on display at the Marianne Boeski Gallery, and it's going through Saturday, May 4th. Artist and activist Mary Lovelace O' Neill joins us to discuss. Mary, welcome to all of it.
- [02:58]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Thanks very much. Happy to be with you.
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Kusha Navadar
Happy to have you here. And also joining us is the founder of the eponymous Marianne Boesky Gallery. Marianne, welcome to all of it as well.
- [03:10]
Marianne Boesky
Thank you so much.
- [03:12]
Kusha Navadar
So, Mary, you made all of these pieces between 2021 and 2023 inside your studio at Merida, Mexico. Where did you draw inspiration from for this new body of work?
- [03:27]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
I think inspiration is really not what it is. It's guilt, you know, guilt that I been given this beautiful, beautiful studio. It's pristine, it's virginal, and I haven't made a thing. And so finally, my husband. It was a bribe, the studio was a bribe from my husband to finally come and say that Mexico is more or less home because I'm from the Bay Area, from Oakland, you know, the warriors, those traders. Anyway, I shouldn't say that, but when the studio was finished, I didn't ever see it, in fact, until it was open to me. And it was full of the most incredible set of paints made also in Mexico. And I won't say all I would like to say about the Mexican paints. I'll just say that Marianne brought what I needed from Pearl.
- [04:48]
Kusha Navadar
But it was this lovely studio that your husband kind of helped you discover. Guessing as a way of saying Mexico is home, what themes or stories did you want to explore through the pieces that you made?
- [05:03]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
I don't think it really starts like that. You know, I go in and I just sit in there and I, you know, it was such a new place. It's not just having new canvas, like a blank canvas to start on. It's a whole new place. I don't really know where anything is. And more than that, I don't have a bunch of things like my own thing. So in addition to these beautiful paints, I don't have any of my rags and my little wrenches and, you know, all of my tools. So I'm sitting there, and I don't smoke anymore. So I'm really just sitting there. I can't even sweep. Sweep up butts of various kinds. You know, I just have to sit there and be with that space. Also, I am disabled to a great degree, considering who I used to be. I'm 82, but not all 82s are as disabled as I am, especially painters. I have enough energy and enough ability to get up there and do what I have to do ultimately. And I'm grateful and entirely blessed. Sorry. I'm sorry.
- [06:26]
Kusha Navadar
Marianne, go ahead. What were you gonna add?
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Marianne Boesky
Mary, you're uniquely abled. You are not disabled.
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Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Okay, I'm not. I'm not. Okay, so tell that to my back.
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Kusha Navadar
Mary, how do you.
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Marianne Boesky
How do you.
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Kusha Navadar
How do you start a new piece? What do you need in your studio to feel comfortable?
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Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Well, I think it's more the discomfort that gets you working because you have to make it your space and your stuff. I don't do things like building stretchers anymore. As a young person, I still don't think very much of it, but as a young person, it was a good idea to have to build your own stretcher bars. I don't do that. And I haven't done it for many, many years, since I found out how to bribe people and exchange people. You know, I gave my lunches away at Howard for years because I just couldn't deal with it. So I'm just saying, it's. It's. I have help, you know, I have real true studio assistants now who build the stretches, or they get the stretches built and they, you know, gesso them as I want them, and then I'm still left with that blank space, you know, this time it's been essentially black or charcoal, like a charcoal board. You know, the board that the teachers write on. And they make you come up and write things to get even with you. You know what I'm talking about? Blackboard.
- [08:09]
Kusha Navadar
Yeah, Blackboards. Yep.
- [08:12]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Yeah. So, you know, I sit there and Somehow I Eventually, maybe it's two days, three days, a week, a month, because I know ways to avoid it. Bake a cake, you know, go to a movie. And finally you have to go in there. And by that time, I've gotten enough courage to hit it. So I may hit it with paint, I may hit it with pastels, I may hit it with charcoal, and then whatever it is going to be evolves. Rarely do I start with exactly what I'm going after. There is a series whose name I will not call and not discuss. I won't speak with you about it because I'm told that you can't use that very beautiful word. And that very beautiful word brought those paintings into being. I mean, I was painting to the title. Okay.
- [09:14]
Kusha Navadar
And you've. So what I hear you say, I think it's interesting, the way you started it, was that it is in the discomfort that you find inspiration, kind of like necessity is the mother of invention a little bit, which is very, you know, makes total sense. And, Marianne, when did you first encounter Mary's work as an artist, and what did you find fascinating about her artwork?
- [09:33]
Marianne Boesky
The first time I saw Mary's work was in 2019. She had a beautiful show at Mnuchin Gallery Uptown. And I really was not familiar with her work, which was kind of shame on me, a little embarrassing. And I was just blown away by the power of the paintings and the scale, the colors. And that show was a bit of a survey, so it included works from several different series going back. So it gave me, you know, bits of the power from each decade almost. And I just. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I'd never really seen painting like that, especially by a woman.
- [10:16]
Kusha Navadar
And what do you think this new body of work does to add and call back to some of Mary's previous bodies of work?
- [10:25]
Marianne Boesky
Well, I'm excited because we are publishing a catalog that is the Mexico series, which will include the works in our show. One of the works at the Whitney and the Solar show works that she has currently on view at SFMOMA in San Francisco. And we commissioned Jan Fjikos to write a text, and she wrote an incredible text on late work and, you know, the power of late work in an artist's career. And I think that one of the things that this body of work is very especially focusing on is sort of grabbing at iconography and imagery that Mary has used all along. And each body of work seems tied to the location where she's working. And that's what inspires, you know, the palettes and the energy. And I think that. That this body of work really is looking at her own history and pulling, you know, maybe it's even not in the forefront of her mind, what she's sourcing from her own past. But there's elements and imagery and almost symbolism in this work that brings together many decades of work.
- [11:37]
Kusha Navadar
We're talking to Mary Lovelace o', Neill, who's a painter, and Marianne Boesky, who is a gallery owner, about Hecho un Mexico a Mano means made in Mexico by hand. We're going to dive into the exhibit right after a quick break and talk more about some of those charcoals that you're mentioning. Mary. Well, this is all of it. We'll be right back after this quick break. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Kusha Navadar, and we're talking about Echo on Mexico a Mano. It is an exhibit by Mary Loveless o', Neill, the painter, and it's on display at the Marion Bowski Gallery. We're talking with Mary Loveless o' Neill and Marianne Boesky right now about the exhibit. Mary, I want to dive into the exhibit a little bit. You've got paintings here that are extremely large. Some of them are four panels or canvases wide, like two facing each other in the main room. Tell me about the process for building these. Tell me about the size and how that plays into what you're trying to convey here.
- [12:50]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
I can't. I can't. You know, I somehow put together a number of five by seven pieces, and I. And that's a part of that sitting around waiting for whatever is going to happen. And sometimes they are not that big, so they grow sometimes. And sometimes I know exactly how much room I'm going to need, you know, how far back I can get into a canvas. Because it, for me, it's about being able to be inside of that space, to occupy it, you know, like, how many chairs can I put in there? How many sunsets can go in there? So it's all of. It's all about. All about that. And that comes along. You know, I kind of give my imagination a run at it, and at a certain point I, you know, pull it back in and say, okay, I have to take complete charge of this because we have a show to do. Or I'm. I'm becoming really too frustrated with this as it is. There's too much going on. So I start to edit. So it's just process, you know, and it's the process of getting stuff out of that incubation in the back of your head, in the back of your brain and giving it some concrete manifestation.
- [14:20]
Kusha Navadar
And, Marianne, do you feel like you understand Mary's visual language and how did it go into deciding the spacing and the organization of the pieces in the exhibit?
- [14:32]
Marianne Boesky
Well, I think that Mary, being one of the great artists, it's her prerogative to also make decisions and changes up until the very last minute. And because she's working with these 7 by 5 foot canvases and they become, you know, diptychs, triptychs, quadriptics. She plays around with them in the studio. And there are times where we've even had, you know, photographs of a triptych that, you know, I'll check in with her a week or two later, and it's now a diptych or part of a quadriptic. So when she finally, finally does decide what each work is, it's very much, I think, according to a deadline, because she has to. And I think she left her own devices would probably continue to play with these things, because I think a lot of the pieces are puzzles that can fit together in multiple ways. But when she does finally decide, there's a lyricism to the work that I find striking, especially because there's so much of the black background that she allows a viewer to kind of step inside the painting and finish the, you know, the story or the narrative themselves, because it kind of ends, you know, before the seam of the next canvas, or it'll end with just darkness of the black background, which is also not a simple black background. There's a lot of nuance in what she's building with the paint in the painting. So when she finally came to the conclusion of this is the Body of Work of the Mexico Works, we also had to work a bit around the curator at SFMOMA who was building an incredible show from this body of work. So she made her choices. And there's some incredible paintings that I would have killed to have on view, but each one has its own sort of power and voice. So once I knew what SF moma was taking, Mary and I could kind of get down to it and figure out what we should show as a unit. And it was a lot of back and forth conversation. I went back to Marita and we sort of sat together and tried to lay things out. And then in the end, we picked a group of paintings to send. And once they were sent, then it was okay. Now we have to figure out how to lay out the show. And, you know, I've been doing this for 28 years, and I know my space quite well. The space we've had for six or seven years, we added it to our Chelsea space because it was next door. So. And it's a beautiful space for painting. And it was important to Mary that two of the 20 foot paintings were included. And there are only two walls in the gallery that can handle 20 foot paintings. So that became the anchor for the show. And then we just had to do a lot of, you know, moving around, and I think we landed on a great layout, and we've gotten a lot of great feedback from it because it gives each work a lot of airspace and a lot of room.
- [17:31]
Kusha Navadar
Yeah. And I find it very interesting that you bring up the black pigment, because that is a recurring theme in this work. And when you look at the paintings, see so much depth and, like you said, nuance in the color black that Mary is using here. And, Marianne, I'm wondering for you as a viewer, how would you describe the texture of the Specific black pigment Mary uses in her work. Break that down a little bit for us.
- [17:56]
Marianne Boesky
Well, and Mary can actually do that better because it has evolved. When she first was making the lamp black paintings, which was in the early 70s, she was using material that was like. Almost like a powdery material that she was rubbing into the canvas. And, you know, now she's using paints, acrylic and oil paints, but she's also using pastels and chalks. So there's. There's a mixture now that's different, and there's a texture, I think, that's different. So, Mary, maybe you want to explain the difference between and the reasons why you're not using the actual lamp black now the way you were.
- [18:35]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
You know, I. I am so fascinated by this conversation, and I. I wish I weren't a part of it, because you all are so coherent and. And Kashner. Kashner is. Is that right? Is that how to pronounce your name?
- [18:53]
Kusha Navadar
Oh, Kusha. Kusha.
- [18:54]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Kusha. Okay. He's really clear about what he's trying to get at, and you lay it out to him. So I. You know, I can't. You know, I can't. I just can't, or don't want to kind of respond to the specifics of that. You know, these are materials that I like. You know, it's like paint. You know, the colors I choose, you know, those are things that I want to eat. I often say going to the paint shop is just this glorious experience because you bring home all of this stuff and you can't wait to do something with it. So the black came into my life in graduate school at Columbia and has remained, but it has taken on different substances because I could no longer use the lamp black pigment in great quantities, because those pigments were making me sick, because it's just like working in a coal mine. My clothing was rotting, and imagine what was going on with my lungs. So eventually. And I also got tired of working on the floor and pushing such intense labor, even though I was happy to do it and to be crawling around on the canvas and pushing in. But there's a. There came a time when I needed to have a different kind of contact with the making so that I could have this almost breathing counterpart, because when there's canvas on the stretcher bar, it tends to breathe. As you push in, it pushes back. You know, it breathes. And so. And it's on a. On a wall, and there's enough space between you and the wall that I'm not hitting that wall again. And again with my hands and my brushes. And so a lot of it had to do with just needing to find some other ways to make. And the black has taught me so much about what my space was about, you know, how I could, how much room there was in there. And so even though, you know, in subsequent work things seem to change, but there's always that kind of black thing guiding me. The way to divide up the space. It's math in some way.
- [21:42]
Kusha Navadar
It is, yeah. And you know, unfortunately we have to leave it there just looking at the time. But what I would suggest to folks is to go to the Marianne Boesky Gallery and check it out because there are these stunning visual displays of black on these beautiful characters. With lyrics deep into these paintings and you know, you're talking Mary about it's kind of math. There is a lot of geometric beauty to what we're describing. We've been joined by Mary Loveless o', Neill, who's a painter.
- [22:10]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
Can I say one thing before we.
- [22:12]
Kusha Navadar
Just gotta close out here?
- [22:14]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
This is at the Whitney, that they should see this at the Whitney.
- [22:19]
Kusha Navadar
Thank you so much. It's the Whitney Biennial. That's right. And we've also been joined by Marianne Boeske, who's the gallery owner. It's Echo on Mexico Amano and it's on display. Thank you both so much for joining us.
- [22:30]
Marianne Boesky
Thank you.
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Mary Lovelace O'Neill
You're welcome.
- [22:32]
Kusha Navadar
It's National Poetry Month and we'll mark it with a conversation tomorrow about how to approach reading a poem. Whether you're new to the genre or want to deepen your craft. That's coming up on tomorrow's show. Thanks so much for listening.
- [22:44]
McDonald's Advertiser
I'mma put you on, nephew.
- [22:45]
Mary Lovelace O'Neill
All right, unk. Welcome to McDonald's.
- [22:47]
Marianne Boesky
Can I take your order, miss?
- [22:48]
McDonald's Advertiser
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snackwrap is back.
- [23:00]
Marshalls Advertiser
Oh my gosh. Have you been to Marshalls lately? They have all the brand name and designer pieces you love, but without the jaw dropping price tags. Alright, so here's the. Should never have to compromise between quality and price. And at Marshalls, you don't have to. Marshall's believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. And that's why their buyers hustle around the clock to make it happen for you. Visit a Marshall store near you or shop online at marshalls. Com.