Jennifer Sullivan
The artist discusses connections between her earlier performance and video work and her paintings and uncovering the subtlety and beauty in the mundane.
Jennifer Sullivan is a painter who lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens, whose studio-based painting practice evolved from earlier autobiographical performance and video-centered work. She has often described her paintings as a diary and a form of psychoanalysis. Recent solo exhibitions include Original Face at Deli Grocery Gallery, Ridgewood, NY (2022); Sleeper at Turn Gallery, New York, NY (2021); Devotional Paintings at Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL (2020); Exiled Parts at No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH (2019); and the soft animal of your body at Emma Gray HQ, Los Angeles, CA (2018). Sullivan has exhibited widely, including exhibitions at NADA Miami, Peter Blum Gallery, Marinaro, Brennan and Griffin, Rod Barton, Marvin Gardens, Safe Gallery, Klaus Von Nichtsaggend, and the deCordova Museum.
Jennifer Sullivan received her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and her MFA in Fine Art from Parsons School of Design, New York, NY. Awards include fellowships with Paint School at Shandaken Projects (2020) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2012-13), and residencies at the Lighthouse Works, the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, the Ox-Bow School of Art, and Yaddo. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, and Art Papers.
Mepaintsme: Would you mind telling me a little bit about your background? Where are you from originally?
Jennifer Sullivan: I am originally from a small town near Albany called Schodack in Upstate, NY. I grew up in a raised ranch house with woods and a creek behind it, that I would explore a lot as a kid. I still dream about that house all the time, but I moved out at some point after my parents got divorced, to the nearby town of Castleton, NY, so I could go to the rest of high school with my best friend.
I moved to NYC when I was 17 years old to study art at Pratt Institute and live the dream of being an artist and a bohemian. Both of my parents were born and raised in Brooklyn and I grew up always planning to move there as soon as I could to pursue an art career.
MPM: It sounds like art was an early focus for you. Growing up, were you always making art?
JS: Yeah - I was. I started saying that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up from a very early age, maybe 5 years old. I was also very interested in theater and acting at a certain point. I think I probably got some idea about being an artist from my mother, who had dabbled in it in different ways for her whole life, and who had some aspirations about being an artist herself, but wasn’t really able to pursue it due to her mental illness. Carl Jung's quote, “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their children than the unlived life of the parent,” definitely makes sense in my case. When I was in high school, I began taking some classes at a local college over the summer to get some more advanced experience and so I could graduate early and move to the city.
MPM: I hadn't seen your video performance works until recently. I was very struck with how autobiographical and vulnerable they were. Would you say this dynamic carries into your paintings?
JS: Oh, thanks! Yes, I definitely think there is a connective thread between my earlier performance and video work and my paintings. For one thing, I think of all of my paintings as self-portraits, whether or not they include a literal representation of me or not. They often don’t at this point, as I’m less interested in that now. I think of my painting work as somewhat performative and improvisational though, and definitely autobiographical, whether it is based on images from my own life or found images. All of it is tied together by a sense of my character as the painter, and the hand of how I paint. I feel like I always make you aware of my presence as "the painter". In recent years, many of the images I paint are just based on snapshots from my home or my life, but which become more symbolic or open ended when I make paintings of them. In a literal sense, I am less present in the work, but it’s still all autobiographical. Now, I just melt myself into the subjects I choose. It's kind of zen or psychological - we see everything through ourselves, not as they are, but as we are. And characters like Lana Del Rey or Courtney Love become avatars for different psychological ideas or feelings I’m working out. I sometimes compare it to the idea of method acting - imbuing a figure or an object with personal feelings the way an actor would play a role in a movie by drawing on their own memories and experiences.
Video performance Adult Movie, 2011
MPM: That makes sense, and also explains why the subjects you choose seem to possess a real sincerity. But, I also notice that they're painted with aggressive, vibrant color and an 'in your face’ energy - I find the pairing very powerful. Was this a conscious strategy when you began painting?
JS: No, I don’t think it was a strategy. I do think I have liked to ride an edge between sincerity and sweetness, and in the past, I reveled in being a provocateur of some sort. But I feel like I’m mellowing as I get older and am becoming more and more interested in subtlety and beauty - I am beginning to be interested in more muted colors, and am curious to see how that will filter into my work.
Color has always been the most intuitive part of my work. I just always really respond to intense color. Although, I think for me, I am most interested in expressing an intensity of feeling and emotion, and color has been a big tool for how I have attempted to do that. I like how color cuts through the intellect, and goes right to the heart or the body. It’s like a physical, sensual thing, not an intellectual thing.
I have always just been a person who really likes and responds to color. I would never wear black or neutral colors, although that has begun to change lately too. I've been teaching a beginning painting class about color and it has really expanded my mind. I find myself drawn to more muted palettes lately, and I'm starting to try to tone things down a bit, or to focus more on hitting a range of tonal notes. Even so, I will probably always love using a lot of pinks!
MPM: Is it fair to say your paintings are less about simply observing the beauty in the everyday or more about capturing how we emotionally experience that beauty?
JS: I think so, yeah, I like how you put that. I want my paintings to be beautiful more and more, and I hold them to a higher standard of what that means as I progress. But yes, I want them to be about emotion more than anything, and maybe they are also about seeing beauty or meaning in the mundane or the everyday. Making some meaning of my life and the things I see every day and making them my own.
MPM: Do you work from life?
JS: I do. More and more, actually. I began a practice of making watercolors from life sometime in 2019 and began filling books full of daily observational drawings. I really loved making them and I felt like I began to improve as a painter through the process. I realized that I didn’t have to have some dramatic subject, I could paint almost anything and it would contain some sense of my feelings or an idea without my having to impose something bigger onto it. So I began to work from life more and more. I am working on a series of paintings right now based on close-up studies of my studio as a subject. And have also made many paintings and drawings of flowers and portraits of my cat, Queenie, who is something of a muse and alter ego for me. I see cats as having a lot of symbolic potential but also I just think they are very beautiful and noble creatures.
MPM: I see that you hosted a podcast titled It’s a Process in 2021. What was behind that?
JS: Yes! I began the podcast in 2020 and made about 29 or so episodes. I am very proud of it! I am thinking about dusting it off again this Summer, but I am juggling a lot with teaching and trying to make my own work, so I think it may be kind of intermittent if it does happen. But my idea for it was that I didn’t feel like there was an art podcast that had the kind of sense of humor and candidness that is what I really like about talking to other artists. So I felt like I had a particularly different kind of angle that I wanted to try. I wanted it to feel like a studio visit, and most of the episodes are unedited. I thought that was more real. I didn’t want it to feel like the official manicured artist statement. I wanted it to be vulnerable and searching and funny. I think the real challenge of this is to choose people who are willing to go there with me, and helping them to relax enough to feel like they can be themselves.
MPM: Are you an extrovert or an introvert?
JS: I am definitely an introvert! I need a lot of interior time and rest. When I was performing it was definitely going against my nature, but that’s part of why I wanted to do it - to challenge myself. I am an INFJ - the same personality type as Carl Jung, which is very rare, I’ve heard. The psychoanalyst Robert Johnson says that only 1% of Americans are introverted feeling types, which is what I am, and which can be very weird, because as a culture we don’t really value feeling.
MPM: Interesting! I wouldn’t have guessed that. Your interests seem to dip into the realm of the human psyche - I’d be curious to know what podcasts you listen to in the studio?
JS: Hmmm, I guess I am always listening to a lot of esoteric Jungian talks, new age-y, spiritual and psychoanalytic talks (Jung, Robert Johnson, Marie Louise von Franz, Alan Watts) and comedy (Theo Von, Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, and Louis CK of late) in the studio… I listen to a lot of YouTube so it’s all over the place. I have been thinking about Taoism again lately, so I re-listened to the Tao Te Ching recently, which is great. ("True art seems artless" is one of my fave lines from it.)
If I had to recommend one thing for other artists to listen to, I would recommend listening to The Way of The Dream - which is an 8-hour long video/interview with Marie Louise von Franz about the language of dreams and the subconscious.
Below is an episode of Jennifer’s podcast It’s a process interviewing painter Clare Grill from April, 2021
Jennifer Sullivan’s work is currently featured in the thematic group exhibition Rainbow High, on view at mepaintsme.com through May 1, 2024.