Oil Painting

“The reward is getting through the tough stuff. And that’s what’s perplexing about the art thing. When I was going to school there were kids that could draw their asses off. There were kids that were better draftsman than me, for certain. But no one was more determined than me.”

We listen in as two painters talk painting, studio practice, and the way their works live out in the world.

“I don’t want to mention names, but there are several black artists that would like to shoot me today because they weren’t in that show. Some of them are dead, but the ones that aren’t dead still give me a lot of bullshit every time I see them.”

Ellen Cantor (1961–2013) was a prolific artist with an ardent vision that was personal, communal, and political. In the years before her untimely death, she had produced a complex body of work spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, and especially film and video. Her work—an open expression of her own sexuality—faced censorship battles in both the UK and Switzerland in the 1990s.

David Brody has discovered a way to improvise abstraction with the help of math, producing exaggerated perspectives that make you feel the excitement of flying. The flight path might be up or down—depending on where you look—over familiar yet impossible imaginary places.

“Every time you remember something, it’s not like you’re being teleported to the past—you’re actually physically experiencing it in the present.”

“I’m a Zimbabwean and I should show in my paintings where I’m from. In our culture, when you have a dream about dogs, cows, or whatnot, it means an evil spirit is coming to attack.”