'Artists can help others see.'
Stephen Mangum is a realist painter working from a studio in California. He has exhited nationally and internationally, often using those he loves and knows very well as muses to communicate wider human themes.
Where is your current studio? What would be your dream studio?
My studio is in a complex in Sausalito, California that is the workplace of around 100 artists. The building has a long and important history in the local San Francisco Bay area art scene, with an artists association and very strong community to help and support each other. It is also very affordable. Do you prefer to work in silence or does certain music inspire you?
If I am working on something very crucial or intense, I prefer to work in silence, have maximum concentration. If I am working on more mundane aspects of a background, I like to have some music playing. I have just started to listen to eBooks, as well. Studio life can lead to isolation, how do you address this/ keep a balance?
I work with a routine, ensuring that I spend time at home with my wife and also keeping up with exercise. I go to the studio just as if I am going to a job. I have never been one of those artists who gets whacked over the head with heaven-sent inspiration and must work all night long. Having said that, I never stop thinking about my work. The last thing I do before kissing my wife goodnight is to have one last look at an image of the painting I am working on.
Describe a moment you had an epiphany concerning your creative life.
In November 2018, my wife and I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. A very emotional day, it was like I got struck by lightning. I felt like the ugliest fibre of our being was on display, peeled back and exposed. I left the building ashamed of mankind. I knew then that I had to devote my work to the trials of humanity.
What is your favourite/ least favourite part of the creative process?
What I really enjoy is when the composition begins to emerge from the drawing or the underpainting and you get the sense that what you were planning or conceiving might actually work. There is a page I have pinned to the wall in my studio, a meme that describes the creative process which is so incredibly accurate and really encourages me forward: The Creative Process 1. This is awesome 2. This is tricky 3. This is shit 4. I am shit 5. This might be OK 6. This is awesome I usually start a painting at the focal point of the composition, which is typically a face in figurative or portrait work, or even just the eyes. I then work away from that point out with increasingly less detail and articulation. it is not until the entire canvas is covered with paint that you really know if it is going to fulfill your ambition, though.
I still stretch my own supports, as pre-stretched oil primed linen in large-scale sizes is just too expensive. But I don’t enjoy this part of the ritual at all. Do you have a personal mantra or quote which serves to motivate you?
I have a number of them. “Keep going” seems to go through my mind a lot, particularly if I feel the paint is flowing and the brushstrokes are working. I also frequently remind myself that I can always repaint something if I decide I don’t like it. I have learned to take more risks by remembering that. How has your style evolved and what contributed to the changes?
My style has definitely evolved. For many years, I studied Freud, Sargent, Sorolla, Zorn, Hopper and others, while focusing on portraits and figurative works. I have always been something of a renegade, though, and while attempting to learn from the great artists, I don’t necessarily want to paint like them. Only in the past couple of years have I developed a compositional style that I feel I can call my own, spending much less time thinking about how I paint than I do thinking about what I am painting. I feel that, once the composition has crystallized in my mind, the painting of it just sort of happens. Of course I am quite deliberate about basic compositional structure, color temperature and values, and I keep reminding myself to keep the paint thick and leave the brushstrokes alone. These days, my work is becoming more narrative and thematic, and I really like the work of Mark Tansey. I am also coming to appreciate Bo Bartlett once again. I look at their work and I see powerful images. I don’t want to paint like them, but I want my paintings to have that effect.
Nature versus nurture- do you believe you have inherited abilities from creative parents, do you have creative siblings? Can you identify environmental factors or influences which led to your choices or directions?
I think it is both. I was always drawing as a child, and i seemed to have a grasp of form and perspective without training. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother doing “paint-by-number” kits at the kitchen table. I think she had creative abilities, but little skill having never studied art. She encouraged me to study art and develop skills from a very early age. I have three children, all in their 30’s now, and only one of them has ever really attempted to express their creativity through art, and she is an amazing poet. We are watching the grandchildren closely for emerging artists! How does your work respond to social trends?
My work has been decidedly more political since Trump was elected. But I have spent the past year confronting racism specifically in my work. I was a child in Mississippi in the 1960’s, the epicenter of racist inhumanity and civil rights activism, and through my recent work I have "gone home" to address the injustice I was too young to understand then. I consider the courage of those who fought and gave their lives for equal rights and civil justice more than fifty years ago, and yet most of the progress our society made in the years since has been undone.
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