Judith Geichman

Interview with Judith Geichman
By Dennis Matthews on October 17, 2007
1. If you weren’t an artist what do you think you would be doing?
2. Material and process seem to be at the forefront of the experience of your work, is this a reaffirmation of the impactfulness of painting versus digital media’s ease to create bold images?
3. If your work could create or be combined with sound, what would we hear?
4. What was your first experience with art?
5. Last good show/Favorite painters?
6. How far back would you go in Art History? Modernism? Is it over?
7. If another medium was it, which would it be?
8. In the most recent installation there were a group of Sumi Ink drawings, these careful arcs, the slight whips of the brush, seem to evoke an Eastern air, donde esta tu influence? (Motherwell’s Eulogy to the Spanish Republic?)
9. How do you deal with a painting’s success relying on a balance of both accomplishment and resignation?
Bonus Round:
* I like Motherwell, Franz Kline versus Robert Motherwell who wins?










1. If I had the science and math skills it would be a surgeon. Visual experience of going through the body, dissection, another world, glistening, bloody, physical. How these things are attractive, unknown. Or a chef

2. Don’t worry about competition, out of fashion doesn’t matter, empower it, do what I got to do. The Personal is essential to a (success). Growth, cycles, images revealing other actions. Teaching, traveling, experiences feed the work. Loss and joy can be worked through in a singular piece. Turn off what It ought to look like. Comes up over time. Iceland, M. Louis Atl Retrospective (gave support) Editing! How things are momentary in the contemporary world, fragility has become more apparent.

3. Opera, theaterical, Bjork, sigur ros,

4. Staring at little imperfections, notches/dimples in cement. Making pictures out of just shapes…Looking gave me a lot of inspiration, way of reinvolving myself outside of what was really happening lifewise. My dad was a bartender, met a lot of people, one sold art books, he brought back a series of time life feature books. Kept pictures of art early on, treasured these playing cards (Goya’s boy with bird cage)

5. NY Chelsea, dutch paintings at Met., Gagosian show late de Koonings. Neo Rauch, (Carroll Dunham, Terry Winters) (people following) Brice Marden, Lydia Dona, Eva Hesse. Fraganard, the past!

6. 18th century, cave walls at one point, modernism can be here and fresh, defining such a challenge. Not over, dialogue of space, paint quality, talking about painting is happening, engagement with how to

7. Times when I needed to make things, sculpture, involving my hands, figuring out how to add to the painting work with something 3d.

8. Pat Steer, Chinese paintings, scholar rocks/paintings, atmosphere, first place I go to at the Met. Poured, curious, created a figure/ground. Southwest/Iceland Lava areas (seeing images emerge)

9. Start with chaos, clear is not there, enough random acts add up to develop to a point that it can be listened to as to what happens next. Belabored is gone, allow the last painting guide the next. Year and a half. Earliest they were let go, developing faith, recognize mystery.

10. It’s a tie, Kline first, Motherwell
Elkins :painting as liquid thought. Yves Klein print painting.

Answers Judith Geichman by Dennis Matthews on October 17, 2007