Interview with Christopher Gray at Tourist Magazine

CHRISTOPHER GRAY for TOURIST magazine: How is life as a minimalist?
COURTNEY PRICE: Am I a minimalist? I am not so sure of this… I think I am too interested in the subjective and vulnerable.  This reminds me of wearing a cowboy hat in front of a real cowboy… where I have to take mine off when the real deal shows up.   I know that I use some of the same language as a minimalist, and a cowboy… but I must admit to you that I am probably neither, like I am riding in an english saddle with a cowboy hat on or something.
No matter what is going on in the world there are things to relate to, to work on and love – I deeply enjoy working and this world – especially plants, rock/stone/minerals and the way things relate to each other.
I think this is the beauty of the mind and of life, so much to look at, interact with or sink into… to invent, adventure in or to avoid and edit… and to create or communicate about… and a lot to laugh over, humans are crazy.   I think my work is in part about being amused and the interface between the mind and the world… and the hand and the world.
CG for TOURIST:  Are there stories behind the paintings or are they developed purely on gut feeling?
CP: 50/50, I work intuitively but also have a lot of criteria…  I am interested in the literal and physical but also I seem to embrace the anecdotal… a warm/cold thing.   I value communication and directness in my work, but the problem is that I am trying to communicate about unnamable things.  I have spent a lot of time focused on communicating and interpretation: the communication capacities of abstraction have driven my direction towards simplified and flat form.
CG for TOURIST: Has having the ability to see things in the simplest of forms effected how you see everything?
CP: Sounds like some sort of superpower we are talking about…
I am a very visual person and sensitive to things outside/inside/near forms as well, things like behavior and situation and context…  but the emotional extremes of this I try to avoid… if I can make that distinction.   I tend towards the scientific – keeping a log about the way things operate, move, are built – the colors they have, the way light hits things, the way they sit, the ingredients, elements and natures of things…patterns.  What I see or notice is not always simple, there is a lot of complication to reconcile – I actually really enjoy problems/questions, and coming up with imperfect solutions to them.  I think of this as a warm math – the solutions are not perfect and cannot be accurate but they are somehow more acceptable to me.
CG for TOURIST: If  you were given the enormous hall at Tate London to use as you see fit. What is the first thing that comes into your head?
CP:  2  things come to mind… one – a very large (floor to ceiling) stuffed shape (in some stretchy flat vinyl perhaps) shoved between the floor and the ceiling in a way that makes it appear to “almost fit” – just a little bit of wrinkle to make it cram in there almost comfortably like a tall man on the subway who has to duck against the wall.
Or, a single color large painted situation on that floor…
CG for TOURIST: Do you have a secret storage of paintings that are covered in mess, drips, splats etc. ?
CP: I have many secret works and none of them involve a kept drip or splat.   In my studio and in my sketchbooks what you will see are a lot of line drawings, shapely objects, taped papers and marker messes – and some super bright color.  I find the happy accident (drip) and emotionally charged mark absolutely resistible in my work.   I sometimes have a hard time covering up the pencil lines/structures that happen in the process of the paintings.
CG for TOURIST: It must be difficult to sketch your ideas if they are so simple. Do you ever draw or sketch? Is this reflected in your work?
CP: I draw a lot and play/mess around with paper shapes a lot… and with vectors digitally… and I make many lists of useful words that create tension – such as this vs. that – looking for things between things.  I love working in sketchbooks for many reasons that include a purity of thought process and hand and something about immediacy…I probably fill at least 3 or 4 books a year.   Some of the shapes and compositions that I find, or make paintings after,  take a bit of time to find and digest… where they prove useful I use them.  A lot comes from looking at things and processing over time.   Sometimes I become fascinated with something intuitively and immediately and need to see it on some sort of canvas, but often I discover or uncover ideas while drawing and processing in books – there are many commonalities of form, structure and humor in this world, and drawing a lot helps me locate these things as shapes.  My sketchbooks are the absolute first thing I would grab if leaving.
CG for TOURIST:  How do you see your work evolving? It must be difficult to keep a level of simplicity over time without starting to consider additional touches.
CP:   mmm… on one hand, I think I am growing more minimal (and cowboy-like?) over time – at least more comfortable with less, but also I am getting more interested in sculpture and the strange or confusing… maybe the presumptuous.  Frames and sculpture are the newer things to my work… they feel like additional touches.
CG for TOURIST: What are you planning for 2011?
CP: More relief work/sculpture and print and mechanical processes… I bet I will have some photographs of paintings in still life situations soon too, some contextual work.
By Christopher Gray