Curator Dina Dusko Interviews Peter Stegall

I sat with Peter during the painting selection for the show and he answered a few of the most basic questions, uncovering his unique perspective on the practice of art making:

Dina Dusko: Why did you start making art?

Peter Stegall: I love color, I have always been affected by color. I would not be in art if I had not taken this direction. Pen and ink artists were initially of interest and so my work started out very graphic, but when I started making fine art it all became about the purity of color.

DD: Who are the artists you are looking at?

PS: I am not looking at anybody. I rarely see anyone who interests me. I am often accused of being cranky. However, Ólafur Elíasson impressed me as the first conceptual artist who looks at color. Walking into his yellow room at SF MoMA, there is nothing to think about. He's done three dimensionally what I like to do on a two dimensional surface, something explosive and visceral with the after image. Yellow has found a receptacle in the people of the room, turning them a pale lavender. He is demonstrating a formal idea, taking it one step further.

There was also a conceptual piece by Chris Daubert in Sacramento. He took over the second floor of an empty office building. It was completely black except for tiny light boxes and red text digital print-outs, reminding me of car taillights in traffic. It got me in the gut, I was disoriented, my body affected. Again, this is what I am interested in, in terms of color - a gut reaction.

I see so much gesture painting, and so little of it interests me. I like color because it is so personal and we know very little about how we are affected by it. By reduction or painting only a portion, I suggest a larger world. When I paint a single color over a large area my attention is to an even paint surface, tiny strokes, it's the same approach as if I were to be painting an illusionary landscape.

I like what Pollock did, his work threw an atom bomb into the art world, his quantum explosion created a new playing field. Everything changed including my view on paint.

DD: Who were your teachers?

PS: Walter Witt who introduced me to the moderns and Jim Nutt who introduced me to the concept of pattern. I loved color theory paintings, I really felt them although I have never been influenced by Albers, Itten, instead influenced by their form, and the personal. I tried to find images that would work for my art by first manipulating pattern and shape in watercolor. Then it became obsessive, an ambition influenced by outsider art like Rousseau and Magritte. Looking at Magritte's actual application, it is not slick in any way. There is something about the lack of facility, the notion of drawing with your other hand.

Initially, I liked to be able to see the whole thing, complete the shape, complete the image. I had the idea that abstraction was somehow missing something. After years of completing, I have been disproving myself, putting less in the picture frame. I know less that I thought I did, but not having the answers is OK.

I was never much affected by New York paintings because I am not a gesture painter and I was not looking for accidents, but they do happen. I think the mind can be expressive and gestural without large physical movement. My friend calls me a formalist because I work with the basics: space, color, shape. What makes my work unique is the scale, choice of the paint, and the method of application (a small #1 brush painting a large area). I believe in the long way around, I don't tape my paintings, but instead work very slowly, whatever it takes to get the desired effect. It's not so much the what, but the how. I am always asking, "What is the relationship between color and shape?" I paint equal color values because of the glow achieved on the physical level. Seeing wonderful color makes my eyes wonder.

DD: Stella wanted to dispel interpretive reading of his work, commenting in 1964, "My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. All I want anyone to get out of my paintings and all I ever get out of them is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see.'"

Do you agree with him?

PS: Yes, but there is an acceptance of what is there and what isn't - I am now putting less in. When looking at Newman, his "zips" run infinitely, forever, he gives us a tiny look of something that goes on and on. He is an expressionist. I am always working expressively, emotionally. I look to Einstein and his appreciation of perfection, beauty - I am sorry, I look for beautiful color, if you want to call that decorative, that's fine. Dealers in 70s looked for ugly work, later pop introduced a more beautiful aesthetic, but I think humans live on the edge of disaster all the time and we have this remarkable way of going on and living. I find that interesting, the continuation, the hope.

DD: What does it mean today to make your work?

PS: I am providing an aesthetic experience for the viewer. I take chaos and make order out of it rather than revel in the chaos. Chris Brown gave a talk recently at the Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento and although I like him and his energy, I don't agree with reveling in the unfinished. His talk gave me insight into myself. I believe art provides a new experience. For instance, children love my work, they love the color. You know what it is when you see it and really, you decide what more it could be. I have a feel for material, relationships, connection between shapes, work that you don't have to explain. There is not always an explanation for why something is made. Motherwell talked about one of his ideas for a painting coming from staring at a piece of string. And then take Charles Schulz who imbued the characteristics of the human race into the simplicity of the Peanuts drawings and characters, I love Charles Schulz for that.

DD: What's next?

PS: I don't know what's next. I've been working steady for almost 2 years and more than ever I do not know what's next. My work had to look like what I did not want it to for years before it became what I wanted - and you have to spend a lot of time struggling, my art practice may have even been responsible for the dissolution of my marriage because I wouldn't take a break. I had to go through all the steps. I put myself in my teachers' hands, however Matisse said if you get on the band wagon, you just keep going in circles, so I've been working in the attempt to do my own thing without ever being a rebel. Since the 1960s I have been a painter, arranger of shapes and a designer at my core, I even worked as a sign painter. I liked the enamels and playing with positive and negative. Chief Curator of the Oakland Museum of CA Phil Linhares was very excited by my work, primarily because of his interest in surfaces and in hot rods, he never has to explain, and I am not sure if he even knows why he likes it. Art should have some mystery. I like the acceptance of not knowing what's next.

DD: Any advice to young artists?

PS: Do what you do until the time comes for working outside that. I don't know if I've uncovered any bit of truth, but this is the hope. Mondrian is a great example of someone completing all the steps and then breaking through. He had a philosophy, there was a time when artists needed that, but we are at a point now that you don't need to complete all the steps in order to break through - that's exciting!

DD: Talk a little about the title of the show "An Equal Playing Field".

PS: The title comes from the cubist idea that breaking up the picture plane into relatively equal spaces and putting everything into those spaces. What you choose to put into those spaces creates an illusion. I am interested in how color can create its own illusion. I use color as an noun, not as an adjective and I look at the physical phenomena of color, the innate physical properties of color. On a field there is an equal opportunity for color in my paintings, an equal playing field.

DD: Final thoughts before the show?

PS: If my work doesn't stand out for what it is, I have probably failed. There is no easy definition for what I do. I consider it a combination of modernist thought and contemporary art stemming from Nutt's personal, complete approach right down to making your own frames. I paint the backs and the sides of my paintings, in that way I am still completing the picture. Some years ago, I can't remember exactly when, but I stopped the using the square, that perfect completeness within the picture plane.

I see possibilities for change and slowly the possibility seeps in despite my attempts for control. I used to be adamant about the vertical, holding the space. The newest work is horizontal and allows things to seep out. I am from the "Eureka, I found it!" school and in showing the work, I share what I have, what I have discovered.

Triple Base Gallery regular hours are Thursday - Sunday, 12 - 5pm. Peter Stegall's exhibition runs from Thursday, January 17 through Sunday, February 17. In addition to the paintings on view, Stegall's works on paper are in the gallery's flat file collection. Please contact triplebase@gmail.com for more information.