Interview with Jeremy Geddes
March 26th, 2008 by Jon Beinart
I recently asked Brian Sherwin of MyArtSpace.com if he could interview some of our featured artists for the beinArt.org blog. Here is Brian's interview with Jeremy Geddes. Jeremy is one of 50 artists featured in our upcoming publication entitled Metamorphosis 2.
Brian Sherwin – "Jeremy, can you tell us about your early years? What inspired you to first pick up the brush?"
Jeremy Geddes – "Damn that's hard to say, although, at least in part, it was undoubtedly to pick up the girls. I'm not sure that teenage boys do anything at all that isn't at least tangentially connected to picking up girls (or other boys)."
Brian Sherwin – "Do you have any academic training in art? Can you tell us about your early studies– be it formal or informal?"
Jeremy Geddes – "I did a BA and a postgrad degree at VCA in Melbourne, although it was useless in terms of technical training, it served more as a studio space and a way to pick up Austudy money, rather than a learning environment. I learned everything I know by myself after I left."
Brian Sherwin – "Tell us about your influences… are you influenced by any specific artists or art movements?"
Jeremy Geddes – "It's a hard one to answer, my influences are always evolving, they don't stay static. I don't adhere to any specific movements, I'm skeptical of the idea of labeled art movements, I'm not sure what it achieves."
Brian Sherwin – "Jeremy, the characters in your paintings often appear as if they are 'boxed' in… there is a sense of claustrophobia about them. Is that intentional?"
Jeremy Geddes – "It's intentional, many painters compose their work so the edges of the canvas are as invisible as possible. All the points of interest are contained within the middle portion of the image, the tonal and colour construction is designed to keep the eye within this space, to keep them viewing the painting for as long as possible."
"I don't really find that interesting, and I often go the other route of putting the points of interest at the edge of a piece, and creating a design that forces the eye off the edge of the canvas, I'm interested in the tension that that can create."
Brian Sherwin – "Tell us more about the motives behind your work…"
Jeremy Geddes – "The motives for me painting have changed a little over the years, earlier, they were in a large part a sort of exasperation at the folly of my fellow monkey's, these days though I'd say they're about attempting to capture a mood, a fairly specific one, but one that I can't quite grasp internally, I'm trying to work it through in my paintings."
Brian Sherwin – "Jeremy, I understand that you are a gamer… what kind of games do you play? Are you influenced by video games or other aspects of popular culture?"
Jeremy Geddes – "I worked in game development for about 5 years, and have played them since I was a kid. Alas I'm so busy these days I don't really play them anymore. Am I influenced by popular culture? Yeah totally I'd say, although I don't really know what is popular culture and what is not. All these distinctions are pretty meaningless, there's just people creating things they think are worth creating, and some I think were, some I think weren't, the former I gravitate towards and draw off, the later I don't."
Brian Sherwin – "So what exactly are the social implications of your work? What do you strive to convey about society? What is the message that you hope viewers obtain when they observe your art?"
Jeremy Geddes – "Conveying an explicit meaning without resorting to didactic narrative cliches is almost impossible. If you wish to have any form of subtlety in you your work, you have to accept that it comes with the cost of potential misinterpretation. Meaning for any particular viewer will only be partly informed by the painting, and predominantly informed be the viewers past experiences, and personal narrative associations formed over the course of their life. It's been my experience that viewers will see the broad outlines of a painting at first, begin to construct a narrative that fits their world view, and then selectively ignore details of the painting that conflict with this constructed narrative. So if you construct an image with a narrative, or message that conforms to standard belief, say a moral lesson, the chances that your painting will be correctly interpreted are high, but if you're attempting a dissident narrative you're going to struggle to convey that explicitly."
"If you accept this as a painter, then you realise that your ability to convey any sort of exacting message through your images is severely limited. I try to set up questions, hopefully ones that spark a cognitive dissonance in the viewer."
Brian Sherwin – "Tell us more about your process. What type of surface do you prefer to paint upon? How do you begin a painting? Do you work with sketches first?"
Jeremy Geddes – "I used to paint on board prepared with acrylic gesso, which worked fine, although I've recently switched to linen with an oil primer for larger paintings. Before I begin a painting, I generally do a lot of thinking. I don't go beyond this point until something has formed in my head which I feel compelled by. Then I play around with it, in my head and in small thumbnails. Then I collect what ever reference I need and get busy. After all the planning though, I usually end up scraping out areas of the painting, and changing them as I go. It's a time waster, but perhaps unavoidable."
Brian Sherwin – "Can you tell us about your studio practice… what are the conditions you need in order to paint– do you listen to music while working?"
Jeremy Geddes – "I work with podcasts or audio books going in the background usually, with the occasional bout of music. I generally work form around 8:30 in the morning until about 11:00 at night, and try to make it 7 days a week."
Brian Sherwin – "What are you working on at this time?"
Jeremy Geddes – "I'm beginning work on a five issue painted comic, which will probably take a little over year. After that, I have a huge backlog of paintings I want to get to."
Brian Sherwin – "Finally, do you have any advice for emerging artists?"
Jeremy Geddes – "That's a hard one. The best advice I could give, is to ask yourself, "why am I doing this?" Then try to answer it as honestly as you can, because with this knowledge you can plan a life that you'll find satisfying. If you're interested in money, you can make one series of decisions. Fame? Potentially another. If you want to simply paint what you what to paint, and couldn't care about money or fame, those choices will be different again."
Jeremy Geddes is one of 50 artists featured in our upcoming publication entitled Metamorphosis 2.
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