In Episode 372, the 1st half of the conversation with Amsterdam-based painter and photographer Claire Witteveen, she talks about:
Her putting off painting initially in favor of photography, for reasons both practical and related to insecurity, partly based on her mom being an artist who juggled that and being a mother; how she can feel completely disconnected from her photography (mainly when it’s a commercial object), but at other times, especially taking portraits, she feels very connected to her subjects; and how with painting she sees it as a monologue, whereas photography is more of a dialogue; how one photography job, combined with painting sales, can sustain her for the year; the complicated nature balance of making good work, and maintaining integrity, while also making a living, or enough income from the artmaking to survive on; the wide swings she can go through in the studio, from thinking she’s re-inventing the wheel in the morning to thinking she’s a total hack later that day; the nuanced factors that make a painting interesting, instead of just good, and an anecdote in which a collector at her opening asked what one of her paintings was about, only to find that it didn’t really matter what she said, because it already ‘spoke to his soul;’ how she connected with her gallerists in Paris, whom she feels very lucky to have and very supported by; the transformation of her work(paintings) once they entered the context of the gallery; and why one particular painting in a show that was in a catalogue and getting so much attention during the run of the show…didn’t ultimately sell. [Claire has a show opening in Paris at Atelier Bergère on April 3rd which will run until May 1st.]
In the second half of our conversation, which is available to Patreon supporters, Claire and I try to get into the mind of the collector, as far as whether they’ll ever go for the tougher, more complicated and sometimes darker paintings, or stick with the lighter, more digestible work; how she organically gravitated to making abstract paintings, and how sometimes she can hide behind the abstraction; the paintings she’s made about letting go of becoming a mother, and how becoming a mother had been what she’d wanted since she was a child, but more recently she’s been gradually making peace with not becoming a mother; in fact, her two childhood dreams were to become an artist and a mother, and how she felt she had to give one up to become the other; Claire talks very eloquently about the deep challenge of feeling like a mother and yet ultimately coming to the very difficult decision to not have children, and how she’s been processing that in relation to her being an artist and her art career; how she learned, while in relationship and living in New Zealand, but not being happy because of creative block, that it’s really important for her to make clear decisions and act on them, because she can’t tolerate being on the fence and ongoing ambiguity.
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