Interview: Jay Gaskill
Jay Gaskill (b. 1980, Silver Spring, MD) is an artist/curator based in Cathedral City, CA. Jay earned an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He recently took time off from exhibiting to start a family and a new life in the California desert with his wife, Erin. His new lo-fi abstract paintings reflect the freedom and excitement that come with a mid-life and mid-career reinvention. As a curator, he founded two social-media-based-projects: Air In Space and The Drawing Exchange. Air In Space functioned as an Instagram-only gallery for emerging artists. The Drawing Exchange is/was/might be again a mediated exchange of 2D works amongst artists. Jay’s work has been exhibited on both coasts, and featured in publications such as Workhouse Rising, Maake Magazine, The Coastal Post and ArtMaze Mag. As a curator, he has been interviewed by ArtNet News, and organized a booth for SPRING/BREAK Art Show.
Read our interview with Jay below!
Featherlight, Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 22 inches, 2023
PP: Walk us through a typical day in your studio or generally through your process to make new work.
JG: Having a family has definitely altered my approach to the studio. I will try to do all the little annoying parts of the studio (like stretching and preparing canvases) at night, or early in the morning before work, so that when I get a nice Saturday studio day, I can focus on just painting. My paintings all start with selecting some kind of sketch or drawing I have done and projecting it onto the canvas in chalk. I like to have between 5 and 10 canvases going at once so that when I step into the studio, I have lots of options, and can work on whichever one is calling to me in that moment. I have made a playlist that I start every studio day with, so I put that on, sip some cacao, survey the canvases, grab some existing paints or mix something new, and just dive in. I find that working in 1.5 or 3 hour chunks is the best for a creative outburst. Then I take a break to hang out with my kid, play with my cats, make some lunch and then get back to it for another chunk of time. When properly prepared it's amazing what one can accomplish in 3 hours.
Evergreen, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20 inches, 2024
Cat City Pop, Acrylic on canvas, 34 x 26 inches, 2023
PP: What motivates you to make art?
JG: I think there is an innate dissatisfaction in every artist. If the world was the way we wanted it to be, if the art we saw in our heads already existed, then we wouldn’t have to create things with the goal of altering the world in some way. It’s our job to take that dissatisfaction and make something positive out of it. And once you do start making something new, the excitement of it all kicks in, and that becomes the other main motivator. Like “If I could do that, what can I do next?”
PP: What challenges have you faced as an artist and how do you overcome them?
JG: For any artist not born rich, time management is the number one issue we have to deal with. Working a day-job, going to see shows, networking at openings, spending time with family and friends, hopefully having some sort of fulfilling romantic relationship, all of these things take time away from our studio practice. There is no overcoming this issue. There is only the goal of effective management, which can only be achieved through years of trial and error. There is no one right way to do this, we each have our own path to follow as we try to find a balance of the above that we find satisfying. Any balance we find that works today, won’t necessarily work tomorrow. Compromises will be made, and we have to make peace with them. It’s not easy, but if we wanted “easy” we wouldn’t be artists would we? I recommend a daily meditation practice to quiet the mind and connect with your inner purpose. If one can do that, then it's easier to find and maintain that balance. But even then, we can still get knocked off track by life. Recently, I found myself feeling very disconnected from art after taking a year off from making work to move and have a kid, and I used “The Artist's Way” as a sort of guide to recentering myself creatively, and it did wonders for me.
Studio view of works in progress, September 2024
PP: What role do you think artists have in society today? What role should they have?
JG: I grew up thinking that artists were supposed to be the provocateurs, the ones pushing the envelope, both artistically and politically. I thought we would all be Marxists and that getting “canceled” (before that term even existed) was kind of the point. Nowadays, it seems the role of the artist is to be a court painter, making pretty pictures for the oligarchs and falling in line with the increasingly right wing bent of both political parties, terrified of making waves. In my lifetime we have gone from “Piss Christ” to a banana duct taped to a wall. It's been a sad slide into conservatism. I am hopeful that one day things will turn around, but I think it's going to get even worse before it gets better.
PP: What is your process like for critiquing your own work?
JG: In the past I wanted my paintings to be flawless, so if I could see one thing that needed to be tweaked, the painting was failing for me. Nowadays, I want my paintings to challenge me. So if there’s a part of the painting that isn’t working, I’ll leave it, and try to work around it. Get it into a place where the discomfort feels exciting. Use the sand to try to make a pearl. But whatever the goal of the work is, the only way to critique it is by looking and looking and living with it for a while and then looking some more. If the painting can’t stand up to that level of looking in your studio, how do you expect it to live in someone's home?
To learn more about Jay’s work, see his Instagram and Website