very methodically, building up surfaces. Susan : And I’ve got Iggy Pop playing, my bourbon in my hand, and everything really loud and chaotic in the studio. We are completely opposite! Stephen : Artistically, it’s difficult when you’re living with somebody. There is a point where you want to ask for feedback into what you’re doing, but the danger is you might not get the feedback that you want. But, both are valid. I don’t think it’s a problem anymore, because I think we’re both confident in our own work now. Whereas early on, I might say ‘why don’t you try so and so?’ and she’d do it. But then she goes down a path and it would be a dead-end and she couldn’t do it, because it’s my vision, not her vision. So I got the point where she looked for feedback and I said ‘I’m not giving you any, because every time I involve myself in your paintings it’s not your vision and then you get lost.’ Susan : Now I’ll ask him, and if I don’t agree with it I just say ‘okay I could see that, but yeah I’m not going that way,’ you know? I won’t do it unless I have that vision. Stephen : Well, early on we were trying to please each other, it was basically, I want you to like my paintings, and now we don’t really care. There is always competition for wall space. When you’re working on something, you want to put things up so you can look at them over a period of time. It’s like ‘is it alright if I hang this here? You know, coz I need to live with this for a couple of weeks, which means so will you!’ Daks : Exactly! Susan : Well this commission that I was just doing for Indiewalls, that’s going down to Miami. It was two 15-foot commissions, three panels each. My studio’s too small, so I had to take our sectional and close it together and put it next to the dining table. So we had no couch, we had no table to eat off, and I had all the panels in there because it was a triptych, so it had to line up.
Threads In private residence in NJ by Susan
for her. And then other times, when I have a show coming up, she will chip in and help me get myself together, get me organised. She’s much better at doing that than I am, but we can’t share the same studio space because we have completely different studio practises; our process is completely different. Susan : Completely! Stephen : I’m a guy, so I don’t multi- task. I have to do one thing. I can’t have any distractions. I don’t like music playing or anything else; just me and my materials. I can work in quite a small space, but it’s very organised and my paintings are very methodical. They take a very long time. I’m making my own paint from pigments. I’m laying them down
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