BLISSS MAGAZINE // ISSUE NO. 129
Stephen Fox:
INTERVIEW // LIZ RICE MCCRAY
The paintings of Stephen Fox are an exploration of the contemporary nighttime landscapes, and the people and objects that inhabit that after-hours world. Stephen lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and many of his landscapes in recent years are drawn from the mountainous Hudson Highlands area adjacent to the Hudson River, as well as the Adirondacks, coastal Maine, and many drive-in movie theaters throughout the country. Will you describe where you are right now? This way everyone reading along can imagine the setting and have a visual. I’m seated in my art studio, a former kitchen in a first floor apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There are paintings in-progress all over the walls, some nearly complete, others with a long ways to go. Sunlight streams in through a south-facing back door, through which is a petite backyard. It’s cool spring weather out there, just beginning to hint at cookouts to come. We are blown away by your paintings. Will you please tell us about your creative process? I suppose it would be right to say that every painting emerges out of three fairly distinct chapters of engagement. To begin with, there is the time spent out in the landscape, a kind of hunting and gathering mode. Sometimes this is a specifically targeted location, like a particular outdoor theater for the drive-in movie series I’ve been working on, while other times I just drive into the unknown with my camera and tripod, trusting that I’ll eventually stumble upon a “fortunate” configuration of light and atmosphere that can serve as the seed from which a fully realized painting might grow. Next comes time spent sketching and computer-composing from these references, until I have a composition that engages a certain kind of feeling in me, a sense that some version of this image needs to exist in painted form. Then, finally, the engagement on canvas or panel, the longest part of the process by far, where I rough that composition in very abstractly, and the painting gradually emerges into refined form through many layers of paint application. When did your fascination for light within the nighttime landscape begin, and how has it evolved? When I was studying painting and printmaking in college, I tended to leave the art buildings very late. It was an urban campus and I loved the quiet that descended upon the streets in the wee hours, with the artificial lighting turning otherwise “ordinary” places into scenes with a kind of quivering stillness. My very first nightscapes came from wandering around these streets right where I parked my car, or where I lived. With those beginnings, I had no idea that I was tapping into an exploration that would carry on for decades. Various themes have emerged from the larger umbrella of painting the night—highway or railway landscapes, glowing phone booths, playgrounds emptied of activity, drive-in movie theaters where film imagery literally beams into a nighttime environment… I was twenty-two when I painted my first night landscape. I’m sixty now, and feel like I’ve still only scratched the surface of the magic that can be drawn out of these night paintings. On so many levels it’s an elemental part of human consciousness to wish for light to emerge out from darkness, and it continues to amaze me how the headlights from one approaching car, or a bit of mist gathered around a streetlight, can transform visual nothingness into a world that glows with mystery.
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ISSUE 129
What kind of art do you like? Do you collect anything in particular? I have my favorite artists, and perhaps it’s no surprise that they are painters whose work dealt with capturing qualities of light – Vermeer, Monet, George Inness, Edward Hopper… But really, my tastes are eclectic, and what stirs me the most is seeing the fruits of sincere creative engagement, whether that takes the form of a soulful painting, or a mathematically complex bamboo basket, or a Lohan sculpture with a quality of presence… When it comes to collecting, my wife and I are living a New York apartment life, which creates certain limitations. We aren’t minimalists – we do have wonderful art on our walls, objects that feed us in the way that fine art can. But by nature we’re creators, not collectors, and live accordingly. Many thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Lastly, any sage wisdom for artists just starting out? And where can our readers check out more of your art. I find myself smiling, recalling being outdoors in a valley while facing a particular life-direction conundrum, and from high upon a nearby mountain trail I heard someone call out: “You’re going the wrong way!” They weren’t speaking to me – And yet, of course, they also were – which is perhaps a strange preamble for saying that for young artists, try to know the difference between a direction that only comes from what could be called mere head-brain thinking, and possibilities that you feel must be engaged with for reasons you can’t even quite explain to yourself. Be drawn like a moth to a flame – it’s art, and half of the fun is in not knowing where touching a live wire like that is going to take you. As for seeing more of my paintings, I have a website, www.stephenfoxart.com. And to see works in person, it might be convenient for some of your readers to drop into Arcadia Contemporary in Culver City, CA, where a different Steve can show them what I’ve been up to recently. Two of my paintings are included in a landscape exhibition there titled, “This Land Is…” which runs through May 10th. But they almost always have examples of my work on hand.