INTERVIEW BY H CANDEE

REGINA SCULLY

VISUAL ARTIST

INTERVIEW BY HARRYET CANDEE

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHY OF ART IMAGES BY GARY GITTELSON

Regina, your paintings are beautiful. For me, they each depict different worlds you travel to and explore, a brave pioneer bringing back information on faraway worlds. Is this how you see them as well? REGINA: Yes, exactly. The idea of traveling while standing still has always intrigued me. Painting is a wonderful vehicle for this. Once you get inside a painting, there are so many possibilities to explore and interesting accidental spaces and vignettes to discover both while creating the piece and later in viewing it. I have always taken solace in the fact that I can travel a lot in my mind and in my art. My paintings as personal journeys to exotic worlds. They are all improvisational. I always start the painting in a different way than I have before….and a dialogue begins. I don’t know yet if the painting will start to hum and rise in volume, and if the painting and I will find resolution and magic together in the end. But I hope we will, and I coax the painting throughout the long process to develop and evolve to this end.

Can you give an interpretation of your work? I am looking at Inner Journey, one of your works on paper. REGINA: The titles of my series give a good overall idea about my work. My first serious solo exhibition was in New Orleans in 2008 and titled, Excavations. After Excavations came Navigations, Passages, Horizons, Inner Journeys, and I am currently still working with Mindscapes. In essence, my paintings are about taking a journey and exploring both the painting and oneself. The concept of taking a journey through a painting was central to Chinese painting centuries ago. Without getting too academic, I would like to mention the book, Introduction to Chinese Art, where Michael Sullivan discusses landscape as the “opening of a door.” He discusses how taking a break during the day to contemplate and enter a painted landscape in the mind’s eye, was recognized as “a source of spiritual solace and refreshment.” While early western landscape painting used linear perspective and exercised ideas of power over space, Eastern landscape involved a spiritual contemplation of nature from afar to create a sense of vastness in the world. This was the subject of my thesis in graduate school, and I take great inspiration from this idea -that a contemplative spiritual approach to painting allows for exploration of a landscape that is reflective in some way of the viewer’s own mind. I also explored this concept when developing my exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of

Inner Journey 20, 2019, acrylic on Stonehenge paper, 22 x 30 inches, private collection

Art with the Curator of Asian Art, Lisa Rotondo-McCord. In preparation for the show, we spent months looking specifically at Japanese landscapes. The exhibition consisted of my paintings displayed alongside Japanese landscape paintings from NOMA and a private collection.

How does your process change when you are painting on paper versus painting on canvas? REGINA: There is a delicacy to cloth stretched on wood, but an even greater delicacy to paper. On paper, most marks cannot be “erased.” It is a more immediate and finalized type of markmaking. Suddenly deciding to make a rhythm of orange marks in the open sky at the top of a painting can be wiped off quickly if it doesn’t look good. On paper, the mark is more committed, so it can all feel more dangerous and edgier when working. At the same time, you can have a stack of paper by your side and freely make marks and freely experiment because the paper is more disposable in the process than a beautiful canvas, which is built from wood, stretched with cloth, and quadruple primed and sanded, before it is ready to work on. Like all mediums, both surfaces have their challenges when trying to create life from inanimate material. It is an alchemical process really. A woman visiting my studio once told me that it must take a lot of courage to paint, and I agree with her.

With your art, you give a gift to viewers, is that something you agree with? All art is a gift. When viewers come to a piece of art with an open mind and heart, they are given something which conjures up some part of themselves they may not have been in touch with. It can be a way for one consciousness to communicate with another without using words. Art in general is a language of the unconscious that can be understood in some way by all people. Personally, I think my paintings conjure up emotions and memories of places where the viewer may have visited or dreamed of visiting. And this is like a gift. There is a lyricism woven through my paintings that has a joyful element; there is also a sense of longing--of the human condition--which is full of both joy and sorrow. I truly feel that my art could be a gift when a group of Alzheimer’s patients on a tour of The New Orleans Museum of Art were greatly moved and responsive to a painting of mine in their collection, Cosmographia. Continued on next page...

Entrances, 2020, Acrylic and polymer clay sculptures on linen on wood panel, 48 x 60 inches, on view at Octavia Art Gallery, New Orleans

That means you have a great imagination that helps you to communicating visual ideas and to feel free to express yourself as a creative individual? If I could, I would live in my imagination all the time! Seriously though, I’ve always enjoyed how my imagination allows me see figures out of the corner of my eye, or faces in mounds of cloth or piles of trash. I love it when my eyes “play tricks” on me, when, for example, in the distant wavy heat, I may think I see an old carnival which is really only a series of gas stations and tents selling fireworks. Wearing glasses for distance is helpful with this, and I like to take them off so things become a little blurry and I can see figures and objects emerge from the landscape when I walk. When I paint, I am painting what I see emerge from the colors and environments I have laid out on the canvas.

What role does your intuition play in your creative moments? I think intuition is a gateway into the imagination. The challenge is to learn how to work with intuition, how to trust it and have faith in it. Ultimately, I believe that creating art is a spiritual act that involves courage, trust, faith, and belief. It’s a constant challenge to approach my work with this in mind and to let go of all judgement and all that I think I “know.”

As a colorist, you work with a pallette of colors that will work with and be combined with other skills needed to gain depth, fluidity and perception. How do you balance and juggle all of these necessary jobs? The color, atmosphere, and content all come together at the same time. The colors play a big role in creating the atmosphere in the painting. I appreciate complex color situations, and I like to use lots of colors in the paintings. I recently had over 30 colors on my palette as I was finishing Mindscape 32. It is a lot to manage especially at the end, when solidifying all the specific colors and choreographing how they all work together in the painting.

An intimate question I hope you will answer: what thoughts go through your mind before you touch the canvas? When I get into the studio, I am preparing myself to work on a big puzzle. First, I am taking note of all the little things that I want to adjust and fix in the painting. I often make lists like “make fence stronger by yellow stars” and “make arch stronger at bottom over writing lady,” etc. At the same time, I am trying to let go and allow my intuition to tell me what to do next. When I am in that balanced place, between knowing and not-knowing, it almost becomes automatic. It is like a knowledgeable intuition that takes over. A certain brush calls out to be used, and areas of the painting want attention and I follow the colors I see in my head that want to be used. Continued on next page...

Cosmographia, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, Collection of New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans

Mindscape 32, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, on view at Octavia Art Gallery, New Orleans

I live with my paintings and I have many paintings going at the same time. Each one has its own timing to emerge completed from the studio. The two large paintings I recently completed each have a long story. One was started in 2018 and the other in 2016. In each case, I liked the painting but could not figure out how to resolve it, so I put it away. When I brought the paintings out years later I was up to the challenge, and realized they were both delving into something that I had developed in other paintings and understood now.

You have had a number of public solo art exhibits at great galleries including the New Orleans Museum of Art. So I wonder since each location has its own demands, how do you go about putting together a solo show? When I have an upcoming exhibition, it is all I think about. The paintings that are already in progress take on a buzz and I start new canvases, keeping in mind the number of pieces and sizes I’ll need for the show. I generally have all of the pieces going at the same time, and they begin to talk to each other in my studio. Concepts about the exhibition start to form and I write down words and titles and ideas as I’m working. There is a great energy and adrenaline that fuels the whole experience. There is a magic that happens when I finish each painting, a final conversation, where everything feels solid…and very good. I need to hear that click at the end. I can often remember the last mark I put on each painting. The exhibitions at my galleries (Octavia Art Gallery in New Orleans and C24 Gallery in New York City) as well as the one at New Orleans Museum of Art, were all planned about a year in advance. Sometimes there’s more than one solo exhibition in a particular year to prepare for, as well as art fairs and group exhibitions.

How does your present day art making differ from the art you did when you finished college and started walking the walk of an artist? In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, a city I had just moved to from New York, my work changed a great deal. Up until then my paintings focused on the figure in an interior or exterior space. They were abstract figures, very psychological and large in the composition. After Katrina, I stayed in Mobile, AL at the old family house, Termite Hall. I took trips to New Orleans to help friends and family clear the devastation and took a series of photos of abandoned neighborhoods with debris everywhere, strewn across lawns and coming out of windows. Bicycles were up in trees, and rooftops were on the ground with staircases that reached up to nothing. Everything was turned upside down and inside out; reality had become abstract. I did paintings using my photos for inspiration and relinquished the figure. Lots of different terrains and abstract landscapes began to emerge, and I started exploring and building these spaces on the canvas.

Mindscape 25, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches, on view at World Trade Center, Tower 7, New York

(Termite Hall—I love that name!)...Regina, of all the artists that you have been inspired by, tell us who has been on the top of that list and why? Cecily Brown and Phillip Guston, Bruegel, Bosch, and Eva Hesse just to name a few. Julie Mehretu is an amazing painter whose work I follow. She was actually at RISD in the graduate painting department when I was there as an undergrad. I took a class on Van Gogh in college. I had already studied his letters to Theo. His incredible passion for painting is infectious. The way he used paint, so definitively and passionately, has always made me feel intense emotions. His paintings vibrate with life bursting through.

When we get through a year like 2020, what can you say you have learned, and is it reflective in your eyes as you paint today? To be honest, I have learned even more about what this world can throw at you. I was living in New York City when 9/11 happened and then I moved to New Orleans in 2003, two summers before Hurricane Katrina. I have experienced destruction and horror on a grand scale, and so during COVID, I did what I always do, paint and survive. I was thinking about COVID when I began making hundreds of body parts to incorporate into my paintings last year.

Would there be a turning point for you when you see a new style coming forth and emerging from within? Do you allow it in or, do you try to stay consistent to what you have been doing all along? I welcome anything new that wants to come into my work. I have lots of pieces in progress that have broken into new territories but are not ready to fully emerge. I have small sculptures which will become something one day too. I particularly love going to see an artist’s retrospective, because it shows all of the different evolutions, both small and large in an artist’s journey. In terms of artists’ supplies, like your paints for example, would you share with us your recommendations on your favorite materials? Your question immediately makes me think of the joy of receiving a fresh order of art supplies on the doorstep. I painted in oils for fifteen years, with Old Holland paint, until I switched to acrylic paint in 2008. I wanted to be able to pile layers on the canvas without waiting for the paint to dry or worrying about cracking. They make wonderful acrylic paint now, and my favorite is Guerra Paint in New York. Guerra sells pigment dispersions and mediums so you can make your own highly pigmented paint in any color and consistency. I keep a notebook of all the new colors I mix so I am able to duplicate them if needed. I also use Old Holland acrylic paint and Golden paint. Using quality materials is important to the integrity of the work and allows me to rest easy at night, knowing that the colors I Continued on next page...

Mindscape 18, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 72 inches, private collection

Mindscape 20, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 72 inches, on view at Canyon Ranch, Lenox, MA

use are lightfast, the linen or canvas is a strong weave, and the stretchers are solidly built.

On a side note question, I wonder, what keeps you occupied when you are not in your studio painting up a universe? I like taking long weekends to visit the beach and spending time with good friends. I started writing poetry again during COVID. I also like practicing the violin, collecting dolls, and metalsmithing.

Oh, Violin! ...We are continuously learning about ourselves and the world every day. As we know, art is a great gift. I would ask you, if not for art, then what would take its place? I think it would be jewelry-making. I made my first silver ring with a tiger’s eye stone in the back of the art room with a propane torch in high school. I was the only student who wanted to work with metal and my art teacher, Judith Saunders, put something together with some charcoal blocks so I could learn. I still wear that ring today. If I did not work in the visual arts, then I would be a writer like my sister, Helen Scully, or a musician, like my brother Francis Scully.

We are so good at problem solving and taking on new challenges. For you, what do you dare to venture into and explore away from the studio? What is your next mountain you need to cross about? Do you see a clear path? I need to find a house and studio by the ocean. I love the ocean and grew up near Virginia Beach and the Chesapeake Bay. For the past six years, I have attended the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Manasota Key, FL. Every time I have gone to work by the ocean, I’ve felt balanced and free and my work has always evolved in new, exciting directions. What part of your life was most profound in regards to your artistic life? That would have to be summers as a child spent at my mother’s family home in Mobile, AL. It is a historical house built in 1851 and has been in my family since 1919. It is known as Termite Hall, and properly, as the GreeneMarston Home. My grandmother was a selftaught artist and was more interested in making sculptures at the kitchen table than cooking, cleaning, or doing any typical grand-motherly things. She called the house her “Walden” and she would walk through it every day and talk about the house and all the objects in it as if they were alive. She and I would sit for hours, making the characters from the Wizard of Oz or whatever came to mind that day. We always started with brown paper bags and scotch tape. Then we would use paper-mache, macramé hair and found objects that we painted or carved and added to the piece. There were miniature vignettes set up around the house. Hal-

Scully working her color palette

loween and Christmas creations stayed out all year, and ghost stories were prevalent. Termite Hall was a fantasy holiday playground as a child. It was enough to fuel my imagination for a lifetime and most importantly, it blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. As an adult, I still go there to visit. Though my grandmother is no longer present, my aunt and cousins are there, and it will always be a touchstone of love and creativity.

Tell us about your solo exhibit Lost and Found last year at Octavia Art Gallery in New Orleans. In life, there are moments of feeling vulnerable and broken as well as times when we put ourselves back together and heal. I felt a great loss last year after my best friend passed away at the beginning of COVID. Along with the isolation of the pandemic and the horrifying images in the media, I began making miniature sculptures of arms and different body parts. I incorporated these sculptures into my paintings and tried to think of the small colored sculptures as strokes of paint. I have worked in different sculptural mediums throughout the years and it was cathartic to bring this element into the 2-dimensional painted surface.

To see more of your art, can you tell us where is the best place to look? My web site address is reginascully.com where you see images of all of my paintings and where you can find my CV and contact information for my galleries. I am on social media and can be found on Facebook and Instagram. There are also a couple of videos on YouTube where I discuss my work. I am represented by Octavia Art Gallery in New Orleans and C24 Gallery in New York City. I am also delighted to have a great selection of paintings currently on view at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA. Regina, to conclude this wonderful interview with you, please throw us one of your most meaningful quotes you have in your mental files? There is a beautiful quote from Pablo Neruda that I love: “I need the sea because it teaches me.”

Thank you!

MARGUERITE BRIDE

COMMISSIONS Is there a special occasion in your future? Anniversary? Wedding? Graduation? Retirement? Selling a home and downsizing? A custom watercolor painting of a wedding venue, a home or other special location is a treasured gift. Now is a great time to commission a house portrait or business or your favorite scene captured in a watercolor. Paintings (or even a personalized gift certificate, then I work directly with the recipient) make a cherished and personal gift for weddings, retirement, new home, old home, anniversaries…..any occasion is special. Commission work is always welcome. And businesses get to use their painting in promotional purposes as well. A very personal type of commission that has been becoming more popular….paintings of your wedding venue (church or other stunning setting, for example, the “Mount”). Or a “special” location that is meaningful to the bride and groom. Perhaps a gift certificate to the bride and groom for a painting of a special scene from their honeymoon? Visit my website for info about an alternative wedding guest book as well. Be in touch …it is guaranteed to be a fun adventure! Marguerite Bride – Home Studio at 46 Glory Drive, Pittsfield, Massachusetts by appointment only. Call 413-841-1659 or 413-442-7718; margebride-paintings.com; margebride@aol.com; Facebook: Marguerite Bride Watercolors.

MINDSCAPE 32 REGINA SCULLY

Regina Scully lives in New Orleans, Louisiana and was born in Norfolk, Virginia. She received her BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting from University of New Orleans. A recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant Award in 2017, Scully has exhibited nationally and internationally and had a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2017. She was awarded an Artist Residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat and has been invited back every year to work since 2016. Scully’s paintings are in private and public collections including 7 World Trade Center, the Microsoft Art Collection, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Scully’s paintings have been in two group exhibitions this spring and summer following her solo exhibition at Octavia Art Gallery in September/October of last year. C24 Gallery recently created and released an online viewing room of her paintings in July. Coming up, Scully’s paintings will be on view with Octavia Art Gallery at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, New York, September 2-5, 2021. She also has work in a group exhibition, The Emotional Brain, at Carroll Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, August 23– Sept. 30. A selection of her paintings is currently on display and can be seen by guests at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA. An inventory of her paintings can be seen at any time by going to C24 Gallery in NYC or to Octavia Art Gallery in New Orleans. Regina Scully – follow/send message on Instagram (@regina.scully )and Facebook; www.reginascully.com. She can also be contacted through her galleries and through The Artful Mind magazine.

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol

FRONT ROW TO AUGUST CLAUDIA d’ALESSANDRO

A is for August. It is also for Abounding beauty, Aborning and Ablush. It is the season of maturity, of ripened fruit and swelling grains. August is nature’s Abundance on display - in all her finery and fullness - even as summer is Almost over. While August’s colors seem deeper and even the skies more dramatic, the days are noticeably shorter. Hot, thick air begins to give way to an occasional nightly chill, and the first hints of color tint leaf edges. While there may be no richer time in New England, August signals the beginning of summer’s end, of summer vacation, perhaps a return to school or work. In its final days August sets the stage for the turning of the leaves and autumn’s harvests which will mark the end of the growing season. While this is what happens at August’s end, there is still time to savor the last of the season’s warmth and richness. As each season has a lesson which applies to the human condition, August reminds us to seize and enjoy the days of plenty, to bask in warmth and be grateful for the gifts that Nature gives us. Nature’s images remind me of the magnificent beauty that surrounds us - the mighty power of the natural world which we inhabit. Air, earth and water serve as my canvas. I hope that you will share my appreciation for summertime’s ‘A is for August’. “Claudia’s photography touches our souls with deep joy!” ~ CHR “She sees with her eyes and feels with her heart.” ~ DKAH For more information on purchasing these, or other prints, - please email me at: cdalessandro26@gmail.com, - visit me at https://www.dalessandrophotography.com, or - follow me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cdalessandrophotography/ and on Instagram as: dalessandronatura. Don’t forget to mention The Artful Mind for Preferred Customer pricing!

Cheers to all for a safe, healthy and inspiring late summer!

CATENA 12, OIL ON CANVAS, 20 X 16” VIRGINIA BRADLEY

CATENA 12

THE SEA

Pablo Neruda, On the Blue Shore of Silence (a passage) “the pulse that rose and fell in its abyss, the cracking of the blue cold, the gradual wearing away of the star, the soft unfolding of the wave squandering snow with its foam, the quiet power out there, sure as a stone shrine in the depths, replaced my world in which were growing stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion, and my life changed suddenly: as I became part of its pure movement.”

KATE KNAPP FRONT ST. GALLERY

Pastels, oils, acrylics and watercolors…abstract and representational…..landscapes, still lifes and portraits….a unique variety of painting technique and styles….you will be transported to another world and see things in a way you never have before…. join us and experience something different. Painting classes continue on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1:30pm at the studio and Thursday mornings out in the field. These classes are open to all...come to one or come again if it works for you. All levels and materials welcome. Private critiques available. Classes at Front Street are for those wishing to learn, those who just want to be involved in the pure enjoyment of art, and/or those who have some experience under their belt. Front Street, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance anytime. 413-5289546 at home or 413-429-7141 (cell) www.kateknappartist.com

FRAGILITY OILS/COLD WAX 8 X 8” FRAMED IN BLACK WOOD FRAME CAROLYN M. ABRAMS

Carolyn Abrams grew up in Brunswick, NY well known for its rolling hills and amazing light and sunsets. Her work is an exploration of the wisdom of art that she finds as a passionate artist. Intuition has always guided her in her exploration of the spiritual and physical worlds. An enthusiastic learner, new techniques and unique art materials drive her work to best express this passion for creativity in her ethereal and peaceful natureinspired paintings. Most recently her work with oils and cold wax have provided the perfect medium for expression. From the natural world that surrounds the area in which she lives, to the bell that is rung by a lyric or poem, each work reveals the elements of impressionism and abstraction. Feelings of hope and harmony are ever present in her work which attracts many of her collectors to follow her on her journey. Carolyn M. Abrams www.carolynabrams.com; Facebook www.facebook.com/CarolynMAbramsArt

As COVID began to lift in March I was vaccinated and reunited with my beloved Caribbean Sea. It was a relief to be submerged in the turquoise waters for endless hours - lost in oblivion and searching for the unknown. As Neruda states “I became part of its pure movement”. Catena 8 -12 were begun in my Playa Santa Studio. They were searching for the “interconnected moments” that held us together in suspension during the COVID Pandemic. The paintings continued their adventure after they arrived in my Great Barrington Studio. The combination of the sea and the weeks of rainy Berkshire weather resulted in a series of playful yet meditative images that carry a sea of mystery as you glimpse into their world. Virginia Bradley - virgbradley57@gmail.com, www.virginiabradley.com, 302-540-3565.

“There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.” – Helen Frankenthaler

robert wilk

Love/red. Flying Horse Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit