On a perfectly humid and overcast Wednesday afternoon I abandoned San Francisco in a blur because today was the day I was going to Berkeley to hang out with and watch Marci Washington prepare for her upcoming solo exhibition “For Forever I’ll be Here” at the Rena Bransten gallery in downtown San Francisco on April 30th. While sitting in her bedroom feeding cats bacon, playing bass guitar, and talking about art and ghosts this is what was said.

Lackluster Life: How long did this one take you, since it’s a more simple piece?

Marci Washington: The drawing always takes a long time so I probably took 2 days drawing, and I’ve been painting it for 3 or 4 days… so pretty fast. Especially compared to the other stuff.

LL: Yea how long did that big one with the dripping skeleton take?

MW: That was like a month plus.

LL: Daaamn.

MW: That’s the one where I fucked up my eye, my eye blew out because it was one of the last ones that I finished for that show.

LL: Daaamn.

LL: If someone tried to copy your style they’d have to really be dedicated to being a piece of shit.

MW: Right…It’d be like, welcome to a world of pain.

MW: I’m gonna burn you a bunch of metal CDs I think.

LL: Wait what?

MW: Like next time I see you I’m gonna burn you a bunch of CDs to listen to.

LL: Oh fuck yea, I’m into it.

MW: This [painting] is so much easier than it was last night.

LL: Because you’re rested?

MW: Uh huh.

MW: See how the lines are there but they get covered by the water color? So I go back in and paint them back in again.

LL: Oh yea…yup.

MW: It’s nice working on something this little because I can keep turning it and working with it.

LL: Yea how do you paint those big ones? You have to stand or something?

LL: God damn it!!! (I bumped the table, thank god Marci wasn’t painting.. it was for the second time too..god).

MW: I’m gonna really punch you in the face.

LL: God, just tell me how much it is. Finish it and tell me how much it is… damn it!

MW: Na, its all good, I could fix it.

MW: Usually my table is about this high [top of stomach] because you just have to stand and lean over it because there’s no other way to do it.

LL: It’s cool seeing this because there’s people out there that think you’re a god.

MW: Ha I don’t know.

LL: For sures.

MW: I have some teenage fans, it’s pretty cool huh.

LL: Yea, because I’ll show people your stuff and their head instantly goes to thinking it’s on that, “famous” level. So I guess you are in your own right.

MW: I don’t know. When you spend all day in your pajamas by yourself it’s hard to get a big head about anything.

MW: I’m definitely a god of always being home alone doing weird shit hahaha.

LL: hahaha.

LL: So when do you call it quits on a painting?

MW: I just kinda go for it and when it starts doing weird things and just feels right I stop.

LL: Is there anything on this painting that you wish you didn’t paint?

MW: Uh..yea, this right here. See how it’s really regular and it’s darker? It makes your eye go to it and when your eye gets there you’re instantly bored. Like, look at this part and then look at that part, see the difference? See how you get really pulled into looking at that weird mark making, but that just looks like a little worm line.

LL: A squiggle haha.

MW: Yea, like Bloooop!

LL: Looks like I bumped the table! huh.

MW: Hahaha.

MW: See here, where you can feel the brush lift and come down and it’s really weird and seems slow. You can tell it was painted really slowly and weirdly and the brush is doing its thing.

LL: Yea, so you like your work to show time has been spent.

MW: Well yea, because I’m trying to create the illusion in the paintings that time has stopped. That there’s a stillness and a quiet. So fast mark making creates a painting that feels fast, but to slow down time you do slow weird things that feel slow and weird. It’s like you’re creating a different time.

LL: Yea, sweet I get it.

LL: So what’s with the faces? Because that is a very “your” face. The eyes are the same color as the face…

MW: Well, yea because they’re more character types, they’re not individual people. They’re stand-ins for an emotional state. I want it to be the type of thing where they’re open like a character in a book who’s not fully described. So the simpler they are the more they can be like that, more open to the viewer.

LL: What’s with the teeth?

MW: Well for one I like really fucked up teeth, but two, I wanted them to feel like they’re all related from the same family.

LL: Yea, every time I look at them it seems like there’s some fuckin weird thing going on down by the river- we don’t want help from these country type people.

MW: Exactly! You know that story, “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

LL: Ut uh.

MW: How he’s obsessed with his sister? Like, that kind of feeling.

LL: Do people get that in your work? Like, you know how if you smoke weed you can be like, “It tastes sweet, sour, smooth, thick.”? Do people walk up to your work and say, “oh, she painted it with such a slowness.”?

MW: Well… you know how some people smoke weed and they’re like, “Yeeaaa this is awesome!” and others can describe everything about it? It’s the same way for art.

LL: Totally, that makes sense.

LL: Do you get more stoked on seeing someone who knows the art or just likes the art for what it is?

MW: My goal for painting has always been to not ignore either way of how the painting should be working. I wanna make something that someone from off the street can walk up to and be like, “this is fucking awesome!” and not know anything about art and enjoy it. But I also want it to be that if you do spend more time with it and you do get more into learning about art that there’s something for you at the end of that.

LL: Yea…Yea, I dig it.

MW: Yea. I don’t like art that’s just for people who know about art. It’s way cooler to get a gut reaction from people.

MW: When there is stuff behind your work, like the stillness I was talking about, when all that stuff is in your work, it effects the way people feel about it even if they can’t put their finger on it. (long 7 second pause) Goodtimes…(said quietly under her breath)

LL: Hahahha (In reaction to the mumbled “goodtimes”)

LL: Was this always your style?

MW: Yea!

LL: Was gouache and water color always your medium?

MW: No, I started with oil but the figure and the psychology has always been the same. With the oil I was always trying to get it to be flat so I could get that feeling but I could never get it so that’s why I switched to gouache because I could get that flat flat flat.

LL: Yea, I love the fuckin flat.

MW: I know! me too!

LL: When a car’s painted in flat black I’m just like mmm!

MW: Yea, I know.

MW: When I saw that guitar was matte I was just like, AGHRRRRAHAGH! It’s also that gouache and water color are traditionally used for illustration so it really tied in well that I was trying to tell a story.

LL: Yea it seems like a really long series… like a soap opera in the woods.

MW: Yea, the way I’ve described it before is that they’re illustrations for a novel that was never written.

LL: Since you draw them from fashion photography, is it because you like the poses or is it a layer in your work conveying your interpretation of the fashion world?

MW: I’m trying to describe an emotional reality that I feel around me right now and when I find the emotion I want to express or that I am feeling in fashion photography, it’s evidence that that feeling is out there in the general population.

LL: Yea, like something a lot of people see or feel but they might not be picking up on.

MW: Yea, so when I find it in fashion photography, I’m like “Ohhh… see!” So it’s not just my own weird thing, I find evidence of that feeling. Then I take that and recast it back into my own thing.

LL: Yea man.

MW: And how the way this feeling of despair and emptiness is almost glamorized. Like how in different times different body types were seen to be desirable. Where there isn’t a lot to eat, fat people are really desirable and awesome because it shows a class thing. But now that we have so much plenty, it’s the opposite, it’s like super skinny weird is the ideal. Fashion is where you find evidence of the body types of your time and also how clothing talks about the social climate. Like all the clothes I’m using now are like bandage pants and really tight constricting stuff, the clothes are constricting the people. The bandage thing and the idea of sickness then the body types being so skinny and the faces so vacant. Everyone in my paintings are almost drugged out so that tie in was really interesting.

LL: So you pick the clothes? You’re basically a stylist.

MW: Yea.

LL: Would you ever paint a look book for a fashion line? That would be super cool and different to see in the fashion world.

MW: Oh I would in a heart beat. I think that would be so fun.

LL: I wonder why they don’t do that. I could totally see people buying into that idea.

MW: That’s what’s cool about it! I’m using the same operation that they use in fashion photography to suck people into the drama to sell them things, but I’m sucking them in to make them think about things.

LL: Yea.

LL: So are these clothes Armani or is this just out of your head?

MW: Well I knew I wanted skinny jeans and the belt buckle to be that gold I’m using and then a plain white shirt is always good and then the big leather jacket is from a photo of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The cuts of the clothes are of the moment though. I try to know what cuts of clothing are being used at the moment and use those, but sometimes I use really specific fashion.

LL: Are you gonna do more skeleton stuff or is it too dark?

MW: Yea I think I need to get away from it for awhile, I was getting weird spending all my time with something like that. I was just thinking about that because Mysterious Universe just had an episode about how Tibetan mysticism has this thing called a Tulpa and it’s this thing where you can meditate on this presence and create a ghost out of you own energy. The story is about a woman who went to Tibet to study and she focused her energy on a little fat monk and people were like, “whose that guy who follows you around all of the time?”. So you can create it, but at a certain point you lose control of it and it does whatever it wants and there’s all these legends about people’s Tulpa killing their creator.

LL: So you’re afraid of creating your own Tulpa?

MW: Well when I was working on those paintings I’d spend months working on those everyday investing all my energy into the painting and I’d be working with these things and there’s a certain point where they start looking back at you and they feel like they’ve embodied something that you don’t have control over anymore. So when I heard about the Tulpa I was like AHHHHHHHGGH!!

LL: AHHGGH that shit could be real!!!

MW: It’s weird because no one wants to buy those paintings because they have this intense energy.

LL: Yea I was gonna say, does anyone put those in their house?

MW: No! no.

LL: But those are amazing paintings!

MW:Yea but they’re heavy, they’re crazy heavy. I couldn’t have that in my house, I couldn’t walk past it everyday, they look back.

LL: I like those ones though, they are some of my favorites.

MW: Oh me too, but there’s something in those paintings.

LL: You gave birth to them and now they’re free to roam.

MW: Yea yea

LL: I want one!! Soo bad!! does the gallery still have them?

MW: You should borrow one and put it in your house for awhile and see.

LL: Do I need to put a down payment or something?

MW: No, I just want to see how long you can live with it for.

LL: Oh I could live with it. Fuckin Marci, you don’t know me very well, I can live with it dude!

MW: But it is like bringing a presence into your house. It’s not just a painting.

LL: I know but it’s an amazing presence. I don’t want to just put a painting up in my house, I want to put an emotion up.

MW: But it’s more than that. I’m convinced there’s entity energy in those paintings.

LL: Is it a bad energy?

MW: I don’t know, it’s a voice that’s there, but hasn’t been heard. People who didn’t have it good, the flip side of people who have everything.

LL: Well let me make some money and then I’ll come get one.

MW: You can just borrow one and hang it in your house for awhile! It’d be a fun experiment because I think weird shit is going to happen around your house.

LL: Well lets fuckin try this!! ?How long you gonna let me borrow it?

MW: Until you get creeped out and want to return it.

LL: Ok cool.

MW: We should document this too!

LL: for sure!

MW: Because I haven’t spent enough time with it to see what will happen. I either channeled something and opened a door and gave it some space to occupy or I made a Tulpa type situation.

LL: Sweet!! I’ll be making my jams and maybe it will make them sound cooler!

MW: Cool, the one I’m gonna give you is the most haunted painting I’ve ever done.

LL: YEA!!

MW: I’d advise you to not put it in your bedroom though.

LL: What if I hung this painting and then I slaughtered Walker, Tyrone, and Pnut? What would you do?

MW: I can’t think about it.

LL: Would you show up to court for me?

MW: I’d show up and say sorry because I created something I can’t control.

LL: What if I choke to death after hanging it?

MW: I’d feel so bad I’d destroy it.

LL: Man…

 

www.marciwashington.com