on art and culture
November 29, 2024 Painter's Tape
Jordi Rowe with Alex Vlasov
"If you are lucky enough to be an artist and you know it, no matter what you do in your life, art will always be there. Eroding at your thoughts and wanting to come out in some form. And if you have enough trust in your vocation, you can go forth and do that thing because most artists realize that you are compelled to make, not asked to."
Jordi Rowe. Portrait by Maeve Billings
I am not sure if I believe in superheroes, but I believe in extraordinary humans. Jordi Rowe is one of them. The roles of mother, wife, pathologist, and artist are not easy to handle individually, but Rowe manages to operate them all at once. Rowe cares about her community greatly and supports every artist she knows as much as she can. Addressing art, her words possess a lot of passion and energy. Likewise, her vast and vertiginous paintings take you to some otherworldly places. She is also one of the fastest drivers I know. I was thrilled to take this ride and discuss her work with its concepts.
-Alex Vlasov
Alex Vlasov: I can’t think of a better way to start than with two specific words that get along in your practice - Romanticism and Modernism. I have known your work for quite some time, and it feels like you are constantly dancing between these two modes of operation.
Jordi Rowe: I couldn't have summarized it better myself. As you said, I am constantly dancing between the two in my practice. It also happens in each painting. Some of them are more romantically inclined. Some of them are more modernist. There are very few that seem to bridge the two in the same work. I am constantly looking for a balance between them. I am very drawn to nature. It is my whole inspiration for painting. I do not feel the need to paint it as representational as the Romantic painters. But I do feel the need to get the experience one has viewing a Romantic painting. If you viewed a Frederic Edwin Church painting out in a more abstract way. At the same time, I find it hard to get that sense of engagement with our natural environment out in a completely abstract work. So, I've painted completely abstract. Then, I've swung towards more representational. Or I’ve painted representational and swung more towards the abstract. I am trying to get that physical experience people have in nature through the physical experience of looking at art. And it's a struggle. I think it will continue to be one (Laughs), which is good. I'll always have something to paint.
AV: What about another word - Postmodernism? You are saying that you are constantly looking for a balance. But might the idea of continually looking for a balance be the balance? You are trying to combine different art historical modes of operation. Constructing a dialog or pointing out how there is a correlation between these two seems almost like an unrealized dream. Do you think this dream can be realized?
JR: That is a noble goal. It can be achieved. I don't think that my work is there yet. I'd like to see it as an operational vehicle to do that. I also understand the limitations painters have in general. You can wish to combine whatever ideas you have in your mind, but what ends up happening is what the viewer takes home from your work. As much as I would like for them to see that I am trying to do these things, I often struggle with the idea that no one is going to get there. I find that disheartening and heartening at the same time. I hope that people experience something when they look at the work. But I am fearful they will go away thinking that it is just paint on a support. It is more of an existential problem than necessarily postmodernist.
Jordi Rowe, Clouds, Watercolor on paper, 7 x 11", 2023
AV: You just said that you often struggle with the idea that no one is going to get there. It made me think about directions in relation to your work. I am looking at your landscape paintings, and I don't see any roads or highways. Your abstract work also does not have any boundaries in terms of a specific direction. When I think about America, I think about highways, directions, always being on the move, going from point A to point B. Do you think with all these directions around us, we became directionless?
JR: Right. Because the pathways are always shown to us. It is always easy to follow the road.
AV: Yeah. How can the absence of directions provide an alternative direction?
JR: When I am thinking about nature, the outdoors, or the stuff that inspires me to paint, you are right, I am not standing at a crossroads in rural America. I am thrown lost into the wilderness of where I grew up in the Canadian Rockies, which is full of some paths or just being immersed and surrounded in a directionless or, as you stated, boundless nature. I am not looking to have indices or signifiers in my work that point to a specific way for you to go other than a horizon line. I don't have symbols that could point you somewhere, but I have indications of something larger than us or being in an expansive space, indicating that something else is at play. Like the overarching creator, whatever that might be to you or however you rationalize spiritualism. I do see how that ties Romanticism and Modernism, but I never really thought about how very specific my view of nature that I infuse into my work is. It doesn't have signifiers of direction. It has a big statement that you are in a void. I think of my nature as more the voids that interest me. The large expanse of the water, the boundless expanse of the sky, and the huge amount of the mountains make me feel so tiny and insignificant. Those types of changes in nature are what inspire the work, which doesn’t have any direction. There's no direction to the sky, the ocean, or the gloaming.
Jordi Rowe, I'm Just Going to Lie Down Here for a Minute, Oil on panel, 42 x 50", 2024
AV: It is a very metaphysical statement to say, “Thinking about something larger than us.” Your landscape paintings possess some otherworldly qualities in terms of color and the depiction of light. The conception of light and space in your work takes us to some other places or fields of other dimensions that our eyes cannot decry. You are trying to depict a specific place that you see, but then it loses its specificity because of the way you depict it. I start thinking about how, in our memory, places lose their specificity over time, and the more places that exist in our heads, the faster they disappear. Do you connect the landscape with our memory and its slight displacement?
JR: I one hundred percent connect landscape with memory. I am one of those people that doesn't get lost without a map. I find myself constantly checking my surroundings when I am in nature to make sure I can always be found because I am concerned with being lost in the vastness. I also have been long interested in depicting light in different ways. I am appreciative that you noticed the way I depict light in a traditional landscape work is not to portray a traditional landscape. It is to highlight that even though you're looking at a view of something, water as an example, it is never going to be the moment that you paint it. It is constantly changing. I try to use light to highlight that it is ever-changing, but also to remind us it is never going to be the same as the moment we saw it. Everyone's experience, even if we are side by side looking at the same thing, is not going to be the same. Even if you remember it later, you are not going to remember the way you saw it. I find that’s the most fascinating part. You can even paint something that highlights a representation or depicts a moment that's the same for two people, but their memories are going to be different. They are never going to agree on exactly what color it is. It is better to portray the experience of looking at it than the thing itself. I use the painting of light to do that.
AV: Where do you think the origins of your interest in light begin? I also wonder what specifically attracted you to light in the first place.
JR: Having grown up in a more Northern Hemisphere, more Northern than where I am now, the days were short in the winter. I would come home from school when it was getting dark out, and everything would be blue. I always thought from a young age that it was a fascinating light to be in that moment of gloaming. That's where I first became interested in it because in Canada, the winters were long, and everything was white. Everything turned blue because snow takes on the color of the light around it. Then, a couple of years ago, I was reminded of that. I was outside in a more urban environment, and I realized that blue light, the gloaming, still turns the urban environment blue. It meant that not only did our environments turn the same color, but everything in it. It's a great equalizer. I found that interesting because we had just gone through the Black Lives Matter movement as a nation. Everyone was very concerned, as they should be, with how people were being perceived based again on their complexion. Here I was, standing outside, and everything around me was the same color, including the people. And it was a very powerful moment for me.
AV: It is connected to the general idea of perception. You are not just trying to gather light but also to hold it. And I think it relates to my question about directions and their absence. We are not looking at reality but at the reflection of reality. In that sense, the spaces of your paintings produce light for our perception. But this is the light that you hold first. What is experience to you personally, and what kind of experience are you trying to transcend?
JR: I try to capture not the visual picture of what I am seeing with the light involved but how the light makes me feel in that moment. I am hoping that others looking at the work can experience them from different perspectives. And they get interested in that moment, whether they recognize it for the light it's supposed to depict or the experience it's supposed to engender. They take that moment for themselves to look at the work versus when I'm painting the thing, the light, I take that moment of light to try to capture my experience. I want the viewer to have the experience of looking at the work, and if they get to what I captured, that's just a bonus. I'm always very concerned that my ideas, I think all abstract artists have this concern, might not be the thing that is coming across in the work. And I feel that's an okay, acceptable thing if the viewer gets an experience out of the work. It might not be the exact one I'm looking for, but it's not a digital experience. It's not a visual-only experience. It is a haptic experience that the viewer gets to have just by being there and walking around the work.
Jordi Rowe, I Wanted to Thank You for the Flowers, Oil on panel, 36 x 24", 2024
AV: What about the physicality of the work? It feels like the work takes us somewhere else but then brings us back to Earth because of its physicality. I'm pretty sure a lot of people will say, “Well, you paint clouds. So what? Why don’t you just take a snapshot of the clouds.” But then I start thinking about how a photograph delimits what is seen. Do you think the physicality of your work opens an unlimited amount of perception?
JR: It does open the experience for perception. I use a few tropes to do it. Generally, when I'm attempting to get someone to experience boundlessness, I paint a very large thing. When I am focused more on the light experience, I try to paint it in multiple sections. When I am trying to get the dynamism of light across, I've often turned to using multiple panels in a row. Always going from left to right or right to left, where they can be read. The ambiguity of the directional reading is there. It can be read both ways. I've played with having the light itself shine - to use the ambient light to reflect off the work onto the gallery wall to show there is more light than just what's on the surface of the work. I think that is easier to do with an installation of work, multiple panels, or the scale. It is much more difficult to do small-scale, which is why I must play more with color to get that across. And I have to use more indicators of the actual natural landscape so the audience has something to focus on, like water. I can show water but with a different color palette to demonstrate this isn't the ocean you and your grandma are looking at. This is more of an ephemeral view of the ocean, something more ineffable is there than just the view. It is funny you mentioned that the photograph delineates the amount that we take in when we look at the landscape because that's where my current work is leading, and it's making me laugh because I am currently painting photographs of landscapes in my style where the light shines through, but they are bordered by our digital platform. That is to point out the absurdity of sharing and experiencing nature in its physical realm as the physical experience but on a digital platform. I am trying to meld those two things together.
AV: Speaking about Instagram and the most recent painting, I'm thinking about many layers of experience on top of one another: landscape, your perception of the landscape, depiction of your perception of the landscape, a photograph of it all, and then an Instagram post which is another layer of experience.
JR: Right. And then it's the photograph of your interpretation of the landscape that is being shared digitally. That meta layering where I'm painting my Instagram symbol on the work is even absurd. And the fact that when I share it, there's a digital version of my Instagram label now on my painting. It is even funnier. I can't get out of my head on that. That's my current way of reaching my light and landscape, abstract view to my audience that wants to experience the paintings in the physical. But that's not the modality of today's art world. It's digital. That's how I am counterbalancing it. I am painting something much easier to photograph and share than it is to experience in reality.
Jordi Rowe, Look Up!, Close Up, Oil on panel, 36 x 24", 2024
AV: What do you think in terms of the word image? What does the word image even mean today? And what does it mean to you?
JR: An image to me would reference a photograph or photographed item. It is more difficult for me to think of an image that you would create in your mind as an image. I can create images. It's a depiction. But I think in today's world, if you say “image,” people will default to the photograph as the image because of the digital platforms on which we live, particularly social media. With that being said, being a painter who paints abstractly, we're very capable of creating images that have no immediate instances of the real world where you don't have any indicators in the work that you're looking specifically at a thing. That is a very powerful tool that a visual artist has to create work or an image. First, mentally. Second, through mark making. And then, third, you get to your image with your camera on your phone. So, it's multiple layers of image. And for me, it starts in the recesses of my mind when I plan the image.
AV: Do you think emotional content is important to your image? I feel there are a great deal of strong feelings and emotions your paintings can provoke.
JR: The images I am generating are, from a personal perspective, coming out of an emotional realm. I am just like any other visual artist - unlikely to put a lot of effort or to paint something that isn't interesting, thought-provoking, and emotionally provoking for me. What the work brings to the physical realm is an experience. And by experience, I mean an emotional response to the work. In the long history of AbEx painters, they wanted an emotional response to their work. It is harder in today's contemporary society when your work is mostly, if not only, being seen online. I think that emotional response is going to be dulled through the many layers of lenses it is looked through. I don't mean lenses as an art history lens or the context of the work. I mean a figurative lens on a camera or computer screen. An artist's outreach nowadays is through their website and their Instagram.
AV: Speaking of AbEx, Pollock once said, “I don’t paint nature. I am nature.” (Laughs). Do you think I can get from the emotional content in your work to your concept of nature? And how would you define your concept of nature?
JR: If you knew one thing about me, it's that I grew up in the Canadian Rockies. And if you saw that my color palette is predominantly in the cool range, you would see what my concept of nature is because there are a lot of leading statements to it. Like Big Sky alone, everyone knows how to conjure a gigantic blue sky. The bleakness of the mountains and the coolness of the Rockies being all snow-capped and gray also come across. What might be less obvious is the light that I like to play with, but it doesn't mean it is not there. It just means it might be harder to get to. People could get there based predominantly on the color palette if they had one leading statement.
Jordi Rowe, Look Up!, Oil on panel, 36 x 24", 2024
AV: I am looking at the painting right behind you. It is almost like you just described to me the painting (Laughs).
JR: (Laughs) Yes. We all have our favorite colors as painters. We all have our favorite paint brands. We all mix to a certain consistency of the paint we want to use. And it would be foolhardy to think we don't have our actual favorite hues and tones. Our “go-to” paint, even though it is rare for someone to just paint out of the tube. Everyone's got their favorite tubes they mix with out of their favorite brands, and mine just don't happen to be in the warm spectrum ever, other than yellow.
AV: What about the sublime? What do you think is the significance of the sublime today? Why do you think it's still relevant?
JR: The sublime is in danger of being lost. As we take over the planet, as we warm the planet, as we grow as a populace, as we become more inward-looking on our digital devices, our connection to nature and to experiencing something bigger than ourselves is lost. One of the easiest ways to get to the sublime is to go out into nature and be overtaken by the vastness of it. We are losing the vast areas with which to go to as we grow as a planet. Painting the sublime is, at least in the technical sense, supposed to offer you a safe space to experience these very frightening and large voids. It is relevant today to mark the fact that we do still have large voids in our world and to get people to crawl out of their digital hamster bubble and back into the real world. We're at an interesting tipping point in society where you can order everything to your house from your phone. You can just meet your friends online. You never have to leave anywhere. And if you never have to leave, you never feel unsafe. The sublime gives you the other end of that spectrum so you can experience what being truly safe feels like because you've experienced the sublime. That's why it is relevant because it is no longer present in our day to day.
AV: Do you think painting itself can be the sublime we are looking for?
JR: No, I don't. Painting can give a close approximation if you are willing to open your senses to the experience. But that is two steps removed from the experience itself.
AV: Then, is that the question of belief?
JR: Part of it is the question of belief. A lot of people who enjoy art are open to that experience or open to looking at a work and trying to understand what it is saying to them. They understand that it isn't just always a depiction. It has care, thought, experience, and skill put into it to be created. If a person who is interested in art looks at a painting that is more of the sublime, they can get to that a lot easier than if someone who's not interested in art has just walked by a window on the street and seen a painting of the sublime. You need to have a broader view of art and culture than just the casual, everyday person.
Jordi Rowe, Clouds 2, Watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 11", 2023
AV: Do you believe the power of painting can change human minds?
JR: I believe so much in the power of painting. I even went back to school as an adult. So yeah, I do. If you are lucky enough to be an artist and you know it, no matter what you do in your life, art will always be there. Eroding at your thoughts and wanting to come out in some form. And if you have enough trust in your vocation, you can go forth and do that thing because most artists realize that you are compelled to make, not asked to. You can't set it aside. It just comes out. And if it doesn't, then an artist like myself would be sad. And I went through a lot of sad years.
AV: What about now?
JR: Now, I'm not sad (Laughs). Not only do I have more skills and more understanding of what I need to do as an artist, but I also have a community to talk to. Other like-minded individuals who are interested in hearing my perspectives and seeing my work. That's the best part of being in the community. Art is meant to be a community event. You might create a painting alone, but it is never meant to just exist solely in your studio. It's meant to go forth and be gazed upon, whether it be by one person or multiple people at the same time. It is not meant to exist in a vacuum. Not the vacuums of our studios.
AV: Painting becomes a driving mechanism for something that you believe in and you are trying to share with the world. Do you think that’s what painting is about?
JR: Painting is two things. Painting is the thing I must do to survive, to be me, and to be true to who I am. Creating works is vital to who I am. At the same time, just creating them and stacking them up in a corner isn't enough. Sharing them, discussing them, seeing if you can improve upon them, and having the next fantasy painting based on conversations with other people is equally as motivating as just creating the one you did in your studio. Having interactive feedback and community discussion with other artists and viewers is equally as important.
AV: What's next for you?
JR: What's next? To wake up, have a studio practice, continue to paint. And continue to have my community. That's what's next. Wake up every day, go to the studio every day, take five calls from my painter friends because they're having a complete freakout about paintings (Laughs). Go to work, sign out my cases, and go to my studio. Be there for my kids. It is freaking tough being this multifaceted individual. But I wouldn't have it any other way. That's the important part. I wouldn't have it any other way. I want it all. And I'm going to do it all.