Q&A with Cleon Peterson (PDF) - Joshua Liner Gallery

05/07/09Q&A with Cleon PetersonText: Ramsey DauYou dropped out of high school at 15, andthen got degrees from Art Center andCranbrook in 2004 and 2006 respectively.What were you doing during that decadeplustime period between high school anduniversity?I dropped out of high school on the second day.I got my GED that freshman year and decidedto study art in college. I did that for a year inSeattle, then got a scholarship and transferredto a school in New York (studied painting atPratt). So I was living in New York and I got allstrung-out. That’s where things started gettingcrazy; things were crazy before that but theyreally got crazy over there. I quit Pratt about ayear after I started and the drugs ended uptaking up the rest of the decade.So what was the impetus to going to art school?Initially when I dropped out of high school, I was on the road to becoming a painter. I wasinto De Kooning, abstract expressionism and modernist stuff. I was doing quirky landscapesand flower paintings (laughs). I’d had a lot of shows at churches, community colleges andmalls. But then I got into drugs and I just put it down; I just didn’t chase after it like I hadinitially.Eventually I started doing graphic design to make some money. But after a few years I gotdisillusioned with it – it seemed boring. So I went to under grad and then grad school, bothfor design. But Cranbrook was really more fine-art oriented. I made a lot of crazy stuff,installations and things like that. You know, your life goes one way and then anotherway…(laughs).Do you see painting as work? Would you like to just live off your painting?I’d do it. Hopefully someday that will happen. It’s all about how excessive you are. I’mpretty excessive. I need cash (laughs). If I lived in a little shithole... I mean I’ve done it fora long time; I lived with no overhead. If you do that, you don’t need much money comingin. You could probably get by doing just art.

So is working at [Shepard Fairey’s] Studio Number One just a gig to pay the bills,or are you passionate about design too?I still like design too. I enjoy just making…and solving problems in the design sense, whilealso having my own voice in the art world. It’s nice to be able to make stuff and not have itbe personal…like it’s just commercial work. At the same time, graphic design and art are notnecessarily that different from each other. People like to label things, but I think there’s abridge. Like the Dada stuff, which was very aesthetically design-ey, but it was fine art. Sothere’s a bridge between the two.With design I try to put myself where I want to be. Like, I designed Shepard’s book, andthat started from nothing. I just wanted to be doing work with other artists. I designed abook for Harmony Korine and Ari Marcopoulos. I also sometimes work with Aaron Rose. I tryto get the design to merge into the art world.Well, in your painting, you portray these scenes of chaos and mayhem, but in amanner that is highly organized and meticulously executed – your work is clearly“designed.” It’s not surprising that you are also a graphic designer.In my paintings, I like working with elements that are common to both disciplines:compositional balance, kinetic movement and a basic color palette. Aesthetically I definitelycarry over aspects from my design background. Actually, what I’m doing in my paintingstoday was initiated from a design project. After grad school, it wasn’t my ambition to go outand do art shows. I was working with Marsea [Goldberg] from New Image [Art Gallery] on acatalog for the Faile, Swoon, Dave Ellis show. She came to my house and saw this set ofpaintings I had done at Cranbrook and she asked me to put them in her gallery for anupcoming show. And from there Jeffery Deitch (and Kathy Grayson maybe?) bought thepaintings. Then I was in his show, Mail Order Monsters in New York two years ago. So it wasjust this weird series of events that came together. I mean, I guess I did have ambitions tobe an artist but I wasn’t out there sending slides to galleries.When we first spoke, you said you didn’t want to show your work in progress –that you didn’t feel you had a “painterly process.” Do you feel that there is someaccepted process that artists must follow to be considered valid painters?I feel that people have an idea of craft, especially for painters. It’s the whole JacksonPollock-ey, romantic, thing. And I don’t feel like I fit into that kind of mold. Like, I’m not outdrawing on subway trains and shit. I used to be all into making a mess and working on like20 different paintings at one time, and slopping color around, but now I’m more reserved.My style has just turned into what it is. Right now it’s very tight. It’s not loose like that. Ijust feel that this style and my process to achieve it doesn’t really fit that romantic notionpeople have of “painters.”Your work kind of reminds me of Henry Darger; not in style, but in subject matter– these scenes of chaotic violence. Why this choice of subject?A psychiatrist once bought one of my paintings, and he said I must be mad at my mother(laughs). Maybe, I don’t know. I’d say that part of what I’m painting are things that I feellike I’ve experienced – when I was at the low points in my life; when I was living on thestreets, and a junkie…this world of turmoil and aggression and dualism. Where there’re

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