M: So, I am Michaela Livingston. I am a super senior at Texas State. I’ve been here since 2014, and I am an oil painter. I am a female painter, a queer painter, a fat painter, a Texas painter, a painter that cheats on painting and sometimes makes collage.. but, yeah.
T: What is your artist process? Can you tell me, like, what goes into this piece, perhaps, in particular?
M: So, for me, collaboration and working with my models is really important to me. Especially when making work about identity. So, its important for me to have a bond with who I am portraying and kind of immortalizing. I’m really processed-based in the technical way of laying everything out.. I take my own resource photos — that’s very important to me. I plan everything; there’s, like, two under paintings in my work before I go in with oil. I’ve started — instead of working solely from photo — I’ll look at a multitude of the photos I take and then kind of draw some contour drawings of what compositions I like, and kind of place them together to come up with a composition. So it’s a lot of, lot of layering — I say about twenty-five percent of the piece I spend on a piece is solely in process.
T: So can you explain this piece to me? (Martin pêcheur, de la Nouvelle Guinee, pictured in the header)
M: Yeah! So, what we’re looking at is a collaboration between myself and the person in the center of the piece, Zachary Kent. It — I was originally doing a body of work that was looking at the way people co-habitate with domestic animals, specifically dogs. And it felt like very safe material for me. I wasn’t — in making that work, I was coming out of depression and kind of re-finding myself. So it was, like, very safe in terms of content, but also very safe in like, getting people to agree to model for you. If you ask someone to model for you, they’ll be like “oh yeah for sure!” but it’s hard to pin them down. But if you say that you’ll paint them and their dog, they’ll be like “ok come over this date, right now!” So he contacted me he was like “I have this idea — we’re gonna be in front of the wallpaper, and these chairs, and we’re gonna wear silk robes. You know, like.. it’s gonna be wonderful.” And he won me over! And making it — in these four months of making it — it’s kind of been this enlightening process. Where making these pieces have kind of informed me of what I want to actually make and why art is important to me. So it’s been like this very recent kind of, I don’t know, a “coming into” artistry.
T: What is the hardest part about creating a painting?
M: For me.. I think being passionate about it. That’s a really big trick. Sometimes, artists make work because they think it’ll be successful, they’ll make work because they know it’s gonna sell. Sometimes artists make work because they’ve made a lot of stuff like it before — it’s easy and you can just knock it out. And I’ve been in all of those spaces, and it’s really unfulfilling. And so for me, choosing content and committing to something that I know I’m passionate about, that’s the tricky part. That’s the hardest part about making.
T: Yeah. I agree with that too. For me, that’s what’s keeping me from graduating. Because I just keep avoiding thesis, because I just don’t know what I’m passionate about yet.
M: Yeah. What fuels you — it’s such a hard space to find.
T: How has your art changed over time? Was your direction completely different from when you first started?
M: Yeah, so my grandmother was an oil painter so I was trained in painting when I was really young. I trained in painting for seven years? And then I graduated high school and I went to the Rhode Island School of Design because all of a sudden I wanted to be a jewelry smith — a silversmith. It was the worst decision of my life. I got into a whole bunch of student debt, and I struggled with the idea and the identity of being an artist. I was trained as a painter, I mostly did watercolors, and then I decided I wanted to be a silversmith, and all of that — it was just very random, right? And then I got here — I started making work about STEAM, which is STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math), but you include art as a communication tactic. So I was making paintings about dissected fish and about overfishing and these kinds of different things — sampling, things of that sort. And I kind of re-fell in love with figuration and doing portraiture, and that’s how I started doing the co-habitation pieces like we talked about earlier. So it’s changed drastically.
T: You mentioned that your paintings are heavily inspired by Lucian Freud, David Hockney, and Deana Lawson — which I can clearly see Lucian Freud for sure. Do you have any other influences within the art world or within the art world culturally?
M: So those guys are my big go-to’s, but I’m very much inspired by culture. Specifically 70’s culture. So into it. I love how everything was very garish, and kind of--
T: Kind of very laid back?
M: Extra! But laid back. You know? Like, you had shag rugs that had like a four inch pile. Nobody needs a four inch shag rug. Or you had— people would put velvet on their walls. And it was just like so much extravagance, but it was put onto functional items.
T: Yeah, it like started at the atomic age furniture that turned into the mid-century modern. Which I can also see that influence within your art as well. Just sort of that whole extravagant fashion feel within your art.
M: Yeah, thanks. It’s a thing I’ve always been attracted to but I’ve never just put a finger on. Like, why do I like it? Right? And it wasn’t until working in this piece where I was like “I like it because it’s melodramatic.” And at the end of the day.. I’m a melodramatic-ass bitch. Like, you know? I think it’s entertaining and wonderful and full of emotion. So yeah, the 70s. I’m inspired by Wes Anderson, definitely. Growing up waiting for his films to come out and watching— because his first two films, he was making work to make work. It’s still good, right? Rushmore is good. But when he’s getting into The Royal Tenenbaums and thereafter, he has his style, and it’s unmistakable. Everything is curated, and specific and it has a taste, and it’s like, this weird place of being like this is too staged, but also it’s natural. And I love all of those qualities.
T: The next question is what is your favorite art/work by this person, but I guess could Wes Anderson be a favorite?
M: Sure, yeah. For Wes Anderson, I think The Grand Budapest Hotel. I just— I love it. And I think a lot of it has to do with the nostalgia of that specific architecture. I grew up in San Antionio, and there used to be this place called Earl Ables, and the original building of Earl Ables was done.. early. Really early. And you’d walk in and there were these red velvet couches that you’d wait on for no reason. Like nobody— it was just like a diner. It was just like that. Also the wood, and things kind of being the way they are — I just love The Grand Budapest Hotel. And I think just the interiors and that movie are really special to me.
T: Next question — it might be a little bit of a redundant question, I’ve kind of asked this — beyond your love of camp people and human nature, what else inspires you to paint? Less of an influence, and just more of--
M: What makes you paint?
T: Yeah.
M: It is— The only thing I’ve ever done that I was really confident at. And it sounds shitty, but it comes really naturally to me. And I feel like it’s the easiest relationship I’ve had with work, you know? I got my Bachelor of Science and I get my Bachelor of Fine Art this semester. I have to work my ass off to be good at science, like I have to work my ass off to get concepts, and I struggle. But I like it, so I do it. I feel the exact opposite of art. Not the exact opposite, but it comes naturally and I feel like I was born speaking that language.
T: Like it doesn’t feel like you really have to wear yourself out when it comes to art.
M: Yeah, I don’t feel like I wear myself out. And that’s a recent thing. There was a big chunk of time where I felt like I had technical skill, but I had no ambition. Like I’m not a creative person — like I can do it, but there’s no reason for it. And this year I kind of grew and fell into this space of figuration and identity, and just re-falling in love with painting. I do it because it comes naturally, but I also feel like I do it because it feels as normal as kicking out your leg when you’re trying to stretch out. It feels very automatic. Yeah.
T: That’s very much something I— like I told you I struggle with. I know I’m creative, but I feel like I lack that ambition to create things that are maybe outside of my comfort zone. I don’t know, maybe I’ll discover that soon.
M: Honestly, for me, I have chronic depression, and I finally addressed my depression and got on an anti-depressant that worked for me. And it completely changed the game, like having serotonin in my brain for the first time in my life just— “Oh! That’s how that works!” So sometimes I think it’s as simple as addressing your mental help, which is not simple. It’s this thing we kind of fight against. I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes ambition being stifled has nothing to do with art, it’s another thing of what’s going on in your life that’s kind of influencing that.
T: That’s a great way of putting it too. I’ve never thought about it that way.
M: It’s like thinking “what’s wrong with my art?” or “what’s wrong with my creative process?” and instead thinking “what’s troubling me?” Then let’s focus on that. Then the rest will give way — hopefully.
T: Yeah. What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an artist, or just in general?
M: It was actually from the head of the painting department. He told me that my paintings didn’t look like how I spoke. It was pre-this painting. This painting was a big bridge and a big turning point for me. But pre-this painting, yeah. He was like “you’re really articulate, and youthful, and excited, but you paint like a 70-year-old woman, and it’s boring.” And it was something that I ruminated on, and I think him— us creating a report and being comfortable enough with me to say that made me realize I was working in a comfort zone and I was scared to do what I really enjoyed.
T: Professionally, what is your goal within the art world as in, what do you hope to achieve on a grander scale someday beyond university?
M: I’m sadly pretty traditionalist when it comes to my art goals. I want to be represented by a big gallery, I really do. Like, I don’t know, I want to be in the Whitney Biennial and I want my paintings to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. Like the big, bad one percent buying your paintings. And I think, one, it has to do with this just sense of accomplishment. I feel like “go big or go home” is a big thing for me that I’ve never felt like I could address or confront, and this is the one thing where I can try. So I want to try and do this. But I also — I really want to have the capital to where— like I’m not— the type of materialism that’s important to me is the materialism of oddities, and not so much things that are pricey, you know? I like something quirky and small and unique and it just makes you happy and you’re like “ok I like it.”So I think there is potential of being financially successful as an artist and using that money to heavily fund local initiatives to preserve the arts in local communities. I think that would be awesome
T: Yeah. And that kind of mentality, I think, is super important as an artist because I feel like professors always tell you “don’t make work for the sake of,” I don’t know “material things.
M: I mean, that’s it. People get their Bachelor of Science and go get their medical degree, not only because they want to help people, right? But also because they want to be successful in what they do. Right? The same thing with someone and going and getting a business degree, they’re doing it with something in mind. There’s this practicality. We live in, one, definitely a capitalist nation, just the global economy. And so you have to think of the fiscal part of living, and that comes into when you’re spending like $40,000 to go to school. And I think there’s kind of this blanket that’s thrown over the arts that’s this weird in-between “here are alternatives to live as an artist” versus “oh no! Make things kind of in a void and the money will come if you work hard.” Which I think there is honesty in both of those things, but I also think, the biggest thing is hustling when you know you can. If you have a super skill, hustle at it.
T: And that’s something I think professors should just teach you. The art of hustling.
M: Right? Yeah, absolutely. Like, we live in a side-gig economy. Go do something that you’re just naturally good at, or if there’s something that makes you happy, there’s a way to make money off of it.
T: Exactly. Okay, last question. I know you’ve sort of mentioned this whole— I’ve sort of noticed this whole concept in the way you’ve explained to me how you love these weird oddities and the 70s, and just things that are different in a way. But last question: what does camp mean to you?
M: Yeah, so all of that kind of defines the way I invest in my own idea of camp. But I think more specifically, what camp means to me is people performing for themselves. That’s what I think camp is. I think people performing for themselves and indulging in the things that feel authentic to them. I think that’s camp. I think that authentic performance for yourself, almost getting up in the morning and in your mind and the way you make your environment and craft yourself as if you’re in kind of one of those mirror funhouses? That’s campy as shit. That’s what I want. That’s a roundabout answer, which is how I answer everything.