Eric Fischl interview with A.M. Homes

Bedroom Scene #6 (Surviving the Fall Meant Using You for Handholds) by Eric Fischl

I've had many discussions with painters about the act of painting. Some tell me they escape into another world and time just flies by because painting is such a joy, but I am from the other camp. Painting for me is certainly rewarding and I am addicted to expression and the journey that I fall into when I am 'in the zone', but it is also an incredible battle. I get excited to continue and loath to start all at once. I have to be calm enough to see direction, but energetic enough to give the work real emotion. On more moments than I care to admit I sweat, rant and swear like a trucker, but this is the way the process is with me... pushing and pulling to get through it all. I like to know that other artists have similar struggles and revelations, especially artists that I greatly admire, like Eric Fischl. Here is an excerpt from an interview with the wonderfully controversial author A.M. Holmes.

A.M. Homes: In writing, in order to pull a story out you go so far into your mind that when you come out you feel you’ve traveled through time and that either you’ve been somewhere incredibly different or that the world has changed. And that’s a good day’s work, but it’s not necessarily a pleasant experience. In painting, where do you go?

Eric Fischl: You go into the painting. I mean it’s the same thing, I would imagine.

AH Does it hurt?

EF Well, every day there’s the technical side of the discipline and there are good days and then bad days where the painting is giving me resistance and I don’t know how to paint anymore. But there’s also the emotional side of the work, the psychological side where you go in and explore feelings and relationships and memories. Often times you find things you’re not ready for and you can’t bear that this is in front of you. I assume that’s the vulnerability you’re talking about. I certainly have times where I walk around in my studio thinking: “I can’t paint, I’m not as good as I think I am, I’m certainly not as good as everyone else thinks I am.” And I’m freaked. The other side is when you’ve opened a door and you feel the weight of the responsibility. There’s something sacred about paint. You make a pact with the painting, you will be responsible for whatever you’re putting on it, what you find out.

AH I make a pact with myself that despite how I might frighten myself, I’ll keep trying. I’m not going to compromise the work because I’m scared. I think your paintings are scary.

EF What paintings? My paintings?

AH Yeah.

EF If you think things and hear voices, that enters you, it touches you but the image can evaporate in some way that when you actually see it in front of you it becomes terrifying. Your imagination can invent and conflate and interpret. Some of it is from what you’ve experienced, but a lot of it is from things you’ve heard, things you’re imagining could happen. When I went to more realistic representations . . .

AH How and why did that happen?

EF I wasn’t good as an abstract artist. It wasn’t fun to paint. A good abstract artist doesn’t feel the limitations I felt. Also, I went to representation because I wanted a broader audience. I didn’t like the pedantic language the formalist painters used. I wanted people to know what they were looking at whether they liked it or not. And then of course, in moving to representation came the question, What are you going to represent? I never felt confident talking about anything I didn’t know much about. I didn’t see my source as being greater than myself, my experience.

Eric Fischl interviewed by A.M. Homes for BOMB magazine.