Juxtapoz Magazine – Kevin Christy: A Step Up the Ghost Ladder

 

So how many preparatory sketches do you do before you start painting?

The truth is, lately, I don’t do a ton of drawings. I usually text myself an idea so I don’t forget it. I think about it for a while. I almost compose it in my head, and then lately, mostly because of time constraints, I just draw it right on the canvas.

 

Half of these paintings have a painting underneath that was a failure. So, if I drew a little more often, I wouldn’t have that happen, but I also don’t love the kind of assembly line style. I like a certain amount of discovery.

 

That’s super interesting to me. I feel I’m way more of a full prep sketch person now, using my own photo archive and memories of things I’ve seen in order to cobble together my composition.

I do take more photos as source material now. Lately, I’ve been hiring models and using them. I use my friends.

 

You’re not giving them the Otto Dix treatment, where they look terrible.

No, no. I make sure they look good. I tell them, “You’ll look cool.” My friend Grace, I told her, “You’re going to be in a band. You’re going to look cool.” I understand vanity. I’m an incredibly vain person.

 

That’s really intriguing. I would like to be looser with my painting. The fact that I have this super mapped-out plan makes me feel like I’m fulfilling something that I did months or even years ago. I don’t have that discovery you talk about. I am trying to work towards that.

Because my art is surreal, technically, I think it’s probably a bit easier for me to add stuff. It is free in the sense that I can react to my own ideas.

 

It’s interesting that you used the word surrealism because I think there might’ve been a few times when I tried to explain your work to people that I was talking to. And I wanted to say “surrealist,” but then I was like, “Gosh, I wonder if Kevin would be bummed if I said that?” Would I call this a surrealist work?

Luckily, in the last decade, surrealism has had less of a stigma. There’s been so much more of it that you don’t only think of the corny aspects of it. People just call it conceptualist painting, which is honestly what it is.