JOHN PHILLIP ABBOTT
“I tend to gravitate towards the names of people, places, and things. It’s important there is a personal connection to the words yet they are open-ended enough to allow for poetic rumination.”
John Phillip Abbott was born in Wausau, Wisconsin in 1975. He received his BFA from Western New Mexico University and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin. Abbott lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife, Stacey Heim, and their dog, Agnes, where he also teaches painting and drawing at the University of New Mexico. Abbott has had solo shows at Galerie Xippas, Paris, Gleichapel, Paris, Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Devening Projects, Chicago, IL, COUNTY Gallery, Palm Beach, FL, Sébastien Bertrand Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland, and Calendar-Calendar in Albuquerque, NM.
Abbott’s current exhibition, Wishing Like a Mountain, runs February 4—March 20, 2021, at Baronian Xippas in Brussels.
Interview by Dan Golden
How would you describe your work?
I make text-based paintings and drawings. The use of text allows me a direct way to capture a memory or idea. It becomes a vehicle for making a painting like a still-life or landscape. The words in the paintings stem mainly from memories and personal experiences but are ambiguous enough to suggest alternate meanings. Shapes and lines are often layered on and within words, allowing for figure/ground play resulting in the melding of text and image or reading and seeing.
Utopia, Spray paint on canvas, 2018, 66x62 inches
Can you talk a bit about the materials you use and your process?
I primarily work with spray paint and acrylic. For drawings, I’ll sometimes use a brush and ink or oil stick, but I like the accessibility of ballpoint pens and markers because they’re relatable mediums. Utilizing tape as a stencil allows me to slow the writing/thinking process down. I prefer to use masking tape. It’s tricky because raw canvas is the same color as the masking tape, making it hard to see. But the more obstructions the better. The process becomes more of an experience as a result. I like the directness of spray paint on raw canvas but it’s not my aim to control the medium. Serendipitous accidents happen, such as the bleeding or variation that occurs under some taped edges, which are welcomed.
Karma, Spray paint on canvas, 2020, 60x50 inches
How do you select the words featured in your paintings?
I tend to gravitate towards the names of people, places, and things. It’s important there is a personal connection to the words yet they are open-ended enough to allow for poetic rumination. They also need to be formally interesting.
Paintings are often homages to people significant to me like Fred Lynn or Odetta, for example. Or places significant to me like Palo Alto or Wausau. But the words can come from anywhere, like a street sign or the name of a recreational vehicle. Anything that captures my attention and speaks to painting, life, or both. Sometimes words will have an intrinsic poetic value in addition to a phonetic or formal rhythm, like Galaxy and Karma. Additionally, some words may speak to the experience of painting and to the socio-political landscape, as in the Holy paintings.
John Tesh, Spray paint on canvas, 2020, 12x10 inches
How did your unique visual language develop?
Books were always around growing up and some really left impressions like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the Inner Game of Tennis, both of which have become content for paintings. My dad had a great record collection with lots of Bob Dylan and folk music.
I moved from Houston to a rural town in Wisconsin to live with my extended family when I was 16 and discovered Thoreau and Emmerson. My uncle had some land where I could retreat to and set up a little place in the woods to read, write, and draw. I kept journals with a poem on one side and an abstract drawing of the poem on the opposite page. I wanted to be a poet.
After high school, I worked in Madison at a bookstore and sold flowers from a cart on State Street. During that time I also made my first relatively ambitious painting. It was terrible but I had intuitively begun trying to figure out how to meld text and image.
I fell in love with painting while an undergrad in Silver City, New Mexico. I took a landscape painting class with Chad Colby and John Arden Knight and was immediately hooked. I loved painting the landscape in the Gila Wilderness but every day was such a struggle. And instead of the struggle being visually interesting, it usually just ended up with me wiping away the day’s work, which was always fine with me, too. This time felt like training and I sensed the landscape was not my calling but knew it was important nonetheless. During graduate school at the University of Wisconsin was when I began investigating the relationship of text and image in earnest.
Wishing Like a Mountain (installation view), 2021, Baronian Xippas
Wishing Like a Mountain exhibition (installation view), 2021, Baronian Xippas
Wishing Like a Mountain exhibition (installation view), 2021, Baronian Xippas
What is a typical day in the studio like for you?
My studio is in our backyard so I enjoy waking up early and walking out there with my coffee, ideally, looking at work from the night before. I like the quietness of the early morning. I like the late night for the same reason but find I have to choose a sleep schedule to maintain a reasonably healthy state of mind.
Some days are just spent stretching canvas or assembling supports but most of my time is spent applying tape. It’s easy for me to get obsessive with the placement but I find it most expressive when I’m nonchalant about the application and the placement of the tape is found or felt. I also do a lot of drawing in the studio, not necessarily “good” drawing, I guess it’s more writing than drawing. I mean, I’m still taking a line for a walk, but the work is quick and usually not that formally interesting, which is something that interests me. Studio days always include a dog walk, more coffee, and an occasional bicycle ride.
What artists or art movement/s would you say you and your work have the most connection with?
One of the techniques of cave painters was to blow ground pigment onto the surface of the wall, very much like graffiti artists using spray paint. There’s an incredible relationship here in Albuquerque of the past to the present with pictographs not being far from tags. There’s a lot of great graffiti here in Albuquerque.
Performance artist Allen Kaprow’s ideas related to blurring the boundaries of art and life have always interested me and encouraged exploration into the personal in hopes of arriving at something my own. Also, spray paint as a medium innately has performative tendencies because of the quickness of the application. It’s a very physical activity.
I came into painting via sculpture and performance and am interested in what painting is or could be, historically gravitating towards painters that explore the relationship of the painting support to physical space such as Sam Gilliam and Joe Overstreet. Also, painters that embrace an exploration of medium and “quality” such as Martin Barré and the Support/Surface in Paris in the 60’s. Peter Halley’s idea that abstract art should not merely be a formal exercise but should touch on values and realities that we can connect with and share makes a lot of sense to me.
Oasis, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2017, 16x14 inches
What is it like living and working in New Mexico?
My wife and I moved back to Albuquerque a little over a year ago after living in rural southwest New Mexico for the last few years. We were near Mimbres and my wife was the Assistant Director of the university museum that houses an incredibly inspiring Mimbres pottery collection. There’s an interesting dichotomy in the New Mexico landscape that feels prehistoric, historic, and futuristic all at the same time.
It sounds so cliché to discuss the light but there’s something about it and the atmosphere here that makes airbrush or spray paint compelling mediums. Raymond Jonson, an important New Mexico painter that cofounded the Transcendental Painting Group, was using airbrush here in the 1930s. (I have a table in my studio that was built by Raymond Jonson.)
There’s a potential slowness and stillness in New Mexico that Bruce Nauman is able to capture in his videos and Richard Tuttle in his drawings and assemblages. But there’s also the fast pace of the city. When we lived in Albuquerque 10 years ago, I was working as a Transitional Living Specialist for homeless youth and became well aware of the problems plaguing the city, too. New Mexico is now known for Georgia O’Keefe and Breaking Bad. I appreciate this tension.
Outside of the studio and your work, tell us a bit about what your life is like.
My wife, Stacey Heim, is also an artist with a studio at the house so the blurring of art and life is no joke—especially during the pandemic. But I get out for bicycle rides quite regularly, usually getting in at least one really long ride a week. We spend a lot of time walking and playing fetch with our dog, Agnes, heading up to the mountains as often as possible.
Green Karma, 2020, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 16x14 inches
Blue ZenZen, 2019, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 50x42 inches
Powerlite, 2020, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 16x14 inches
HolyHoly with Black Diamonds, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2020, 12x10 inches
Holy Holy with Orange Diamonds, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2020, 12x10 inches
Who makes up your creative community?
There are a lot of great artists here in Albuquerque. The pandemic has made it challenging to get together for studio visits but social media is also a big part of my community. The list of artists I admire is long. I didn’t know her, but Jackie Saccoccio was an artist whose work I really admired. She was a wonderful painter and struck me as a generous person. The artists I admire the most seem to have struck this balance between excellence and kindness.
How do you feed your creativity?
Coffee. And I listen to a lot of music in the studio. Lately, I’ve been listening to audiobooks while working, too. A lot of beat writers. I just discovered a link to a reading of Big Sur. I like Steinbeck. As well as the Imagist writers whose aim was to encapsulate complex ideas into a precise and vivid image. Books and music that feel authentic and tell stories, regardless of genre, are welcomed. Seeing what the artists I follow on social media are up to in the studio is always inspiring.
You are represented in Paris by Galerie Xippas and in Florida by Brintz Gallery. New York and LA also seem to be locations where your work would also be represented. Do you have any favorite NY or LA galleries?
Yes, I do. Too many to name. Regarding representation, it’s tricky, right? All the stars have to align and it has to work for all parties. There are so many great painters out there, it must be really challenging to settle on a roster. But, yes, I am wanting to make something happen in NYC and LA.
New Day exhibition (installation view), 2020, Xippas
New Day exhibition (installation view), 2020, Xippas
New Day exhibition (installation view), 2020, Xippas
New Day exhibition (installation view), 2020, Xippas
Tell me about your Paris gallery, Xippas.
The stars aligned. Melissa Steckbauer, a friend and incredible artist in Berlin, introduced me to Tristan Van Der Stegen over 10 years ago when he had his own gallery in Paris. We worked together until he closed a few years later but remained friends.
Fast forward to 2019, I had an exhibition in Paris of Zen Paintings at Gleichapel and Tristan was now the Director at Xippas. That exhibition allowed me to introduce my work to Renos Xippas, who in turn generously gave me an exhibition the following year. The show was very well received. We are now working on a catalog with a foreword by Catherine Millet. I’m so grateful for this relationship. The team at Xippas is amazing.
How was 2020 for you?
Personally, it started off great with my solo show at Xippas in Paris in January, and then the pandemic hit. It was a challenging year, obviously. And this first couple weeks of 2021 have been a real doozy, too. A friend said she hopes 2021 has a better personality. I’m hoping for the same.
What are you looking forward to in 2021?
Currently, I have work included in the 30th-anniversary show at Xippas in Uruguay, and a solo show at Baronian Xippas that just opened. The title of the show, Wishing Like a Mountain, is taken from an early 90’s Poi Dog Pondering album, a band then out of Austin, Texas. The exhibition includes a few Holy paintings that are a nod to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, a poem that promotes personal freedom and breaking from social norms where “Everything is Holy! The World is Holy!” There’s an air of optimism and hope with this exhibition. At least that was the aim. I’m wishing for healing. Wishing like a mountain.
Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy Holy, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 2020, 88x72 inches
