Tali Lennox
Tali Lennox brings us into her world of the perverse and the sublime in a series of new paintings that capture both the personal truths and fictional stories of characters who live their own mythologies. Adorned in costumes, masks and makeup, the figures stand within a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream. Each work becomes its own song or ballad. The subjects in Lennox’s paintings are often strangers she approaches on New York City streets. She then meets them a second time one-on-one, where she photographs them to paint from a real-life narrative. Our publishing director Atesh M. Gundogdu interviewed Tali Lennox about her current New York show.
Atesh M. Gundogdu: Let’s start at the beginning. When did you know you wanted to be an artist? Why painting?
Tali Lennox: I don’t think that's always a conscious decision. My mother says that she knew that's what I was going to be from a very young age, although she never tried put me in any direction. I was obsessed with cutting things out, drawing faces, playing alone in my room for hours. You see the traces in one's path often from so early on. My life now In ways is not dissimilar instead of doing these things alone in my bedroom for hours everyday I'm at my studio in Chinatown. Drawing was always what I was most practiced with, but when I learnt how to use oil paints they allowed me to feel I could sculpt an image more and the instinct I feel with mixing color makes one almost feel like they are playing jazz. Its an eye to hand thread that has an electrical pulse that is beyond you. I just started learning the instrument the theremin, and I felt pretty natural about it as its all about very delicate hands movements in the air plucking at invisible notes, painting is not too far off. I also love painting as you can truly at times feel like you are a magician, you can make an image or an energy appear from nothing.
Mourning for Twilight, 2019, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches Courtesy of Meredith Rosen Gallery
AMG: What emotions are you channeling into your art?
TL: My paintings are somewhat of a paradox, or a duality. I'm such a sensitive person, everything I experience can feel so amplified, the beauty and the pain. My therapist even says I'm the kind of person who can not feel an ‘up’ without feeling a ‘low’ after. Like the sad/happy venetian mask. It's not a negative thing to me, especially as it gives me access to a spectrum I can use in my work, although it can be mentally tiring. I've been through some intense tragedy in my life but also so much wonder. I want my work to a celebration of the light and the dark. And the fine line between elation and sadness, beauty and vulgarity. I want them to touch that place within us where we don't know if we are intrigued or if we want to look away, a seductive repulsion of sorts.
Karol’s Fortune, 2019, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches Courtesy of Meredith Rosen Gallery
AMG: What do you think is more important in life: Self-actualization or making art?
TL: I believe as an artist that self-actualization and making art ought to be closely intertwined. If you spend your days creating and using your internal world as means of expression, then the work will be a mirror of the self, which is ever-changing and evolving. As a human being one might strive to be more spiritually harmonious and looking to attain a positive and peaceful mind, however for the moment I don't want my work to reflect only the light, but be more challenging and difficult to ingest.
AMG: Who has inspired you in your life and why?
TL: Being close to artists and sharing a creative language with others is greatly inspiring to me, one of my closest friends is the painter Ariana Papademetropolous, we will talk on the phone for hours while we are both working alone in our studios, we connect on the mental path of being an artist, and specifically a painter, which is very solitary. I love to be around those who are committed to staying in their wonder and non-conformity.
The Ballad of Linda Leven, 2019, oil on canvas, 36 x 26 inches Courtesy of Meredith Rosen Gallery
AMG: If you could live with only one piece of art what would it be?
TL: Lately, I've been repeating the term ‘Protect your wonder’ to myself, which I heard the filmmaker and puppeteer Frank Oz say at a talk earlier this year.
AMG: What is your favorite ritual?
TL: Once a week I go to the Bathhouse. Its an escape from societal layers, in which everyone is underground and stripped of their status, their clothes, their phones, and enveloped in an archaic practice of cleansing the body. The one I go to is no-frills, intense heat, freezing cold plunge pools, it works through my system deeply, mind and body. When I leave I feel like I could dissolve into the sidewalk.
AMG: What songs/albums are on your playlist nowadays?
TL: While I was working on my show ‘The Ballad of Linda Leven’ i would listen to a lot of music from 1920’s Berlin like Kurt Gerron and Rudolf Nelson. The work referenced that era, and I'm greatly inspired by the art of Weimar Germany. I use sound to gently submerge me into the atmosphere I want to create.
AMG: What is so scary about the future?
TL: The possibility of impending doom.
AMG: Any advice or lessons you’ve learned?
TL: For artists in the contemporary world, one should be striving to keep attune with their inner realms. Which is individual to each. A person has over a million impressions every day, advertisements, social media, everything that passes us. So one has to stay focused on surrounding yourself with what helps transports you to your minds eye. For me that can be going to my favorite antique store, or a 1920’s diner for breakfast, seeing an old film at film forum. Its daily choices one can make in cultivating a life that feeds their imagination.
”The Ballad of Linda Leven” can be seen at Meredith Rosen Gallery until October 26th
