Colleen McCubbin Stepanic
Philadelphia, USA
Website
www.colleenmccubbinstepanic.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I make large scale paintings and installations. My installations are created by cutting up my paintings and sewing them back together into new forms.
What inspires you?
A lot of my inspiration comes from being outside. On a hike or in the garden I encounter the most amazing things. Plants, in particular, make me think anything is possible. There’s a structure of need; how to feed, how to reproduce; and each plant is designed to meet that need the way that best suits them. The craziest, weirdest things occur because of this need and their relationship to the organisms around them. Need is different in the studio but I want my works to follow a logic- their own unique necessary way of being.
For years I was very excited about rock formations. Geological time is much more vast than our memory but I still felt a connection between them. I used that perceived connection to make quite a few works. Currently I’m thinking a lot about decorative patterning and psychology.
Can you speak about your process?
My process involves a lot of play and experimentation. I’m very intuitive in the way I work and I like to include the shifts and changes of my attention and interest as I make my work. I’ve been thinking about the question people sometimes ask “how do you know when it’s done.” For me, it’s very simple. It’s done when I don’t want to do it anymore. After that I ask myself “is it good”? If the answer is No then it goes back in the materials pile. Whatever happens next will depend on what I care about the next time I’m working. An important part of my process is that the new marks always matter more. So for example, if I’m painting a tree over what had been a painting of a person then I just do what the tree needs next. I tune out the prior layers and if the branch goes right over the faces then that’s what happens. I don’t try to protect or keep anything from the prior layers because I want to be surprised by the new thing and the way it interacts with what came before.
My cut and sewn works have a process, or a set of steps I follow. Those works evolved by repeating those steps over and over. Once I lock into a process it can be meditative which I enjoy. Most of those works take a long time. “Peak” for example, took 11 years to develop to where it is now. That’s a big contrast from how I paint which is very fast. In painting speed is an important way for me to preserve gesture and movement. I love that feeling of ease and freshness in a painting.
How did you become interested in art?
I loved drawing and making things as a young child. I knew from the time I was 8 that I wanted to be an artist. Although until I went to college I imaged that meant being an illustrator. Once I was in college studying illustration I realized I didn’t want to do what other people wanted me to do. It was at that time that I fell in love with painting. Painting was challenging and fun and it really felt like a place I could explore my own ideas.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books or quotes?
The artist Phyllida Barlow was an artist whose works really excite me. After she died I was listening to a talk she gave where she talked about 5 works that were important to her. I started to think about whose work has been critical to my development as an artist. There are so many but I picked out 5 whose works were important to me at critical times in my practice.
Alice Neel was the first. My college roommate’s Aunt came to visit from NYC. She’s an artist and when she saw my paintings she told me I needed to look at Alice Neel. I immediately loved everything about her work. Her energy and audacity motivated me to follow my own paths as an artist and to stick to it no matter what.
The second was Joan Brown. I was living in isolated, rural places after college before it was possible to find everything online. I used to go to the bookstore in Ann Arbor and look for new books on figurative painters. I found “Bay Area Figurative Art: 1950-1965” there. Joan Brown’s work was fantastic. I was drawn to her heavy, aggressive use of paint and loved that she used that paint to depict her domestic spaces.
Dona Nelson was my professor at Tyler. She’s so smart and listening to her talk about painting is wonderful. Her intelligence is excited and energetic and I love that. She’s never afraid to contradict herself or change direction. Then when you see her painting you realize she uses all of that in her work. Her work is alive, vibrant, aggressive, all things that I want my work to be.
I saw Lee Bontecou’s work at the MCA in Chicago in 2004. I was profoundly affected by it, equal parts attracted and repulsed. The way she used canvas sat in my mind for years before I started cutting and sewing my own works. The powerful physical reaction I had to her work was something I wanted to experience in mine.
The Louise Bourgeois show at MOMA in 2017 was really important to me. My husband came with me to the show and as soon as we walked in he knew. He said “oh you’re going to be awhile. I’ll be in the bookstore when you are done.” I stayed for hours. There was so much to look at, so many different materials, and I love the way psychology runs right through all her works.
