Winter Cover Spotlight:
Profane Statue by Julia Ricketts

Although Gage emphasizes the realist tradition, we have incredibly talented artists who create abstract, or nonrepresentational, art. The high quality and variety of this work, however, made picking just one piece to showcase on the catalog cover a very tough decision. Ultimately, we chose a recent piece from Gage instructor Julia Ricketts, Profane Statue, in which representation informs this abstract work. Here is the full interview with Julia Ricketts, an excerpt of which was published in the Gage Winter Catalog.

GAGE: Tell me about your journey as an artist — where did you start and how did you come to abstraction?

Ricketts: In college, I was of course searching for my voice as an artist, and I did most of my studies in printmaking. I loved the processes: the preparation of materials, the labor and the potential for making variables. I loved making an etching plate and then printing it 20 different ways. I learned how much color choices and layering can affect an image — the same image is no longer the same at all. Gradually, after school, I moved toward painting, but the idea of building an image out of components and making variations using those components definitely continues to inform my work. This implies a certain degree of abstraction in my thinking about painting, although I have worked with recognizable subjects and sources at different times.

GAGE: Are there artists in particular who have influenced your work or whose work you like, and why?

Ricketts: My taste is pretty diverse. I love the Bay Area artists (especially Diebenkorn, whose work has so many facets), mid-century painters like Rothko, and more contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter and Vija Celmins. Because I've been working in a vocabulary of geometric abstraction for the last few years, I've been looking at Agnes Martin, Sean Scully and other painters who really work the rectangle.

GAGE: Your work has changed quite a bit over the last several years — what do you consider to have remained common themes or ties, and what has changed the most?

Ricketts: Well, I'd say a tension between simplicity or the impulse to simplify and a desire to investigate painterly complexity has been a constant for me. I'm always interested in the battle between imperfection and perfection, and how the hand expresses those tensions in a painting. Also, I like to invent processes to build images. This satisfies the printmaker in me, and allows me to visualize a series of works that result from a particular process.

GAGE: How did the cover art Profane Statue come about?

Ricketts: The cover piece is from a series that combines a seemingly random field of marks — brushstrokes, scribbles, dots and dashes — with a graphic image. I liked the idea that one part of the process creates a random visual interaction with the other component. The "image" is really a hole where the "thing" ought to be, and the "things" I chose are iconic silhouettes of various kinds.

GAGE: On the whole, what influences your work the most?

Ricketts: My own interests in the process of painting guide me. I'm not really going for anything, I'm finding my way in each painting, and I think this is why structures are key. Over the years, I've internalized a lot of thinking about and looking at the world we live in, and my observations are in there, but I'm not depicting things or places so much anymore. I'm more interested in what painting can do on its own, and I'm developing works that are about balance, harmony, tension. I don't know much about music theory, but I relate to musical phrases, movements and variations as ideas a painter can work with too.

GAGE: What do you find fulfilling or challenging about instructing artists?

Ricketts: I love working with students and other artists. It is really great to be the "eyes" for another artist and be able to ask those important questions about the work. We all need that type of objective input and critique, whether it has to do with content or technique. As a teacher I also get a lot of satisfaction from introducing my students to new concepts and watching them tentatively try them out. We learn a lot by experimentation and imitation, and painting really is a learn-by-doing kind of activity. You can't just read up on it — you have to get your hands dirty!