A Conversation with James Tucker

(Usually I do the interviews for Jackson Point Art, however interviewing oneself is rather awkward. I would like to thank Deborah Tucker for doing this one. )

James Tucker was born in Connecticut and lived there until his family moved to Clemson, South Carolina when he was 10 years old. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he worked in Atlanta before he and his wife moved to the Cumberland Plateau near South Pittsburg, Tennessee. He has shown his work at a number of galleries and art shows over the years, most recently at City Hall in Chattanooga.

See more of James’s art at: James Tucker

For interviews with other painters see: Ellyn Bivin / Josiah Golson  / David Jones / James McKissic / Renel Plouffe /  Larry Young

You’ve been involved with art for a long time now, haven’t you?

Yes, I have. I entered the art school at the University of Georgia in 1965, took all the foundation courses toward my art degree, and did some studio work with David Paul and Mike Torlen before switching my major to History at the end of my junior year. Later, I took studio classes at the Atlanta College of Art and at Callanwolde Arts Center. Two of the teachers at Callanwolde, Amelia James and Karen Stinnett, were very helpful in my development as an artist.

You come from an artistic background. I believe your grandmother was an artist and knew some of the American impressionist painters of the Old Lyme School. Did she encourage you as an artist?

The artists she knew were active in Old Lyme during the 1920s and 30s. I suppose you would call it the ‘second flowering’ of the Old Lyme School. Her name was Helen B. Tucker (nee Hunt), and she was born in Providence, Rhode Island, only moving to the Old Lyme, Connecticut area after her marriage. She was a small but formidable woman and in no way ‘grandmotherly,’ but she gave me my first set of oil paints when I was eleven or twelve years old.  She also provided an occasional piece of advice. I’d been painting in watercolor, taking lessons from Olivia McGhee, a local artist in Clemson, South Carolina. There were more failures than successes, and I was getting discouraged with my work. I told Gram I couldn’t paint in watercolor. She said, “Have you painted a hundred watercolors? You won’t know whether you can manage a medium like that until you do.” I don’t know how serious she was about one hundred paintings, but she made her point. I kept working and shortly thereafter produced the first painting that my family framed: a picture of the Mayflower at sea. My youngest daughter, Molly, has it at her home in England. It was the “Magnum Opus” of my early period. [Laughs]  Another time when we were visiting her, Gram took me out sketching. I was proud of what I’d done until we showed each other our work for the day. She was sweet about it, but the difference in what we’d done was obvious and painful to me.

But you move from smaller watercolor pieces to larger work in oil.

 For a long time, I stayed with watercolor and pen & ink. In the 1980s and 90s, my work was represented by galleries in the Atlanta area and in Greenville, South Carolina. My life was hectic, and watercolor doesn’t require much space and is easy to set up. When we moved to Tennessee, I switched to working in oil because I had the time and the studio space. In the summer of 2004, I built a small sailboat with my stepson, Andrew. I enjoyed sailing it and began painting what I saw on the river. My goal was to create a dreamy, timelessness, which is how I usually feel when out sailing.

In the last few years, your paintings have shifted from quiet, almost meditational landscapes to a focus on the human figure. What brought about the change?

David Jones approached me in 2011 about showing in his new gallery, Graffiti. Since his art and the focus of the gallery was non-representational, I didn’t see how that could work  I turned him down several times, thinking my style wouldn’t fit in, but he persisted, and I finally said yes. I don’t know what I was thinking.

And did you fit in?

No, not at all. There were abstract expressionists, geometric constructionists, and color field painters like David–and me. I should have withdrawn after the first show.

But you didn’t.

No. I respected David’s vision for the gallery and became intrigued with the work of some of the other artists. I gave it a try. For almost two years, I painted work that was totally different from anything I’d done since art school. I also switched from oil to acrylic to take advantage of acrylic’s faster drying time and all the mediums and foundation materials that are available. I’d never worked in acrylic before.

Did you enjoy working that way?

It was tough. You hear people say their five-year-old daughter can paint better than a famous abstract, but that’s just garbage. I did some interesting paintings and painted over a lot of failures. I’m okay with the best of my work from that time, but I never felt comfortable in that idiom. Where in the past I’d been communicating with symbols I shared with the viewer—trees, water, sky, clouds—I now found myself attempting to make a statement without those things. It was very difficult, and I couldn’t sustain that approach. But the year wasn’t wasted. When I came back to a more representational style of painting, this time working with the human figure, I brought along a lot of what I’d learned and experimented with. I now paint my figures with far less detail than in the past, concentrating instead on the expressive qualities of the human form as a semi-abstract shape. It’s very gratifying to me that those paintings have been well received.

How do you reconcile the changes in your art over the past ten years?

I suppose the differences in my style arise from contradictions in my personality. On the one hand, I am introverted and have no problem being alone in the studio all day, day after day, talking only with my wife in the evening. I think that’s the quiet place the urge to paint landscapes comes from. On the other hand, people really fascinate me. I never tire of watching them move about and interact with one another. I love seeing how little ‘mini-stories’ unfold. I wish I lived in a place with a sidewalk café where I could sit and watch every afternoon. Obviously, that interest forms a direct link to the figurative work. Yet, like the landscapes, a lower-keyed, quiet sensibility remains. I view the human experience as something that’s difficult and fundamentally lonely. People struggle, often with great courage, to find meaning and order through their experiences and relationships. My figurative paintings are an attempt to express that.

In paintings like Adieu and Wayfarer (2), you present people in a state of reflection, but the context is enigmatic.

Yes, that’s intentional. I want to provide some context but not offer defining information. What I like is for viewers to enter into the image. They bring with them a state of mind that is real for them and not dictated by me. If you make things too specific, your work becomes an illustration because the image limits the range of responses from the viewer. I want viewers to embrace the story as it exists within them in a way that connects to their minds and emotions.  I want viewers to look at my figures and tell their own stories, not mine. It’s very pleasing when people ascribe different ‘stories’ to my figure paintings. There’s no right reaction or, rather, every reaction is the right one. The essential meaning of any painting arises between the painting and the viewer.

I grant that different viewers would see your work in different ways. But you have a firm idea of the story, even if you conceal it. Could it be that, in a sense, these seemingly anonymous figures are self-portraits?

I suppose you’re right. I’m painting my thoughts and moods, my feelings and ideas. I could walk up to someone viewing one of my paintings and tell that person exactly what the figure in the painting is thinking and feeling. I know all the backstories, but, of course, they are my backstories. I did a painting called “The Last Table” and was delighted when people formed all sorts of ideas about what was going on with the three figures. I know what I was thinking when I painted it, but each viewer’s story is as ‘right’ as mine is.

You live on the Cumberland Plateau and paint in a book-lined studio away from the world. It’s not what one would expect from someone painting night scenes of people in the city.

No, my world isn’t a downtown loft sort of place, but I’m fascinated with cities. My wife and I have spent many days just rambling about in cities in the US and Europe with no plan or goal. At night, the shapes become more abstract, and the sense of mystery and possibility grows.

What is your process when making a painting today?

My methods now are somewhat similar to how I’ve worked in the past. I will observe something around me or see some visual motif in a photo. It’s usually just a spark of an idea or a feeling. I’ll make a note and a quick sketch. If it’s a photo, I still make notes and a sketch. I periodically check through my files and notes, and if something strikes me and I want to carry forward I start making thumbnail sketches, just playing around with visual ideas. Sometimes, there’s a preliminary gouache involved, but often, I work up the painting from the sketches alone. If I paint the gouache, I edit that and work on the final painting using the study painting and its notes as my reference. There have been times, however, when I decide that the study painting says everything I have to say and I just stop there. “Scene de Vie (1)” is an example.

Although the tonal range in many of your paintings is striking, your palette is usually subdued and based on cool hues. Is that a conscious choice or an unconscious aspect of your style?

I’m very drawn to the tonalities in black & white, whether it’s ink drawing, old movies, or 1950s TV. I did a lot of pen & Ink and ink wash drawing early on and love the dramatic tonal juxtapositions you get with the pen or the subtle shades of gray available with ink wash. No one would call me a great colorist. I know enough about color and color theory to use it the way I want, but tonality, not color, is central to my work. Cooler bluish tones, blacks, and grays are what attract me. When making a painting, my goal is to get the underlying abstract structure of the painting correct and tonally balanced. If I get that right, I usually have what I’m after.

Several of your new paintings have a very rough surface. What’s going on there?

When I was painting nonrepresentationally, I experimented with different surfaces, and one was made by mixing sawdust into gesso primer. That was the surface used for a painting called “Threads of Time.” It is rough and irregular. It forces me to keep my painting loose since detail is impossible. It also provides an interesting way to layer colors. You can paint on a base color and then carefully bring a brush back over the area with a much lighter or darker color, just touching the very top of the textured surface.

You used that surface in your “Wanderers” paintings. Would you talk a bit about those?

Those paintings originally began with all the images I was seeing of the refugee crises happening around the world. There are seemingly endless armed conflicts forcing people from their homes. These people become rootless, wandering, going from something but not to something. I find that very troubling. As I thought about it, I began to consider the process of wandering in broader terms. I began to wonder if we are all wanderers to a greater or lesser degree. We’re born into this world where there is no instruction manual, no roadmap for existence. We spend our lives trying to figure out how to make our way. I think we all, if we are honest with ourselves, go through life making the best go of it we can, but not really knowing what’s over the next hill or what we are supposed to do about it. Of course, political refugees have all that to contend with, and they’ve had their way of life destroyed by madmen.

You’re a writer as well as a visual artist. Does that influence your work?

Yes. I love stories, and I process life in terms of story. It’s central to my worldview and how I get some sense of psychic order. That was what was so tough for me doing abstract painting—there’s no story! I felt caught in the endless process of applying paint. In my current work I try to avoid a sense of literalness, but all my painting is about story. My writing about art and my interviews with artists also help broaden my thinking about my own work. I find that my writing about others provides an important source of new ideas for me.

 What artists, and I suppose I should add writers, influenced you the most?

I love the pen drawings of Rembrandt and Goya. Using just a quill pen, they could do so much with so little—a few squiggly lines come alive as a person. I’ve also studied the great late 19^th and early 20^th century pen & ink illustrators like Coll, Gibson, Flagg, and so on. They were geniuses at spotting lights and darks and creating structure. I’m also very attracted to the work of Whistler, with his sense of design and delicate touch. As for writers, I’d have to say, Albert Camus and Joseph Conrad. Reading Camus early on had much to do with how I see life, and Conrad is just endlessly deep. If I could paint the way Conrad writes, I would die a happy man.

For a long time artist, you’ve gone through some surprising transformations. What lies ahead?

I have no idea. I’ll just engage with ideas and images that motivate me and let the brush take me where it will.

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