Marina Moevs in Conversation with Susannah Cremer-Bermbach

SC-B: How would you describe the impact of music in general and especially of your father’s compositions on your working as a visual artist?

MM: In my parents’ household, music was central to our lives. I played the flute and at one time considered pursuing it as a career. Even today I find that I think in musical terms when painting and drawing. Value contrast is like dynamics in music, the visual line is akin to the melodic line, color harmony is like musical harmony, and so forth. Undoubtedly the use of these formal elements in my father’s music and in other music has impacted their visual application in my artwork. In addition, my father modeled for me what it means to be an artist. I learned from him the importance of artistic integrity (an allegiance to your idea), and the importance of dedicated and sustained work and craft. Craft is required in order to most accurately and precisely communicate your idea. Like my father’s compositions, my paintings develop slowly, over an extended period of time (a year or more).

SC-B: Light plays an essential role in your paintings and drawings. Can you describe the special technique you developed to get the result you want?

MM: Painting and drawing is about the manipulation of light: the frequencies and quantities of reflected light. It is also about playing with how our visual system operates. I am aware of how value contrast and color can enhance the experience of light in the drawings and paintings. I develop the paintings with many thin and fairly transparent layers of paint that allow the light to penetrate into the paint film and glow. And I apply the paint mostly with my hands (I use brushes for details); not only does that permit a direct contact with the painting, but it also helps me control the amount of paint in each layer.

SC-B: What about the relation between drawing and painting?

MM: The subjects in my artwork are largely invented. Even when I refer more directly to actual places, the color and illumination are greatly changed. Because my paint film is so thin and transparent I do not have much room for error and correction while painting. With experience I learned that I must have a thought through road map before I start a painting. This is where the drawings fit into my process. The drawings are fundamental in my work; I could not make the paintings without fully finished and resolved drawings. It is in the drawings that I solve as many problems as possible. For each painting I do a charcoal drawing where I work out the composition and distribution of values, and a color drawing where I work out the color harmony. The smaller format and the forgiving nature of the media make them well suited for problem solving.

SC-B: There is always the same horizon in all of your works. For the German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer the horizon “is rather something into which we wander and which wanders with us. Those who are mobile shift the horizon for themselves.” I assume that the horizon in your works has another meaning or function?

MM: The horizon line is our eye level. No matter where we wander, to paraphrase Hans Georg Gadamer, the horizon line goes with us. If we are high on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the horizon line is high and we see lots of water. If we are down on the beach the horizon line is low and we see little water. The horizon line is in the same place throughout my paintings and my drawings. It is placed at the approximate height of the viewer’s eye level. By so placing the horizon line, I want to create a direct relationship between the viewer and the artwork. I want the viewer to feel that they are directly experiencing the scene in the artwork – that it is their eye level that determines the horizon line in the artwork.

SC-B: You told me that the measures of your pictures refer to American window sizes and the size of the door in your house. Why?

MM: I like the trope that a painting is a window into another reality, so much so that I intentionally use it in my paintings. The format of my drawings and paintings is that of a window, and all my paintings are in one of two sizes: window size, or doorway size. 

SC-B: What is this other reality that you describe in your artwork?

MM: I believe that the biggest existential crisis we face is climate change.  Our current way of organizing experience clearly is not working. It has led us to the brink of catastrophe where we are putting in peril the very ecosystem we rely on for our survival.  The drawings and paintings advocate the destruction of our current way of understanding ourselves in order to make room for another way of being in the world. The natural disaster theme in my earlier drawings and paintings not only directly references climate change and its effects, but it is also a description of the personal “natural disaster” that occurs when we jettison one understanding of our identity in order to be open to another.  It is a traumatic passage.  

SC-B: What does the house stand for?

MM: The house in the drawings and  paintings is a metaphor for our culturally mandated understanding of our identity: the constructed self, the island subject (the individual), where subjecthood is a piece of private property attached to a particular body.  This view inevitably defines the rest of the world and its inhabitants as “other than my self” or “other” and objectifies and devalues them. This in turn creates a hierarchy of being, with ourselves (the subject) at the top, and animals, plants, and nature at the bottom where they garner little value and respect.  We cannot muster enough respect for the planet to be willing to change our behavior and avert climate change. We do: Nothing.  

The  drawings and paintings posit that we are all trapped in one of these houses, these self constructs.  Through the window (the painting or drawing) we can see into another reality, another way of understanding ourselves and our place in the world, where subjecthood is a universal phenomenon.  When you look into someone’s eyes, the person you see there is who you are, and vice versa.  When you use the pronoun “I” and someone else says “I”, it is the same “I” speaking.  There is only one “I”. And this applies to plants, animals, everything. There is no hierarchy of being.  There is instead an ecstatic harmony. The stillness in the drawings and paintings attempts to communicate that sense of peace.  It is only from this perspective that we can attribute enough value to our planet to be willing to live harmoniously with all life on this Earth.

SC-B: Where do you see your recent work heading?

MM: In my recent drawings and paintings I have moved from an exploration of the personal “natural disaster,” that disruptive transition from one understanding of our identity to another, to focusing instead on this other reality, this other way of understanding ourselves and of being in the world.  In the more recent drawings and paintings the landscape elements dissolve into a white open center where the physical dematerializes and the individual dissolves. The visual language I use to communicate this phenomenon in part comes from my experience of the light of Southern California, where the intense glare burns away all particulars and leaves only itself.