Maine Artist Julia Einstein Finds Inspiration in the Most Delightful Subject: Flowers

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Lisa Belisle and you are listening to, or watching, Radio Maine. Today in the studio I have with me artist Julia Einstein. Very nice to have you here today.

Julia Einstein: It's a pleasure to be here, Lisa. Thank you.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I have to say thank you because I've been enjoying your piece, Flower Power, which is behind us, ever since it came over to our studio to await being placed on the wall. The colors are so vibrant. I love them.

Julia Einstein: Thank you. It's funny. I put together a whole series of work and I called it Flower Power. It is reminiscent of that tiny little icon flower from my youth, and we all said flower power, but I named it that because it's a part of a series of work that I fooled around, I played with funny color schemes that perhaps I would not get to use otherwise. It's almost as if I thought, oh, I always wanted to put a sort of a poison green next to a lilac. I'll never do that. When am I going to put it in the shadow or light, whatever. So I thought, no, I'll have an abstracted close up set of paintings of flowers. And that way I can just have a limited color palette and get it out of my system, my artistic system. And the one that's here is more monochromatic, but it is that powerful red that you really don't get to use that much when you're a painter of still life, of flowers. And I wanted the paleness of the line to almost disappear and you fool with color combinations. And that happens in, I think there are three flower power paintings at Portland Art Gallery right now. And they all have that similar idea.

Lisa Belisle: Do you tend to do things in series, and explore themes?

Julia Einstein: I do. I used to think that it's a good way to work. I used to think, I'll work on that series and then I'll start a new one. At one point when I was making a lot of paintings, I thought, oh, I'll wait till the next series to explore that idea. That was back when I did this in this series, but now I have several going at the same time. And of course everything blends all together because it's recognizable as my work. So it's quite clear that I'm using something here and exploring it in what I think is this little box of a series, but it's also going into another part and another part and everything is in my studio before it gets put onto this wall or the wall at Portland Art Gallery.

So no one, unless I spoke about it, you wouldn't necessarily say that's so distinctly different from this, but I think they are. And in terms of the series currently on view for the exhibition, I call them flower portraits. They're different from this. This is as if you would zoom into the flower or several flowers, it's like a bee coming in. The portraits of flowers that are on view are really set up in front of my window and I always have a good window to work from. And what you don't see are the other flowers that are just outside the frame of that canvas and the window, because I do take one, put it in a vase, look at the line that it forms, look at the shadow that is cast.

And put another one in, take it out, do it, and sometimes what you also don't see, since I'm revealing behind the scenes, is I sometimes have to prop up that flower. I might have to tape it to the edge there, because I want that turn right there. So they are posed, they pose for their portrait. And so they're different in that respect. And the other thing is, when I think about the term for that series, portrait, I think of a human portrait and I am face to face with that flower. So I am the artist, I have my canvas and there's my subject and it's big. I make it big on that canvas. And so when people come up to the canvas, they come right up to that one or two or four flowers, and it's almost humanlike. It's not really, but that's how I think of it. But yeah, those are the two major series that I've been working on in the past several years.

Lisa Belisle: What is it about still life that attracts you?

Julia Einstein: Well, I think it has to do with that act of composition. So when I set up for painting, I need to capture the essence of that living thing very quickly. And I rely on everything I know about making art in a relatively short time, then I get it and then I can refine it. I can change it. I walk away from it. And now I can look at it, I've captured the essence or maybe I haven't. So I have to quickly go back and make some decisions. It being a still life set up in my studio, I can look at it throughout the day and say, I'm gonna wait till the four o'clock light.

Even though you might not notice, it's not that the colors are realistic, they're more expressive, but it's four o'clock light as opposed to 10:30 AM light. It has to do with the way the shadow hits and it has to do with the decision I make on the color of the lightest part of the painting. And that's what you do with still life. And I live with it because currently, and for most of the time I've painted, I live in the place where I make art. Sometimes I close the door, I've had studios where I can close the door, leave, then come back.

But currently it's right there, not too far away from where I make coffee in the morning. So there is something about still life that works for me right now. And I know the history of still life, there's a history of still life, where you can look at an artist's work in their still life and you can see the same things and you can recognize them. I'm going to see the Matisse exhibition called The Red Studio and it's at the MoMA right now. And I'm lucky enough to be driving past New York City in the next couple of days. And I thought I'll have to go there. And what they've done is that they have recreated parts of that painting. They have objects and paintings that are in the painting. And so I love that kind of thing.

Because if you fall in love with an artist and you follow their work and you look at them in books or in museums, you know that you've seen that little painting, that sketch. And so that's another thing with still life too, is that I do tend to repeat my favorite. My favorite, most for me, might be a petal. I'll shake the flower and have a petal drop. But yeah, I guess there is a lot to still life that people might not know about or think about.

Lisa Belisle: I hadn't thought about it before you mentioned it, this idea that you can have something that seems as though it is static, but by virtue of things that are happening around it, the sun going across the horizon and projecting the ray into the room, that object actually changes. And I think it's something that as people we can see one another age. So we know that that's a thing. And I guess with a flower, you will see that eventually, even if you're propping it up with a stick and some tape, it's eventually going to droop, but even while we think something is static, it is changing.

Julia Einstein: And that's exciting for me. A lot of what happens, and I'm sure you've heard this before talking with artists perhaps in different ways, but there is the element of surprise. You have to be surprised. I have to be surprised. There is a certain amount of control you've put together, but there has to be a bit of surprise when all of a sudden you look and you say, well, that's the stage of the flower that has this little droop and the surprise has prompted me to do something different. So while it seems quite static, there is that element of capturing something living that, its essence is not going to be for long. And then the other thing, when I talk about essence or capturing something, when you talk about the movement, both in light coming across the object and the little tiny spot that you've put together, it's like a mini interior.

But there's also this word called gesture. And when I say essence, I do mean gesture because I see it in the garden, where I pick the flower and that's what makes me pick the flower. Other people might pick a flower for its color or just the gigantic blossom it might have. But for me, I look for a certain gesture and I know that I love long leggy stems. I like to have space in between in my flower portraits to fool around with color schemes and things like that. And by the way, there is a progression of what happens for me too. Yes, I set up a still life. Yes, there are certain things I wait for and decisions I get to make, whether it's light or shadow reflection and all in the gesture, the essence of that subject.

But then there's the painting and there's that canvas. And at a certain point, it's all about the mark, the glob of paint, what you're doing on that canvas. And there is an equal amount of assuredness of what you want to do. And then there's that surprise. It's like, oh, I got it right there. And it's putting a surface of paint where it comes together for me. And then it's about the canvas and the paint. It's not even about looking at that flower beyond the canvas on the still life. And yes, people might look at my work and be attracted to the pure subject. Right now I have lilies on view at the gallery. I have snapdragons. I have delphinium. So people might say, I love that flower.

That's my favorite flower. But hopefully they'll come and they'll look at it and they'll sit and look at it and they'll realize, oh, the surface moves, as the light hits the surface and it goes across, it moves, or as I move. And that's what a painting is. You're not just staring at it, when you're moving, you're human. So that's when I think it's the difference being a painter, a sculptor, or somebody who draws or is a print maker, it's that tactileness of paint on surface.

Lisa Belisle: It seems somehow very, the word I'm coming up with is metaphysical.

When, and I think this is the first time that word has come to me while I've been speaking with an artist. There's something very interesting about the way you're describing your own mindfulness in coming to that place of contact and commitment with the canvas, but is somehow also on the other side with the person looking at the art, pulling them into that place of contact, and then once they're in that place of contact and mindfulness, this sense of shifting and moving about, and it's an interesting conversation that I hadn't really thought about before.

Julia Einstein: That's interesting that you say that because what I also do is, I'm an educator, I'm a teacher and so there is a thing called an interpretive space. So you're there, and if you enter it as a viewer, as a visitor, to a museum collection, or an exhibition within a museum, or even I've worked as an educator in history museums, where there are objects, and then enters a visitor, and has to make meaning if they want to, then they can go by it. You can have lots of different types of experiences in front of art. But if you really want to have that experience of perhaps discovering what the artist's intent was, or discovering something new and say, I want to find out what the artist's intent was now, because I think I've discovered something here, and by the way, that can happen in a split second. And it happens in two minutes. It could happen in 30 seconds, but there's something that allows you to stop. Look, notice, wonder. And if all of those things happen, then yeah, you're acting on something. And when I speak about that space, it's like, when I leave my little stool or my stance at the easel, I physically leave what I'm doing. I wash my brushes. I leave. I know this sounds kind of funny, but it's almost as if I want to fool myself into not being the artist who's making that painting because I need to come back in and say, oh, that's it right there.

That's it. I got it there. That's what I'm gonna do next. I'm gonna work on that part. So it's like trying not to recognize it, or know it, like you think you know it. Some artists turn their paintings upside down when they leave the studio. I don't do that. There's another trick of turning binoculars the other way. So you see your painting from a distance, so that you can make the decisions you need to make in order to finish or continue, or really make the central idea come through at the end, because it's not simply coloring in the colors and yes, making them balance, there has to be something else. And for me, my idea many times is, it's sort of, I don't want to say solitude.

There's a peacefulness, a quietness, that I like to, I think my paintings have, even the flower power ones, there's not a glob of paint streaked across this. It's this gentle movement of your eye going. And so that's on purpose. I think that's what my paintings are about. But yes, I do think about that space. And looking in while I'm making art. It's funny, I did this, we called it a "garden intervention" at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. And I thought, well, I'm gonna stretch mylar. And I'm gonna make paintings where visitors can look in and watch me, and I can look out and see them. And it was simply doing what you spoke about.

It was simply inviting, there was almost making that transparency, having fun with that very thin little veil between the maker and the viewer. And I enjoyed that. People said, "oh, I didn't realize that's what you do. I didn't realize that's how you," they asked all sorts of questions, but one of which was that I didn't realize that there was this frame and now that they will look behind me. And what I liked about that was that the conversations that I had that day were about making art rather than, oh, isn't that a beautiful view that you're making? How long do you think it's going to take you to finish this? It was more about, there was this immediacy and tactile kinds of questions. So, yeah, I do think about that.

Lisa Belisle: Well, that does sound more relational than methodological. And I think what you're describing in this interpretive space, I can see a parallel, for example, in the work I do in medicine, where you have two people coming together, and they're trying to understand one another and trying to understand where each other is coming from. And you'll never be in that same space in that same way again. And I think that's similar to interacting with the still life on your side, the side that is the maker. And then also on the side as the person looking at this piece.

Julia Einstein: I can see that. I can see exactly what you're talking about with the relationship, in the way that you spoke about it. Almost like the ephemeral quality of that, there's a time that starts in your case and a time that ends, and you have to be with it together. If it's going to be a success, right? So yeah, that's an interesting correlation. I get that.

Lisa Belisle: What is your connection to Maine?

Julia Einstein: I'm New England born and raised. I started coming to Maine when I was a college kid, as many college kids do. I spent summers in Ogunquit, saving money for college. And then I was that kid that I didn't leave. I thought "I like it here." In Ogunquit, I like living, in my case, in a very small town. It was under a thousand.

And I then for many years lived in Kennebunk and I worked at the Portland Museum of Art. I worked for Historic New England where I interpreted experiences for all ages up in Wiscasset. There were houses in South Berwick. And so I've come to know Maine through my work. I knew Ogunquit though from being a college kid and studying art history there, the artists that came to Ogunquit in the early 20th century made art history books and were in my lectures. So when it came, I loved the idea that that's where my life ended up. And now I live in, I just recently moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, completely different. But it's lively, it's a city, I take an elevator down from my apartment.

I made it completely new and different. And now, instead of planting my own flowers, I am an artist in residence at a city farm where they've allowed me to make an artist garden at the farm. And so it's lovely. I still have that same act of walking through and picking and gathering. Of course I'm here right now for the exhibition, and I'm thinking about my next series. And I took a very small cottage in Southport and I picked wildflowers, and I've made the starts of the paintings that I will take back to my studio. So I feel like Maine is always going to be in my work, somehow.

Lisa Belisle: That must have been a very interesting change for you. Having spent so much time in Maine, it sounds like a very specific choice that you made.

Julia Einstein: I did make that choice. I have family, my son and daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter are there in Raleigh. So I thought that's where I'm going to be. And I made a big change for the best.

Lisa Belisle: Has that impacted your art in any way?

Julia Einstein: I think the way it's impacted my art is that people that I really don't know are seeing my work. For many, many years, maybe it's just an impression, I feel like, well, everybody knows what I do. I don't know why I thought that, but everybody sees what I do, but when you're in a whole new place, there's a person and you think, oh, I have to talk about what I'm doing here, because that person really doesn't know what I do. So there is that aspect of it that I think is exciting for me.

Lisa Belisle: So you are like the flower that the sun is hitting in a different way.

Julia Einstein: Oh, I love that. Yeah. That is me.

Lisa Belisle: And you're drawing people into this new interpretive space of your life.

Julia Einstein: Yes. That is me. And that is what I'm doing. I love that.

Lisa Belisle: So how has that manifested itself in your work with the Portland Art Gallery, which I know is somewhat on the newish side, it's another very specific choice that you've made.

Julia Einstein: First of all, it is something when the gallery that is exhibiting your work makes your work look good. And I mean that in the way that the light, it's well lit, it's well presented. Even when, while I'm bringing the work in, I'm thinking, oh my goodness, the paint to the surface is changing as I'm carrying my canvas in, and if it gets set on the wall, there is a responsibility to bring my level of work up to meet that. And that's not taken lightly by me. And I think that last night we had the opening reception of the work. And part of that is just the joy of celebrating a body of work created for an exhibition.

But part of it is also the opportunity to simply hang out with the other artists who are on view and all of us have that same reaction of we rose to the occasion. We made that work. And each of us, of the artists that are currently on view, completely different. And each of us needed to put together remarks that were said out loud in public. And I know that seems like, you know, brief remarks, they've just at a gallery reception, but they were meaningful and they were well put together and thoughtful. And I think that I know what I did as soon as I heard each person speak. I thought, I've gotta look at their work again, because of what they just said about that. I need to see it.

And I think that that's what happens in a gallery, you talk about this new body of work. You write about it, you chat about it informally to the lovely people at the gallery. And they talk about it with people that have never met you and never will meet you. And that's the beauty of having work in a very good gallery, that they're paying attention and representing you even when you're not there and making sure that your work is seen in a good light. So that's what I feel about the Portland Art Gallery and what that level of trust and responsibility does for my work.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I very much enjoyed our conversation today.

Julia Einstein: Me too.

Lisa Belisle: You've caused me to think quite deeply, so I'm gonna have to go and ponder this idea of the interpretive space and the relationality of art and the artist to the viewer. So I really appreciate that.

Julia Einstein: Thanks, Lisa. I think that there's a loveliness of this table in this space and it comes out and I've seen other interviews with artists that you've made. And I think it was great to be a part of it.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I hope people take the time to go to the Portland Art Gallery and to see the work that you've put out there. And I really hope that you are able to bring people into your interpretive space with the work that you're doing. Because it's something that I told you, I came in earlier this week and I found your piece and I immediately felt drawn to it. So I think what you're describing, you've been very effective with.

Julia Einstein: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Lisa Belisle: I've been speaking with artist Julia Einstein. You can find her work at the Portland Art Gallery and also the Portland Art Gallery website. I invite you to come into this space that she has created for us as viewers. I'm Lisa Belisle. Thank you for listening to or watching Radio Maine.