KATHERINE MCMAHON
Habitat is a weekly series that visits with artists in their workspaces.
This week’s studio: Joan Semmel, SoHo, New York. “Painting uses all your faculties as a human being, because its physical, it’s tactile, and it’s intellectual all at once,” Semmel told me, as she motioned toward a work in progress. She is perhaps best known for unflinching paintings of nude women or couples in colors that range from naturalistic to wild and electric, but she has also painted herself for decades.
The prolific feminist painter has been active for 50 years and continues to work in her SoHo studio and home, which she’s inhabited since 1970. How did she find the place? “I had just come back from Spain and was walking down the street and I saw a bearded man who looked like an artist,” she said. “I asked if he knew of any open studios, and he walked me right up here. I rented the place from him for a year, and then he left and never came back. I’ve been here ever since.”
Semmel grew up in New York City and studied at Cooper Union and the Art Students League before earning her BFA from Pratt. From 1963 to 1970, she spent time in Spain. During this period, she created Abstract Expressionist works and gained more of a sense of framework in her paintings. “American Abstract painting is highly gestural,” she said. “I found that with Spanish abstract art, even though its abstract, it’s surreal and contained in a certain way. While I was there, I learned to let go of that kind of bravado brushstroke and brought things to more of a sense of resolution,” which perhaps provided the framework for the figurative paintings that she continues to make today.
Two weeks shy of her 83rd birthday, Semmel is working on new paintings and will be participating in the exhibition “Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics” curated by Alison Gingeras at Dallas Contemporary, which opens January 16. This winter, she’d like to try and visit Cuba.
Recently, her paintings have incorporated more of a sense of volume, while continuing to have the thin, transparent layers of similar images that she has used for years. “The idea of overlaying images gives you a sense of memory and reflection,” she said. “At a certain age, you start thinking about how the future is finite. When you’re young, the future is infinite. I think that’s part of what stimulates the inner process of my paintings.”
ALL PHOTOS: KATHERINE MCMAHON
01
"I was originally an abstract painter and got into figurative work later on. I prefer working at a larger scale. I feel really cramped when working on a smaller scale. I can do it if I have to, but I don’t ever choose to."
"This is one from the ‘Shifting Images’ series which came from the blurring of the camera when I was taking my own picture. It gave me some images that I rather liked."
"These are some of my tools and materials. I like the tactile nature of painting and I like to move around while I work."
"I work with oils and use stand oil all the time. I keep a little Dorland's Wax just in case I want to use some for an underpainting."
Storage in Semmel's studio.
"I use technologies that are available to me, like photography, as a tool to serve the painting but never as the end itself."
"In the late '90s I did a whole series on mannequins." One of those paintings, Odelisk, hangs in her living room.
"These are some old posters of mine. I keep plastic on this door to keep the studio insulated in the winter."
"Sometimes you just need time to sit back and understand what you've done on canvas."
"I’ve had this for 100 years," Semmel joked about the apron she paints in. "It’s so comfortable and perfect for working. You can see the wear and tear."