Marilène Phipps — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

May 1

May 1 Marilène Phipps

Biography

MARILÈNE PHIPPS was born and grew up in Haiti. She is a recipient of the NAACP’s Award of Excellence for outstanding commitment in advancing the culture and causes for communities of color. Phipps held fellowships at the Guggenheim Foundation, Harvard’s Bunting Institute, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, and the Center for the Study of World Religions. Her work can be seen in several public collections in the US and abroad, such as the Museum of the NCAAA in Boston, the Fuller Museum of Art in MA, the Mexicarte Museum in Texas, the Mattatuck Museum and the Discovery Museum in CT, where she won the prize for best painting. Her work was shown at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Cairo Museum of Modern Art, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and the Mupanah Museum in Haiti. She has presented and lectured about her work in numerous places such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Art Institute of Boston.

Artist Statement

I paint to celebrate Creation and my participation in it. My work draws from the powerful sensations and visual excitement of childhood. This was a time when the physical world held untranslatable magic, when people and animals seemed mysteriously connected to their surroundings and to an invisible yet palpable realm. I aim for beauty, poetry, truth, and order, focusing on enchantment. My compositions depict people, animals, landscapes and still lifes as metaphors for particular states of being. I invite viewers into a dialogue by presenting them with an idea in visual terms, one related to the human and physical world we share. The overtones of my earlier work have been about promoting knowledge, appreciation and respect for Haiti and its culture. I now move in a varied American culture that influences my sensibility and inspiration differently. I start my creative process when an image presents itself to my mind. I organize the image on canvas. I draw with brush and paint. I work one piece at a time. I keep holding its hand until it has crossed over to our world. It lives so that its message, its color and surface texture might reveal the attentiveness of my heart.

What first prompted you to think of becoming an artist?

Being an artist is an issue of temperament and sensibility. Becoming an artist does not depend only on a personal decision. Nature and nurture interplay in intricate ways. Personality, talent, willpower and life opportunities have to coincide all along one’s path for one to “become an artist.” Success, if any, comes from talent, hard work, and luck. Much of what now appears significant in my life seems to have “happened” to me outside of a conscious decision-making process. Anthropologists might call it a succession of “adaptive mechanisms.” Yet, looking back, and apart from some early years spent outside of the arts, I can see how Life has helped me all along to become who I am today. Personal situations shifted, opportunities suddenly arose, mentors and collectors took an interest, scholarships, prizes and fellowships ensued and opened more doors. My mother was a painter and so the stage was set for me from the start. She had me draw and paint along with my brother and cousins, all of us sitting around a table set with tropical fruits and rum bottles. A desire to please her, an interest in acquiring skill along a natural ability, all proved to be decisive in what would become my lifelong work.

What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?

I don’t think about it. I just do the work. I leave it to art critics to use their individual intellect in their drive to put all artwork in a box, fit it in an artistic trend or category. Creativity is moved by emotions, not analysis or reason. If people love my work, great! It makes me happy and encourages me, obviously. It takes an intense emotional effort to dissociate oneself from one’s creative work and not take rejection personally. The work is born out of one’s guts and whole being. But I must be able to dissociate myself from negativity or indifference in the world about my work. My work exists, and my life matters, whether the art world values it or not. In time, a particular vision of me as an artist will nevertheless emerge on its own as a result of the work. In the meantime, I must be free from wanting to please or be fashionable. It’s not easy because art essentially depends on a need to communicate with others. I have set myself aesthetic, moral and spiritual standards. My work tries to meet them. The contemporary art world is a complex domain. It is constantly shifting in its expectations, taste, and enthusiasm. Only established art from the past has found a steady ground to stand on and resist fashion, economic strategies, biased publicity, subjective art critics, and the boredom of audiences needing a constant new fix and excitement. In view of the vast emptiness this state of affairs might leave a contemporary artist to feel, my trying to define what “kind of an artist” I am might prove demoralizing and pointless.

What are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?

Celebration! I want to share my feelings of wonder about the world; bring awareness of the complex forms of beauty all around, as well as the sensitivity and vulnerability of being alive; help people grasp the passing chance afforded in a painting to see differently through another’s vision, experience and sensibility. Creating is an act of excitement and gratitude about the chance to be on earth a while, relate to and bond with each other, and manifest our presence and worth.

Can you explain the process of creating your work?

I start my creative process when an image presents itself to my mind, entices me, and imposes itself. I feel commanded. When the visualization of the idea is firm and I am confident, I go to organize it on the canvas. I draw with a brush and diluted paint. When the outlines of the image are established, I meditate on the colour scheme that I will use. This is mostly a mental play on possibilities because the colour had already presented itself along with the image.

Afterwards, I prepare the paint. I use mostly Cadmium colours, Manganese and Ultramarine Blue mixed with various amounts of Ivory Black or White, along with occasional measures of Dioxazine Purple or Quinacridone Magenta in order to create the myriad hues I plan on.

Meditation and mixing are done sitting down, but I paint standing up. Changes or additions to the initial colour scheme happen all along the painting process, and so the painting is always a surprise at the end. Something else than my decisions or skill also enters the game while I am working and provokes happy accidents which I must instantly recognize and accept as a gift. I am sure that all painters have this experience. It is so much you can plan, prepare and control. I paint in silence, and alone. I work one piece at a time and stay with it until I feel it is done. I have rarely destroyed a finished work. I keep holding its hand until it has crossed over to our world, singing its odd song. It lives so that its message, its colour, and its complex, intricate, inviting surface texture and skin might reveal the attentiveness of my heart.

What is your favourite part of the creative process?

The action. Doing it. Painting. The time when all the preparation work is ready when I have mastered my brief anxiety in front of an empty canvas. I pray I take a plunge, and then I lose myself in a new relationship that relies on my openness, goodwill, generosity and courage to dare.

Can you give us an insight into current projects and inspiration, or what we can look forward to from you in the near future?

I cannot. The future is a mystery in which we must trust. I continually hope for new surprises and passion that will light me up with renewed interest and help me find meaning worth living for.

Website www.marilenephipps.com