Sally Ross, 'Sans titre', 2007.
Can you paint something you've never seen? Go tell Joachim Patinir that, the 16th-century creator of some of the most otherworldly, psychedelic yet credible landscapes in the history of Western art. At a time when explorers could only bring back their altered recollection back home, Patinir reflected on the growing idea of landscapes of the imagination. Sally Ross, whose new landscapes are about to be unveiled at Baumet Sultana in Paris, is also a painter of the unseen. Basing her richly coloured paintings on old photographs, her work is more about the abstract qualities of place, of how imagining what a place might look like actually can, as a riddle, influence the way it might be.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez: I'm curious about the story behind the series you're about to show - How did you come to paint images based on a 1950s book of photos of the Finnish countryside?
Sally Ross: I have a longstanding attraction to the landscapes of Finland.. they seem archetypically picturesque. There is a certain dislocation in painting these places as I have no direct experience of Finland - my experience only comes from books. The found photographs are a perfect reference point for me to make conventional pictures. When we have no real experience of a place we rely on photographs to inform us.. I use photographs that come from informative or educational books rather than from more 'artistic' photography books. Using outdated publications adds an interesting temporal element.. most of my pictures do not seem particularly contemporary, there are rarely traces of 'now' in my paintings.
LNF: How did you select which images to represent (or somehow echo)?
SR: I chose photographs which would 'translate' best into paintings.
LNF: Is the project completed?
SR: Never! I would like to paint many more of these pictures. The show at Baumet Sultana is a very small selection of new paintings .
LNF: Is it part of a larger series?
SR: I suspect I will continually make these types of paintings.
LNF: How does it connect to what you were doing previously?
SR: I have regularly included landscapes in my exhibitions. The other obvious connection is that the paintings are once again directly inspired by second hand books that I find, I use old Time-Life books a lot (both works for the collection Lambert en Avignon exhibition 'Return to Cezanne' are paintings of photographs found in teh Time-Life publication on Cezanne). The Snake show at Galerie Baumet Sultana was based on two pages in a Time-Life publication on South America and my last show at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, LA, was based on a nude photography manual and a field guide to fungi. So there is a continuation in the fact that the exhibition is entirely based on painting pictures from photographs in a book.
LNF: I haven't seen your works in real life, but even through the digital versions, one thing that's immediately striking is your use of colour, the way you juxtapose bright and deep hues to create a sort of symbolic break, here for example going from a kind of hidden witnessing and the idea of 'seeing through the trees' to colour-driven, absorptive, pure abstraction - could you describe your technique a little bit, what the process of painting is like for you, and what part colour played in creating this series, what it has to do with your subject?
'Untitled', 2005.
SR: I hope you can see some work in the flesh - these new oil paintings are quite colourful.. more painterly than my flatter, more graphic previous works.. less faithful to the photograph at the point of departure - the works are an inquiry into how much detail is required in order to adequately (agreeably) describe the subject... rather than always slipping into a more obsessive overload of detail and mark making, I have tried to be more selective in terms of technique: contrast, use of colour and detail. So there is a co-existence between more abstract areas and more illustrative elements. The result seems a naive intense vision of the found photographs.
In terms of colour - it is highly influenced by the over-saturated colours of 1950s printing techniques.. Strong and almost syrupy. In contrast, my last exhibition at Baumet Sultana was all black and white.
LNF: The press release for your upcoming show mentions some of the art you're interested in, from medieval tradition to Picabia. I would love to know about your medieval inspirations! And of course any others, particularly any other contemporary artists who've either influenced you or who interest you or whose work you are lately intrigued by.
SR: These influences may not be too evident in my work. Joachim Patinir is one of my favourites, Memling, Holbein and early Flemish painting - perfect, small scale, extraordinary pictures. Also Rousseau, Freud. On the graphic end of things I continually return to Hokusai's work as well as to Durer and Max Ernst's early graphic works, as well as Marcel Broodthaers' pictorial explorations - he made wonderful works from books. Picabia for his sheer variety of practice and mastery of painting 'genres'. In terms of contemporary artists I am a great fan of Fischli & Weiss - of all the things they see and present, artists that feed from many sources - that is what I would like to do.
'Paul Cezanne', 2007.
LNF: I'd love to know what you're working on now/next?
SR: I'm preparing for a new show at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, LA, scheduled for early 2008.
All images: Sally Ross, 'Sans Titre', 2007, oil and pigments on linen.
Courtesy Galerie Baumet Sultana, Paris.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
SALLY ROSS, 'LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS'
5 May - 16 June 2007
Galerie Baumet Sultana
20 rue Saint Claude
75003 Paris
+ 33 1 44 54 08 90
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