Creative Resilience
Fever Dream
Heather Day
“I view my practice as a form of meditation. Rather than clearing my mind before working, I view it as a slow emptying process. My mind begins to clear as I paint and the marks I’m making are representative of that captive energy or recycled conversations or thoughts.”
– Heather Day
There have been certain times since launching Matrons & Mistresses that felt extra special: a magical studio visit, a letter from someone I greatly respect praising an article, and recently, an email from Hilary Pecis asking if I might be interested in sharing something she had been working on.
Over the past few months, Hilary had been corresponding regularly in the ways that we now do in lieu of in-person visits—Zoom, email, and phone calls—with fellow California-based artists Heather Day and Maysha Mohamedi. Realizing they were not alone as creatives, Maysha voiced some of the ‘new questions they had to tackle as the pandemic took over [their] lives: How is everyone doing? Will our art be forever changed? If so, how?’ Thankfully for us, the three of them made the decision to record and transcribe their conversations. As they continued to dedicate time to their practice, they sought to find clarity in their lives on, as Hilary expressed, “where to be flexible and where to stand rigid.” In that process, Heather acknowledged that her reality of being a creative committed to her practice during these new times ‘existed inside the context of a larger one—one in which George Floyd was murdered, where racial injustices continue, and COVID-19 still surges.’ Instead of attempting to escape those realities, these artists allowed the existing conditions to shape and mold their practice and conversations so that they could better serve their communities through their art.
I am so honored that these three incredible artists thought of Matrons & Mistresses when the time came to share their roundtable conversations. I greatly admire each of their work and the thoughtfulness with which they approached these conversations.
A Roundtable Conversation with Artists Hilary Pecis, Maysha Mohamedi, and Heather Day
I am the Oncoming Voices
Maysha Mohamedi
1. How were your recent shows? What sort of concepts or ideas were you exploring, and what's the process been like for developing new work?
Maysha Mohamedi: My solo show, Salt Pepper Prophecy, just opened at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York. My studio building closed in mid-March, so I finished the paintings in my garage studio, while also homeschooling my children and navigating all of the new procedures necessitated by the developing pandemic. The themes that I pursue—nationality, math and creation, language, visions of humanity, and the emotional valence of color and line—took on a supercharged flair against the backdrop of a global crisis. Most importantly, I wanted to make useful paintings that offer healing, inspiration and beauty during this time.
Hilary Pecis: Just two weeks before NYC was shut down, my show Come Along With Me opened at Rachel Uffner in NY. The show consists of a blend of still life and landscape paintings, which appear in all of my shows.
Heather Day: I admire how you both have been able to shift your schedules to balance your studio practice and family life. Similar to Hilary, my solo exhibition, Woolgatherers, opened at Fort Wayne Museum of Art about a month before states’ shelter-in-place orders were issued across the nation. The museum is currently closed.
Woolgatherers focused on inviting museum-goers to observe what’s in front of them in a deliberate manner, without the distraction and stimuli we deal with everyday. Now, that idea of taking a moment to be an objective observer of your own thoughts feels more utilitarian than it was before the pandemic.
2. Heather Day to Maysha Mohamedi: Maysha, how do you make things look unintentional? I've noticed you use a long stick to make imperfect lines.
Maysha Mohamedi: I use a variety of techniques to interrupt the learnedness of my hand: a long stick with a crayon attached to the end, delaying the upright read of my painting by applying most of the marks while it’s flat on the ground, experimenting with the collision of different tools and materials, and obscuring my understanding of the composition by taking (sometimes long) breaks in between marks. I also incorporate marks originating from various levels of confidence.
3. Heather Day to Hilary Pecis: Hilary, where do your compositions come from?
Hilary Pecis: The still life compositions originate from a cache of photos that I have snapped while in my home or while in the homes of friends. In choosing an image to work from, I am looking not only at a composition that I find intriguing, but also at the other formal qualities, and the way light and shadow work in the image. Most of the arrangements are true to the way they are in real life—that is to say, they are not staged in advance or altered after. The liberties that I take are typically in color and texture.
Heather Day: That makes sense. Your work has always had a candid, less staged feel to it while also subtly referencing the camera by composition or cropping.
Spring Blooms
Hilary Pecis
4. Maysha Mohamedi to Heather Day: Heather, how are pocket sketchbooks important in your process? Do you fill a lot of them in advance or during the process of creating a body of work?
Heather Day: I’ve been keeping sketchbooks since I was about 10 years old. I wasn’t always consistent, but when I felt like I needed another resource to let out my thoughts, they were there. They served as a visual diary if you will.
Recently, I’ve picked up my sketchbooks again. Right before shelter-in-place orders went into effect, I left San Francisco for Joshua Tree and I’ve been staying there since. We thought it would be best to stay put rather than traveling another 8 hours back to San Francisco.
The canvases that I was supposed to have shipped from Oakland to my studio were put on pause until it’s safe to continue building them. I brought about eight sketchbooks with me to Joshua Tree, and my goal has been to work in them consistently as things progress. Working in multiple sketchbooks lets me keep up my workflow as I wait for pages to dry. Recently, I’ve started referencing my sketchbooks as studies while I work on large paintings.
Maysha Mohamedi: The framework of a visual diary connects to your large paintings. To me, they each feel like a mood, or emotion, sorted out through the act of expressing color, line, and shape on a surface. They are generous in that I am also granted this catharsis simply by viewing them. I wonder if your recent increase in frequency of expression—assuming you are filling the pages of small sketchbooks quicker than you would a group of large canvases—will affect how you attack the canvases once you return to your studio.
Heather Day: That’s a good point… It feels like I’ve been studying for an exam. I’m hoping all of this “research” in the small works will translate into new ideas in larger paintings.
Suns Out Guns Out
Maysha Mohamedi
“The themes that I pursue—nationality, math and creation, language, visions of humanity, and the emotional valence of color and line—took on a supercharged flair against the backdrop of a global crisis. Most importantly, I wanted to make useful paintings that offer healing, inspiration and beauty during this time.”
– Maysha Mohamedi
5. Hilary Pecis to Maysha Mohamedi and Heather Day: How do you both start a painting? And how do you know when it's finished? As a representational painter, I have somewhat of a guide to help with the starting process. How do you figure out that first mark?
Maysha Mohamedi: I get into a state of meditative focus prior to making the first mark on a painting. I have no ritual or action to achieve this state; I’ve trained myself to clear all extraneous thoughts or concerns when I’m faced with the blank surface. First, I make sweeping pencil marks to delineate a loose division of space on the large-scale surface. I take the necessary time and space in between marks so that I only act when I’m absolutely compelled to. As mentioned earlier, I execute the marks using various levels of confidence; however, they all originate from a certainty that an action needs to be made in a particular moment and on a specific area of the painting. I have an intuitive connection to the tempo at which the painting is made, which is heightened when nearing completion: I can sense when the painting is three or four marks away from being finished. My sense of completion is tied to my idiosyncratic preference for a specific ratio of raw canvas to applied paint, and a desire to leave the painting looking alive and peculiar.
Heather Day: Similar to Maysha, I view my practice as a form of meditation. Rather than clearing my mind before working, I view it as a slow emptying process. My mind begins to clear as I paint and the marks I’m making are representative of that captive energy or recycled conversations or thoughts.
I often begin a painting with several works surrounding it in my studio. The other works in the studio are representative of where I’m picking up—allowing one piece to lead to the next. Let’s say I’ve mixed a small batch of Naples yellow for a painting. After painting with it, I may think, 'Now I want to make a painting devoted to that color and its relationship with Payne’s Gray.’ Oftentimes a small mark in one work is a signifier that it needs to be exaggerated in another piece.
Hilary Pecis: So interesting! I can very closely relate to both of your practices, while working within the parameters of representation. Like Maysha, I feel like the work is done once there is a balance. For me the balance is overworked vs. underworked surface areas. I can also identify with the notion of emptying that Heather speaks of, which happens when I am in flow. It is one of the few times during the day that I can be fully present.
6. Maysha Mohamedi to Heather Day: Heather, how has this prolonged separation from your main studio shifted your daily creative process?
Heather Day: Distance definitely makes the heart grow fonder. I miss having access to a larger space and look forward to getting back to the studio with a newfound appreciation. That said, I’m grateful for this time I’ve had in the desert. It has allowed me to slow down my studio practice and take space since my last show at FWMoA opened—which is hard for me to do. I work long hours and I’m fast paced. Out here I’ve been experimenting with small painting studies and using new painting mediums, along with digital work too.
“I have never been the best at anything, but I also really like a challenge. I think one of my strengths is that I just don’t quit, which has allowed for me to continuously work until either I got closer to perfecting my own style, or I was the last one standing. I also try really hard to not make excuses for why I am not where I want to be. For one, we all have a certain level of privilege that has allowed us to be an artist, and additionally many of our challenges provide fuel for whatever we are doing as artists or otherwise.”
– Hilary Pecis
Botanical Gardens
Hilary Pecis
7. How do you balance, or counterbalance, being in the studio all day? Do you have any guilty pleasures or side projects that act as a release from being in the studio?
Hilary Pecis: Being in the studio feels like such a privilege and I am genuinely so grateful to spend my days making art. That said, I do love to work out and run several days a week, which, along with physical health, helps keep my mental health in check. I tend to listen to audio books throughout the day while in the studio, and my guilty pleasure is listening to books about running, athletes, and personal triumph. I love relating my studio practice to athletics, particularly distance running. We are all hopefully in it for the long haul.
Heather Day: Yeah, I’ve found a workout routine that balances my studio practice. In January, I took up swimming and started going to the pool four to five days a week. Since I paint in a live/work studio, having that escape from my work is crucial, especially now. It gives me a sense of perspective when I’m taking a break from painting. I’m missing my time in the pool, but I’ve tried to replace swimming with hiking.
I also read as a release from the studio. I’m a big Joan Didion fan. I love her sense of authenticity, even in the face of somewhat grim subject matter. Lately, I’ve been craving her work more than usual. But, sometimes I find myself questioning that craving because her work can be gut-wrenching to read.
Maysha Mohamedi: I am a Joan Didion fan, too! I always wanted to find out which house was hers on the Malibu coastline and drive by.
Heather Day: I’ll join you on this adventure post COVID.
Hilary Pecis: Me too!
Carte Blanche
Heather Day
8. Heather Day to Maysha Mohamedi and Hilary Pecis: I can tell you both hustle. How do you maintain that momentum? Where do you learn that drive and where does it come from?
Maysha Mohamedi: I find great meaning and drive in pursuing a creative question which resists definition and evolves unpredictably. I would also like that my children have the experience of watching me become an expert at something, and all the associated highs and lows of concentrated study in a single area of focus.
Heather Day: Maysha, I like that idea of resisting definition. I’m dyslexic, so throughout my education I had to resist that label and work harder than some of my peers to succeed. Somewhere in that part of my life, putting in extra effort became a sort of muscle memory. Now, I use that feeling to fuel and progress my work even if I can’t see the immediate reward that will come from it. Commitment to the process is really important.
Maysha Mohamedi: I also connect to the muscle memory idea and, in particular, working toward something that might be painful or obtuse in the present moment. Perhaps it’s this common characteristic that has enabled the three of us to carry on in the face of such uncertainty right now.
Hilary Pecis: I have never been the best at anything, but I also really like a challenge. I think one of my strengths is that I just don’t quit, which has allowed for me to continuously work until either I got closer to perfecting my own style, or I was the last one standing. I also try really hard to not make excuses for why I am not where I want to be. For one, we all have a certain level of privilege that has allowed us to be an artist, and additionally many of our challenges provide fuel for whatever we are doing as artists or otherwise.
9. Heather Day to Maysha Mohamedi and Hilary Pecis: If you have to find some silver linings to keep you driven during this pandemic, what are some of them?
Hilary Pecis: Well, only time will tell how COVID has positively affected our lives. That said, I think that one significant aspect is that there will be a general understanding that business does not always need to take place in person—therefore cutting down on our carbon footprint. People are working efficiently from home, and maybe that means in post COVID that employees can work remotely one day. Or that gallerists don’t need to fly out to every art show that their artists have in other parts of the world. Perhaps the fashion industry can look for more local talent for their editorial and advertising needs, as opposed to flying out a whole crew to remote locations.
I’m also enjoying the way that Instagram has provided a platform for artists to be seen by galleries, since everyone’s screen time has likely doubled in the last month. Galleries have started using “online viewing rooms” to host exhibitions, which allows them to take more of a risk in showing an artist that might not have a market. And lastly, I think that this pandemic has provided us the realization that we all need human contact and that we are very interconnected. I miss my mom and close friends and even the class teachers at the gym, and I hope when this is over that my time spent in the company of others is focused and that I don’t take it for granted.
Maysha Mohamedi: In becoming unified in the pandemic experience, I have such love for other human beings. In particular, I further recognize the spectacular glory of women! We are pioneering, quick to band together, resourceful, and tenacious. The manner in which the three of us quickly assembled to engage and record our reflections of this unprecedented time—especially considering that Heather, you are a new friend to me—gives me hope for post-COVID times and our collective ability to bond, process, and reinvent a new normal.
Heather Day: The optimistic yet informed approach to your responses is what I heard when we first began the conversation and why I've been excited to continue to talk.
I feel that the internet is finally being used how it was intended, and we’ve all been training for this moment. It will be interesting to see what the new normal looks like and how we will value in-person interactions moving forward. I know I miss them.
10. What's next on the horizon? Any particular event or release you're working towards?
Maysha Mohamedi: My solo exhibition, I am the Oncoming Voices, is currently on view at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton. I am leading the activism workshop, "Who Are the BIPOC Abstract Artists?" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in August.
Heather Day: My solo show, Ricochet, opens September 12th at Diane Rosenstein in Los Angeles. My work will be in Untitled Miami and Expo Chicago later this year.
Hilary Pecis: This summer I have work in a group show at Halsey McKay in East Hampton, as well as another group show at Karma in NYC. I will also have works in a show at Gana Art Center in Seoul. My next solo show is at SPURS Gallery, Beijing in the fall.