Mieke Marple

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

"Bad Feminist" (Installation View)
Mieke Marple

“I no longer believe that compulsively helping and pleasing others will get me what I want—which is to live my most alive life.”

– Mieke Marple

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When I returned from my studio visit with Mieke, my good friend commented on how happy and light I seemed. Yet, if someone had sat in on Mieke’s and my conversation, those would not be the first words used to describe it. Instead, there was a fulfilling weight to our conversation and a familiar language shared amongst people who have begun to realize that there is, in fact, a ‘gentler, softer way’ when one is willing to stop numbing and armoring themselves from the world.

So yes, I was ‘happy and light’ after seeing Mieke’s powerful art and hearing the story of how, after losing herself to addiction and codependency, she found the path to reclaiming her art and herself.

There is something grounding and encouraging about meeting a fellow traveler…

Photo Courtesy: Andrew McClintock

Elizabeth Mathis Cheatham: While you received a BA in Fine Arts from UCLA, you chose to enter the art world as a dealer vs pursuing your art right away. Will you tell us a bit about your experience working in that world... the struggles, the lessons, and your ultimate decision to follow your passion?

Mieke Marple: When I graduated college I was—like many thrown into the “real world” for the first time—crippled by self-doubt. I was confident about my ability to help others, less so about my own creative voice. Art dealing was a way of immersing myself in the art world while avoiding the vulnerability artmaking requires. I learned a lot during my time as an art dealer at Night Gallery, including what it takes to be a professional gallerist and artist. I also saw—and, at times, participated in—the dark side of the art world. The collusion and price manipulation of artists’ work. The total disregard for an artist once their “hot” moment is over. The bad behavior at art fairs and after parties. By the time I turned 30, I was pretty disenchanted. I didn’t recognize the person I’d become. So I left the gallery and art dealing altogether. Although, that makes my departure sound carefully considered. The truth is I just freaked out and bolted, and realized why much later.

EMC: Your first body of work was inspired by something you turned to regularly when deciding to leave Night Gallery and pursue art full-time: tarot. Tell us about this series and how the body of work has evolved over time.

MM: Anytime there is great uncertainty, people become more open to spiritual practices. I grew up in a secular household. My childhood, while materially abundant, was spiritually poor. I became acutely aware of my spiritual deprivation upon joining a twelve-step program, which I did immediately after leaving the gallery and moving to the Bay Area. From there, I attended all manner of new age therapy retreats and listened to over 100 hours of Eckart Tolle. Someone at an Enneagram retreat told me that my drawings, which I’d just started making, looked like tarot drawings—and BOOM that's how it started. At the time, I was also working on a memoir (which I’ve since novelized). The way the Fool’s Journey in the Tarot mimics the Hero’s Journey was of great interest to me as a writer.

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

The Lovers (Tigers)
Mieke Marple

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

Bad Feminist (Blue Lace Medusa)
Mieke Marple

EMC: When we spoke initially, you shared of the power imbalance you experienced working in the gallery. Did that lead to your Bad Feminist series? For those who don’t know (I certainly didn’t), will you please share the full story of Medusa and what it means to you?

MM: The story goes like this: Medusa, a mortal, was raped by Neptune, a god. When Athena, Neptune’s wife (also a god) found out, she turned Medusa into a monster with snakes for hair and eyes that turned people to stone. Most people only know the latter about Medusa, not the former. This speaks volumes to the way we whitewash history (even fictional history) and propagate victim-blaming through ignorance. The Medusa story resonated with me on a few levels. Having been a young female art dealer who sold art to older multi-millionaire and billionaire men, you could say I was something of a mortal amongst gods. I was pretty ignorant of this power dynamic at the time. Blame the cockiness of youth—but I really saw myself as having equal power back then. However, when I left the gallery and my inbox went from 100 emails a day to 1 or 2 a week, I realized how disposable I was—not only to these collectors, but to the art world at large.

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

"Bad Feminist" (Installation View)
Mieke Marple

EMC: You described your Death (Rome on Fire) painting as a “rebuttal to Damien Hirst.” Can you talk about that?

MM: The painting is of the Death tarot card, which is the card of rebirth. It depicts a skull with a drawing of the Great Fire of Rome inside it and is covered with over a thousand dollars of gold leaf. The Great Fire of Rome, which happened in 64 AD, occurred roughly 400 years before the end of the thousand-year Roman empire—roughly around its “pinnacle,” or the beginning of its decline. It was hard not to be alive in California this year—with the fires, the pandemic, the protests—and not feel like something was both ending and beginning. I called it a “rebuttal to Damien Hirst,” because I both loathe and love Hirst. Clearly, we like many of the same things: wild animals, bright colors, butterflies, gold, diamonds, mythology (particularly, the Medusa story). I respect his entrepreneurialism and his weaving of art’s status as a luxury commodity into the content of his work. Hirst has a natural ability to create drama and glamour that I truly covet. That said, he seems like a man who believes himself God, like an embodiment of the worst of white supremacist patriarchy. Still, I delight in using many of his strategies to my own, very different ends.

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

Death (Rome on Fire)
Mieke Marple

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

Death (Rome on Fire) (Detail)
Mieke Marple

EMC: I love your approach to process—this belief that ‘the process is sacred and that one must give themselves the time to do things that don’t work to allow for organic evolution.’ To give oneself that space and permission sounds lovely... not sure I’m there yet, but I’m trying. How does that actually look for you?

MM: My biggest mistake before joining a twelve-step group was doing too much, too quickly. The pace of my life today is much slower. It is important for me to continually check in with myself about my decisions. Because I can’t separate life decisions from art decisions, my sacred process looks like this: I get lots of sleep and exercise. I go to meetings 3-4 times a week. I eat dinner at a table with my partner most every night. I work on my art or writing two to five hours a day, every day. I read lots of novels, rarely watch TV, and *gasp* don’t read the news. I limit my social media to 10-15 minutes a day and meditate 20 minutes every morning. I’m less “productive” than I used to be, but what I do is deliberate and, hopefully, sustainable.

EMC: You often paint elaborate “wallpaper” on the walls where your work will be exhibited. When I asked about it during our studio visit, you said you wanted it to feel “aggressively feminine.” What does that mean to you and how does that differ from the stories girls/women are often told about being “too much” or needing to be small to be loved/accepted?

MM: For context, I’m a cis white woman who grew up in a heteronormative white household. My mother was a homemaker; my father, an engineer and entrepreneur who sold his tech company when I was a teenager. My parents wanted greatness for me. Yet, what they modeled was very different. What they modeled was that a woman can only be indirectly great. She can only be great by supporting the greatness of others, which requires a certain amount of smallness or invisibility to work. The past few years I’ve worked hard to shed my impulse to be a behind-the-scenes person, to cultivate my inner diva. Hence the "aggressively feminine" floral wallpaper murals, gold leaf, and fluorescent colors in my work. I’m inspired by all things camp. I love people and things turned up to a 10 or 11, particularly when it's done with a wink or to inspire others, especially those who find it hard to be more themselves.

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

The Moon (Self-Portrait)
Mieke Marple

“I’m less “productive” than I used to be, but what I do is deliberate and, hopefully, sustainable.”

– Mieke Marple

EMC: I left our studio visit so grateful to have connected. Not only had I been introduced to a very talented artist, but I had also met a new friend who seemed to be working through many of the same challenges that I was being called to look at and address. Will you speak about your experience with codependency, having the ‘courage to disappoint,’ and how you have learned/ are learning to be yourself vs conforming or acting against what you feel others’ expectations are of you?

MM: Only when codependency released its death grip from me did I feel free to be an artist. This happened when I left the gallery and disappointed most everyone in my life. I’d define codependency as deriving one’s self-worth from others, rather than from any innate sense of self. As a codependent, having everyone hate you is your greatest fear. Actually, scratch that. Being isolated and alone without anyone to validate your existence is a codependent’s greatest fear. Which is all to say that after I disappointed most everyone in my life and discovered that I was still alive—not only alive, but happier—I realized that something was fundamentally wrong with me working so hard to please others, even if it brought me external success. I’m far from recovered from codependency, which I consider my primary addiction. Still, my life has fundamentally changed because I no longer believe in it. I no longer believe that compulsively helping and pleasing others will get me what I want—which is to live my most alive life.

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

Two of Swords (Choices) (Detail)
Mieke Marple

Image courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco

Two of Swords (Choices)
Mieke Marple

EMC: As you have continued to reconnect with yourself and your art, you have also been writing a novel. Tell us a bit about the premise of the book, your experience actually writing it, and what you learned along the way. I so enjoyed the chapter you shared with me and am desperate for more ;)

MM: The first line of my book, Love at Night, is: “Dealing art is like sucking cock.” It is a semi-autobiographical novel about a 33-year-old woman reflecting back on her bottoming out on sex and love addiction as an art dealer in Los Angeles three years earlier. No surprise here; it started off as a memoir. I was advised by an agent to novelize it, not only to protect myself from getting sued, but because doing so would allow me to speak more freely. My hope is that, while certain parts are fabricated or embellished, the novel contains a greater underlying reality that feels true. Love at Night is both a window into and a critique of the high-end art world. Mostly, though, it is about a woman sorting through her own baggage—figuring out where her flaws end and the world’s begin, and vice versa. Obviously, in writing this book, I did a lot of baggage-sorting myself. There is a freedom, I found, that comes with taking responsibility for harms caused. Owning what you are responsible for also means disowning what you are not responsible for. This process gave me the courage to make art that feels urgent to me. It took me four years to come up with that first sentence, to say exactly what I wanted to say how I wanted to say it—without hedging or refining. And that pretty much sums up what the experience was like for me.

Thanks so much for these thoughtful questions. Grateful to have you as a new friend!