John Loughman: Creating Spaces with Painting and Poetry
Interview by Seamus Blackwell
How is it that you began painting in the first place?
I was lucky enough to be raised (Ojai, CA) in a home where drawing was just as encouraged as math or English or any other school subject. My siblings and I would be allowed to stay up past bedtime only if we were in our beds with a sketchbook and pencils. There were many late-night drawing sessions between my brothers and me. We had volumes of notebooks dedicated to certain subjects. I recall one where we depicted deep sea scenes, a consistent horizontal line on the top page intending to be the surface of the ocean and underneath it, types of fish and sea life... a type of saltwater procession. They were imaginary most of the time but looking back we would still set parameters in rationalizing how we could possibly create a taxi car fish or a type of shark that somehow grew 50 caliber guns for fins. I wish I can find those somewhere. I can easily just say I've been drawing since then.
In grade school I was super into drawing depictions of battle scenes, usually DragonBall Z fan art, making copies off of printouts from the internet (really slow internet from the local library). It was a strange mix being raised to think independently, but also growing up my parents were/are deeply Catholic and raised us around concepts of faith, heavy doctrine and ritual. It was not necessarily a confusing time but really an environment full of contrasts.
What came of that was my love of searching and drawing whatever the exterior to my reality was, then extracting my own whereabouts within such a spectrum of contrasts and creating spaces from that. I had the Pacific Ocean, the beach, the mountains. They were a natural escape from such personal and inward projections like the Rosary, Sunday Mass, Confession etc.
I learned that painting was what I wanted to do in this world; the two things really got me past just liking to draw were social anxiety and heavy metal. I was homeschooled then went to a small, budding catholic school of 50 or so kids then suddenly to a public school. In high school, I remember always going to the art classroom every second I could. It was my refuge and my art teacher noticed that. She gave me my own corner, a studio space of sorts. That gave me the courage to start painting. I started really getting into it then and was also encouraged to put all my focus into the idea of building bodies of work pertaining to narratives and story structures. I was enthralled with such concepts (narrative work). But when I say I didn't have much friends in school it's no exaggeration or even a sob story. I just preferred having that kind of space: creating my own as opposed to forming spaces within new relationships. Who knows?
When it came to the music I was listening to, there was some amount of desired shock factor in consuming the heaviest most brutal of metal. That part was conjoined with a lot of teenage angst but somewhere in there I gravitated towards this idea of abstraction and distortion in sound, and thought what if I can mimic those subtle, beautiful, surprising but violent moments in music and translate them into mark-making? Visualizing just that perfect amount of abstraction. to make the viewer come to their own conclusions about what spaces they enter when viewing That intention is why I started painting... to push the image further towards that goal. And to try avoiding distractions [chuckles].
Why do you think you gravitate towards painting for your voice as an artist? Any early memories that left an impression on you?
Yeah, from my most formative memories I have been creating images in an almost reactive state in some form or another. Whereas now I am relying on meditations of images and words which hark back to memories of water, certain figures, roads, and even dreams. I think a combination of seeing different environments as a child while simultaneously forming a language of any kind in response, really implanted in me an inner voice that still to this day rings true. I think it was to make sense of everything around me. Those sharp contrasts in upbringing I mentioned, perhaps. Maybe it was a singular incident and I’m constantly trying to paint the same image, experience or reaction as a sort of subconscious homage to what has been covered by layers of memory. This has a lot do with me drawing/sketching in a book as a daily, and meditative practice. Buts that why I still paint or why I am still gravitated to this medium. It's not only my preferred choice in communicating, but it’s mostly the means in which I find the most direct path to translating a language. Whether from dreams, observation, or a mixture of both and into a more consumable and finite form... or maybe infinite. I don't know.
I would like to think that my voice as an artist is unwavering or that I'm constantly producing but I've learnt within the past year and a half of quarantine, that stillness and not making a single painting can work wonders within a studio practice. Stillness calls me to question my relationship to painting altogether, and I feel conditioned and conflicted in this line of thought: do I fully know my voice in painting if I don't fully know its market value? What efforts have I actually made to build relationships with other painters, artists, galleries or collectors, etc.?
Of course, that same question often compels me to quit and still lurks from time to time. I put myself through these mental cycles asking myself whether I should stop.
Other avenues of creating almost act like barriers to any ideations of quitting painting altogether, but my existence as a painter compels me to ask certain questions about the value I want to put into my work. I want to make sure there’s a mutual understanding between myself and the viewer. And for the work itself to stand alone in title and image as inter-subjective as possible even without myself there.
Do you consider painting your primary medium then? Or are there others that you explore as well?
To prevent a manic and psychotic departure from painting (because that's what it'll look like), I have been learning to engage painting by bouncing off other mediums. Mostly sketching and poetry. So, for now it's all a mix as far as what exactly my “primary medium” is. Drawing is and always has been the central core to my practice and I’m bringing it into painting by now solely working on paper. Over the last few years I have been appreciating other artists' use of drawing as a "final" medium, showing the potential to not just be in service to painting. There's a lot that can be said about an artist’s intention in drawing. Knowing when to stop... in that immediacy one can signal to the viewer that, yes, when parameters are set and accurately described, connections to larger issues or concerns can be made.
Though I am way out of practice in draftsmanship within the scope of "academic drawing" (I haven't been to a normal figure drawing session since 2012?) I feel the most connected to drawing right now when it comes to conveying a personal language with such simple and concrete forms like a pencil, ink, or marker on paper. Somewhere in between those two...concerns in larger structures and a strict set of tools... becomes what I believe are parameters in practice. Drawing is more to the point. That’s another thing about it that attracts me to it.
What about poetry? Do any of the concepts are approaches in your writing overlap with your visual practice?
Sketching and writing titles as a form of visual planning led me to poetry. Poetry is something new to me and it started while I was on the road working as an art handler. I drove from Seattle to Portland, Bay Area to LA and occasionally eastward to Boise, Big Sky, Salt Lake and Vegas. There were definite moments of clarity that came with that gig. I would focus on phrases or words while my hands on the wheel, then I would hit a truck stop and start writing. Then back on the road again. I would and still do combine elements of social findings, descriptions of natural environments, certain dream states that mirrored waking realities all to bridge a gap between personal experience and memory. Between what was seen and what was felt, and tie it to larger, more abstract systems. Like economic and political landscapes, for example. For now, I am still writing poetry but in a different capacity (not on the road) and when I am in the studio or out at my day job I try to tie in visual elements to either write from or vice versa. It's helping me guide the stance of my work a lot better. There is always the possibility that it's real bad poetry but then again painters make a ton of bad paintings, so why not write a few bad lines?
There is an abstract but distinct quality to a lot of your art. How do you think you established your style? Did it feel like it took a while for you to develop it?
See, I feel like I don't have a style yet. But I may never have one. It’s something that I have always struggled with, finding an identity within the work itself. I don't want to force anything to be conscious in how I paint. That is to say, the intention is in the parameters I set (as I mentioned before) and that's about it.
I'm leaning into using a drawn frame within each work. i.e., When I am drawing, I tend to make my first marks a square or rectangle. This helps me plan out compositions in thumbnail form. I'm working towards identically painting pages from my sketchbook or smaller drawings. I want to still keep forms loose in that sense and not weigh down a composition by additive layers or meanings, which is something that I always fall into.
But establishing a style is scary territory for me. Painting is still something that feels very new still, despite finishing a BFA in 2010. Even down to how I work... finished pieces seem aloof and not pinned down in terms of style. I hop between mediums, variations of line, consistency in paint too much! I'm honestly happy with that and as much as it can be a daunting feeling not having a style that is hyper-noticeable, personable even. I would much rather get to the point where the work starts figuring out itself through trial and error, all to explore every possible outcome in a composition. Where the style is formed and valued over time, in my case over a decade if need be. I'm playing the long game when it comes to being a painter within larger discussions and viewership ...who knows?
What I can attest to is that the last three years I have been in absorb and react mode. Just throwing ideas on to paper and not having a definitive goal within each piece individually. I moved away from the figure to play with colors and mediums. But I want to delve back into specific figurative work where I'm painting real figures in spaces. It's something I have always strived for in a painting style... for it to be imbued with the subject catching that screenshot of both narrative and abstraction that’s transposed onto a sitting figure.
What are some subjects or themes that you tackle in your work?
It’s all very abstract in my head still and there is a lot to unpack from this sentiment but working on the road, driving the entire west coast during seasons of protests, quarantines, and personal lows have been on my mind. There was a definite fluctuation in the state of spaces that I experienced. An imbalance to say the least.
I'm always thinking of how my experiences can correlate to a visual language. Moving in and out of the studio and thinking how I can show the work and its physical history by centering every mode of practice somewhere between the image that's intended versus the stopping point I spoke of earlier. Making the work in its finality appear like a screenshot. This subject seems to find its way through intersecting what I know versus what the viewer knows. In this sense a type of secrecy is embedded in the work. This comes from watching current events on screen vs. watching as a first-hand witness. To have this knowledge of actual social, political, and economic climates experienced vs narratives at home about the same spaces seen and told altogether differently was discouraging, confusing, and became a cycle that once removed from helped me in such a tactile way by attaching a want, within in the work, for envisioning entirely new social structures to live and exist in, not just for myself but for the rest of society. That's essentially my core theme in my work, it's the byproduct of a painter in transit, figuratively and literally.
My work tends to be a response to the larger systems that govern my reality and spaces. There is a combination of using the figural form as a platform for both metaphor and symbol, where on the one hand I play with notions of perception, history, and narratives and on the other I seek new personal meanings of ritualism, nationalism and identity.
One example would be themes of narration that come into my work by fitting myself into singular scenes mostly turning into sequentially motivated small works on paper. Allowing the work to slowly become autobiographical and inward seeking while still holding to a balance between observation and abstraction. I guess my biggest studio question that always comes to the front of my mind is, “what is abstraction to me? And how do I represent it through observation?”
How has military life affected your art? Do you have any different perspectives after leaving civilian life, and has that influenced your work?
There's a mental cave I put myself in when in uniform, and maybe that sounds a bit harsh but it helps me. I'm always learning from this role and I'm at a juncture in knowing that the structure in this organization affects my creative practice in ways I'm still learning. For myself, I need to be ingrained in such an environment to know a) its harshness and b) its exact opposite. To live in contrast fuels the subject matter I want to visually investigate.
In this sense, being in the military makes me at times feel like I have imposter syndrome. I’m always one foot out, clinging to my time off duty. My roles as artist and sailor are conflicted, but there are many aspects to military life that I love like being part of a heavily subsidized organization that takes a certain amount of individuality away. No joke, I see this as a positive! It leaves a vacuum to be filled by my specific role as a parachute rigger. I like that it's the closest thing I'll get to in simulating some kind of Marxist existence. My specific task within a larger machine alongside a cross section of this country, citizens who have joined for many reasons plays a small part in knowing what it’s like to collectively move towards something. I love the comradery, but the direction is where I start feeling doubt.
I joined in 2013 and left for a sabbatical 2018 then came back about three months ago. I have the distinct experience of transitioning in then out, then in again. It's a perspective I'm willing and working towards telling. Riding out a certain era as a civilian was lifting but left a lot of doubts in my head about having to rejoin. Leaving for this period had a tremendous impact on how I see the importance of my voice which then was free of the structure, uniforms and hierarchy but was always in the distance. It loomed over me. This why I invest time in the abstracts of visually bringing up the horizon as a backdrop, a single line, for figures that sort of thrash in the difference of spaces. I don't know really; I try not to lend too much outer explanations with my military service or label myself as a military artist. I am an artist that joined, am now embedded but still see the power of being a painter in transit of sorts.
