Gordon Massman (born 1949) is a self-taught painter and poet based in Lockport, Massachusetts.
Massman paints oil paintings out of fear of worthlessness, meaninglessness, futility, and death. He uses unrealistically large canvases to express equally large emotions, honing paint’s ability to convey ideas broader and more ambiguous than language alone. There is nothing taboo in his subject matter. Using thick layers of paint and abstracted imagery, his work tells stories of survival, control, procreation, power, security, ego, and vanity.
Massman’s subjects, usually psychologically distressed, are offset by a subtle sense of humor, either in the canvases themselves or in their witty titles. Parodying his own anxieties and those of humanity with poetic sincerity, Massman’s paintings are shameless confessions of the human spirit, unfolding in graphic, chaotic detail. “I picture it like a Kodiak bear attacking fresh carrion,” he says. “I yell at the paintings. I talk to them a lot in a vulgar and loud manner. I curse. Sometimes I throw brushes at the paintings.”
He approaches the canvas as a storyteller, seeking to bring out from deep within the depths of the impulses, fantasies, and delusions that most of us suppress or control in order to gain acceptance into civilized society. From insane joy to insane destruction, Massman seeks to expose it all.
Massman studied literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He teaches writing and literature at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts, and is an author who has composed thousands of poems over a 45-year period and published five volumes of poetry. Massman has also exhibited in the United States, and his work is included in the De Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
You were a poet for 45 years before you took up writing, and you describe that change as if your poetry had burned out. Was there a particular moment when you knew the poem couldn’t hold what you wanted to say anymore, or was it a slow transition?
I finally realized that I had exhausted the countless word combinations within my limited vocabulary, was writing the same poem over and over again, and had reached the peak of my potential as a poet. I never thought of myself as a painter. I can’t draw people, and I didn’t go to visual arts school. But when the words left me, something equally wonderful flowed into me. It is the possibility of expressing pure emotion through painted images. After years of experimentation and steady practice, I finally found the raw beginnings of my true voice. My poetry has always been unusually visual and unusually intuitive, so the transition to art was relatively smooth. But it took me years to fully understand the unfiltered power of a painted picture.
you said When you paint, the world ceases to exist. But with the port right next door, I’m concerned about the edges of the process. Does the view from your studio on Gloucester Pier act as a decompression chamber, where you land when you finish the painting process?
Lobstermen depart from three sides of my studio, which juts out into the ocean, most of them bearded, tough-looking men in Gruden oilskins, Carhartt pants, knee-high muck boots, black woolen hats, and thick rubber gloves. The diamond-glittering harbor and the ocean spread out magnificently. However, these people called “Gloucestermen” ride around on diesel locomotives killing people. Nature is but an illusion of tranquility. Because behind that fantasy, in the deepest oceans and deepest forests, animals are eating each other alive in blood-soaked slaughter zones. Campers vacationing deep in the woods hear them screeching as they are being eaten. This is a terrifying hymn to survival and death. This is what’s around me while I’m painting. I’m stuck inside my loud headphones and barely notice the “beauty” around me. There is no gentle landing spot for me. After work, when I get home to my wife and dog, I decompress with a marijuana joint.
I work with canvases up to 12 feet long, which I’ve been told is actually impractical. There’s something confrontational about that scale. Does size have to do with who you look at, or what your body needs to do to make it?
My pants size is 38. My shoe size is 12.5. My T-shirt size is XL. With my arms outstretched at 6 feet 1 inch and my skull measuring 22.5 inches, the size of my canvas is monumental. Nature made me this way. Big visceral emotions require a big insatiable surface. I don’t paint meticulously under strong light using a pinpoint brush and a magnifying glass. I paint a fiery storm of chaotic and contradictory emotions – anger, passion, grandeur, anxiety, rebellion – in large slashes, naturally, under only the ambient light of a window. I can’t paint in complete darkness, but I can paint pain and its opposite, peace, with an applicator, stick, brush, hand flesh, or sliced ​​and unrolled 200ml tube. It requires an oversized platform.
Have you ever been shocked by what comes out of you when you walk away from a completed painting?
everytime. As I circle around in the center of my studio, I wonder who painted these Stonehenge pieces. I exclude myself as a suspect. Because only I have no talent, without spiritual intervention.
title landscape and power This is interesting considering your work tends to be very interior-oriented. Did that framing change the way you think about the work being screened?
Unless the title refers to an inner landscape, it does not describe my work. That title was given by the curator, not me. If I were to title a solo exhibition of my work, it would be “Unraveled.”
I love your mirror picture. What does it feel like to draw a mirror?
In the mirror, the paintbrush meets your face. So, while drawing a mirror, you transform your face into a reverse self-portrait. I had an old mirror and painted it. I liked it, so I painted another one and the project became a series of mirrors painted like dominoes, keeping each other in place within my studio. However, these interesting flights of fancy do not truly represent the universe of my intentions as an artist. Although they shine alone in the distance, my big works are my planets and constellations.
I have to ask: Is the canvas where you stay, or is it some other form that gently tugs at your sleeves?
I wish I could paint the atmosphere, but the canvas fulfills my destiny, old-fashioned, no AI, no computing.r No graphics, no taped-on bananas, no gimmicks or illusions, no youth-driven desperation. I’m a mirage drinking dinosaur.
What excites you artistically right now? Is there any artist or music you’ve come across that makes you want to get back in the studio right away?
Our earth flourishes with art. Young people keep getting knocked out of the ballpark, middle-aged people discover their talents, and old people reinvent themselves in their children’s spare bedrooms. Galleries can’t keep up with it, critics can’t get it, and the world can’t keep up with it. Art is a noisy garden. My inspiration does not come from external stimuli, but rather from my own inner psychological wear and tear.
But art books are often spread out heavily in my lap, art openings regularly fascinate me, and Instagram posts constantly amaze me. I enjoy passionate music, from Beethoven to Jimmy Page to Miles Davis. But it’s the inner grind that sends me straight to the studio.
postscript
I don’t paint to decorate my house or match color combinations. Also, when painting, I do not take into account practical issues such as gallery representation or sales possibilities. Nor do I paint for tradition or established acclaim. I paint for my own hard-earned catharsis, but it’s my choice to paint. It’s okay to be ugly. It’s okay even raw. It’s okay to be unprincipled. Ridicule is okay. It’s okay to be primitive. it’s okay. I am only true to myself and out of control.
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
