Gary Bolding
by Stephanie D ’ Ercole
Back in February , I was organizing papers at Gary Bolding ’ s home studio when I came across a typewritten resumé of his as old as I am . The fi rst page of the yellowed papers , still neatly clipped together , included the addresses and telephone numbers of just three people : Philip Pearlstein , William T . Williams , and Allan D ’ Arcangelo . The list of names reads more like an upcoming group retrospective at MoMA than a graduate ’ s references . I knew Pearlstein had been one of Bolding ’ s professors , but to discover these heavy-hitters of the art world on an unassuming document really reminded me that , regarding my educational lineage , I ’ m from good stock . As a former student of Bolding ’ s , and his current model and assistant , I consider myself fairly close to him . Though I feel much like one of his kin , I ’ m unremittingly learning new things about his multifarious past . I recently had the chance to ask him a few questions that came to mind when considering the gaps in my knowledge of his artistic career .
Stephanie : Why art ? Gary : I don ’ t remember not drawing . Reams of typing paper and pens and pencils from my father ’ s offi ce were always at my disposal . I found making art an amusing way to spend time .
I never thought of myself particularly as an “ art kid ”. I never took an art class except for one in the seventh grade . I was interested in all kinds of stuff : reading , music ( British Invasion and Memphis Soul ), science , and sports . I was consistently drawn to almost any kind of creative pursuit . Upon refl ection , I guess most third graders don ’ t beg their parents for sets of oil paints and then copy reproductions of Van Gogh paintings from the encyclopedia , but at the time I didn ’ t think it was abnormal .
My parents were intelligent , practical people who had lived through the Great Depression . I was raised to be a doctor , lawyer , or engineer . Being a professional artist of any kind was never a consideration . I had been an excellent student until my later teenage years when I became interested in things other than schoolwork . In college , I was a dilettantish slacker drifting from one major to the next . I played guitar and wrote songs , but was terribly self-conscious about performing in public . I continued to paint as a hobby . When I was a junior in college , I took a painting course thinking that I might as well get academic credit for something that I was doing anyway . Filled to the brim with the unearned arrogance of youth , I remained a stubborn autodidact , but was allowed to earn an art degree in my remaining four semesters . After spinning my wheels for a few years , I moved to New York City with my future wife , Jane . I studied at the Art Students ’ League , The New York Academy of Art , and Brooklyn College , and I immersed myself in the city ’ s galleries and museums .
So , why art ? A life centered around a creative practice was appealing to me in a way that nothing else was . It is that simple .
You have mentioned Meet The Beatles as your first introduction to art . Do you mean both visual and musical ? Yes . Meet The Beatles was the fi rst experience of art that I remember . It probably has to do with the work having been done in a medium that can be infi nitely reproduced without becoming pale shadows of themselves , like the plates of paintings in books . Like a Coke , my copy of Meet The Beatles was just as good as that of a kid who grew up across from the Met . I was always interested in making art , but this was different . This was being swept up in the creative work of someone else .
What was the flow between your representational paintings and your abstract ones ? Did you break away from representational painting to do abstracts for a certain reason ? The change was not strategic or intellectual . It felt like it happened at the cellular or molecular level . After I fi nished Double Self-Portrait , it was as if a switch had been thrown . I was done with that kind of painting . The practice of describing my subjects in minute detail — something that had once so engaged me — now seemed not only torturous , it seemed predictable . I was ready to try something I didn ’ t know how to do . I was ready for a new experience . Oddly enough , I am now employing some of the technical approaches that I used to make abstract paintings to make the new , large , representational Vaselina Springs paintings .
Were the abstract works a revisitation of an earlier artistic sensibility ? I started exhibiting in my early 20s as an abstract sculptor and painter . I then became a fi gurative painter in NYC after studying fi gure drawing for several years . Despite this change in orientation , my interest in artists like Cy Twombly and Richard Pousette-Dart never diminished . When I returned to abstraction , I struggled with the problem of how to structure a painting that has no image , but I loved the act of painting itself . Focusing on the physical properties of the paint and on different ways of manipulating it gave me great pleasure .
Do you see yourself pursuing something beyond Vaselina Springs , or are you too honed in on this project to think about what you ’ d like to pursue post-Vaselina ?
I don ’ t see an end to the Vaselina Springs project . It appears to be inexhaustible , plus it allows me to do so many different things under its auspices that I don ’ t see it becoming monotonous . I do have one non-Vaselina Springs project in the pipeline . For 2016 , I am doing an artist ’ s book project involving daily readings of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke . This has proven to be incredibly meaningful to me . I plan to begin another daily project in 2017 .
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