Trenton ReynoldsThis is Dabalon. My name is Trent Reynolds, and in this podcast, I have conversations with artists about materials. If you are enjoying this podcast and want it to continue, please subscribe or make a one-time contribution at dabalon.com forward slash podcast. Leave a five-star rating on iTunes and tell all your friends. The longevity of this program very much depends on your support, and I thank you. In this episode, I have a conversation with artist Cindy Danio. My focus in these conversations is talking with artists about materials, often to the exclusion of talking about their artwork. Cindy is at the top of her game, creating fantastic artwork, participating in really cool exhibits. I would have loved to talk with her about so many of her projects, shows, and writings, but that's not really what this podcast, this particular ongoing conversation is about. So, I want to begin here by encouraging you to go look at and read her work. You can find it at her website, www.cynthiadanao.com, and her Instagram account is @cynthia_danao. Danao is spelled D-A-I-G-N-A-U-L-T. Her writing is very insightful and fun to read. Her paintings are beautiful, and in a time when craft is often underappreciated, it is a breath of fresh air to see excellence in paint handling and material construction. Back to the subject of this podcast, I was interested in talking to Cindy in particular about materials because she is an artist who, unlike me, goes for depth over breadth when it comes to materials. She paints with oil paint on linen, and as you will hear, knows those materials to an extraordinary degree. One of the things that has been surprising to me about these conversations about materials is to realize how much variety there is in the amount artists even care about materials. Some artists don't really think too much about what they're using and jump from one medium to another depending on what a piece requires. Others commit fully to a fairly narrow range of materials and don't feel much desire to deviate from that. Some love the materials of art making just as materials. The smells, the feel of smooshing paint around, and some only see materials as a means to express something. And so I still feel like I don't quite know what this podcast conversation is exactly about.
What I do know.
Trenton Reynoldsat least I'm fairly certain, is that Cindy Danio loves oil paint on linen. She has strong feelings about the pigments and oil ratios she uses. I forgot to ask, but I think she uses mostly the same brush, which I would guess is about a 5/8 inch wide hogs hair filbert. She has strong feelings about the oil primed linen she paints on. It's been cracking me up recently to read Instagram posts about quality control issues with some linen manufacturers. Cindy knows these materials really well, and it was a lot of fun to talk to her about them. And now, here is my conversation with artist and eminently lovely human being, Cynthia Daniel.
Cynthia DaignaultI am a painter who uses very traditional materials. I am an oil painter. I paint in oil. I paint on linen. You know, all the bedrocks of very traditional things. And I think that's a reflection. I think that choice is a reflection of a few things. I think one is... At its core, it's probably the fact that I came into art really loving art history and loving, you know, the history of painting and historical painters, you know, and studying painting, whether we're talking about Corbet or Manet or Monet, you know, Picasso. But I started in that way as a traditionalist. I started, you know, doing figure drawing and And when you start on that path, it starts you in a very traditional material path because, you know, you're making very traditional paintings, your teachers are very conservative painters, and, you know, it's kind of unquestioned that like, oh, well, if you're following in the path of Picasso, you're going to paint on this piece of linen and you're going to be an oil painter.
Trenton ReynoldsHave you ever felt called outside of that or experimented outside?
Cynthia DaignaultNo. No. That's interesting. I mean, I think once in a while I do something else. Yeah, so on one hand it's like that basis in art history and then it's probably also that like... you know, I'm conservative in that way, I guess, you know, that like, and I don't know if it's that I never had any interest or if it's that thing where you take one step and you follow the step, you know, your next step follows that step follows that. that stuff, all of that stuff. And I never really jumped off the path in any way. And there was never some moment of frustration or disenchantment that made me want to go a different direction. I don't know. I was more into the idea of a practice and doing something for your life and getting deeper and deeper and deeper into it.
Trenton ReynoldsDo you think there's something about oil paint specifically and that way, mode of rendering, that... you resonate with that wouldn't be satisfied by exploring other media or is it just because
Cynthia Daignaultthat's where you started that's like it's i think i wonder i mean my my gut would say i kept doing it because something in it worked with me you know like it i also when i started i was really into vine charcoal i mean i was a charcoal i was a drawer long for as a painter like many people and vine charcoal has a very similar thing to oil paint it's it's very slippery and wet and you move it around and and it's it's kind of like very imprecise in that way unlike you know pencil or hard charcoal or something so you know my guess is my personality is and the type of person I am and the way I like to work I like to work fast I'm a little messy I think that's all drawn to the materials. That said, there have been moments where I've worked on a piece or for some reason in acrylic and it wasn't horrible. But I wasn't so excited by it that I kept working with it.
Trenton ReynoldsWhat do you think that is? Is it the difference in color? Is it smell? Is it tactile?
Cynthia DaignaultI think for me it's the connection to history and probably the slowness of drying, I find. I mean, at a certain point you've worked for so long and you've gained a certain facility with the materials you have. Yeah. it's hard to give up some of that also, you know, like, um, like the, the, the malleability of oil paint or like all it's very specific, tactile chemical nature. It's, it's, you know, when working another medium now there's something disappointing, like, oh, I don't have that thing. I don't, I don't have that glide or smush or, you know, whatever, if you're in acrylic or watercolor or gouache or something.
Trenton ReynoldsWhy linen? Do you have strong feelings about linen or is it just because it's a premium material?
Cynthia DaignaultNo, I think some of it was just, I think it started again, like you wonder like, what is just the byproduct of choices you made 15 years ago that might have been arbitrary and that you just keep doing out of habit? or what, you know, but the funny thing is, something that you start for some arbitrary reason and you keep going out of habit, it then becomes preference. Do you know what I mean? Like, there wasn't something I preferred about linen at the start. It was just like, I was becoming a more professionalized artist and some older artist told me that he worked on linen, you know, somebody who's more established than myself. And I was like, yeah, linen, that's what professionals use. you know like like that's professional right and like so the reason i did it at first was just like that seemed to be what professionals did and i wanted to be a professional but um you know then after working on it for five or ten years yeah then it becomes like this preference where i prefer the look of the weave you know like i i prefer the and i work on i don't work on a very smooth one and i work on like a medium linen but it has a very beautiful weave and and You know, cotton duck has a very grid-like, straight-up weave without all the kind of beauty. So I think you do get seduced by the materials you work with. I mean, if I had to paint on cotton, I would do it. But, you know, it's not something I couldn't live without. But, yeah, you do start to, I guess, fall in love with the things that are habitual, I think, at first. Sure.
Trenton ReynoldsI think something about linen that's always seemed to me like there is something about the irregularity. Like there's little knots and little irregularities in the pattern that make it feel more accessible to me. Like the rigid, like cotton duck is so precise in how it's formed that, I don't know, there's this kind of, Clean distance, you know, it's like it's almost like more mechanical or something more mechanized
Cynthia DaignaultYeah I mean, I think it's also like Weave is a funny thing because you're the person Who spends the most time looking at it because you're right? your face is like right up in the painting at the distance you really feel the weave, you know and More than a viewer who's gonna be probably like 10 feet long like 10 feet back from the painting. So in some ways, those choices are also for you. You know, like there's something about very, there is something about, I think the world is getting back into this. There is something about, when we say like luxury items, I don't mean that. I think I mean like well-made things. You know, really beautiful, historical, well-made things. The history of linen goes back, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, almost a thousand years, right, at this point. Like, it goes back, like, and the actual industry, you know, in Belgium, you know, is like the people who make it now, we're still making it in the Renaissance, you know, and this is tied to fabrics and sale fabrics. And like, it's a very beautiful, well-considered object, like up from the flax that's then processed, that's then, you know, like spun into the fibers, that's woven into the linen. Like, I think there's something that we grew up in this time of like exploding mass consumerism. where things were made en masse and all production moved to China and it was just about quick and cheap, like the rise of fast fashion, right? That everything is designed to be used for a couple weeks and then thrown away. And I think for those of us who grew up in that time, there's something... very seductive and deep and important and incredible about something that is made to last, that's made with time and consideration and history and a very well-made thing. And it's why a lot of people are rejecting fast fashion and they want to buy only a few clothes that last forever from artisanal American craftsmen. I think there is the same seduction in using very, like, well-made materials that you're saying, like, I care about this thing. It's not meant to be thrown away. Right. Like, you know, like, I want this to last. I want it to have that kind of weight. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. It's not a piece of plastic that was made to be thrown away. It's something that, you know, from start to finish, from like nose to tail, is like in its whole making, every part of it, you know, is made to be kept, not consumed. You know what I mean?
Trenton ReynoldsAbsolutely. Well, it occurs to me, you listen to you talk, the care that you put in and the materials that you use and their longevity.
Yeah.
Trenton Reynoldskind of forms your, I don't know, the narrative, the continuity, the space and time that you want it to engage with, right? So like if you were to make this painting that is gonna dissolve, you know, not very well made, not a good material, it's gonna yellow over time, Just the choice of materials and the construction of it is saying that you only intend for this object to exist in a story that's much shorter, right? That's much more specific. And I find that interesting. The materials that we choose... in part dictate the conversation that we become part of in terms of a historical context, right? Do we want to engage future human beings in the conversation that we're participating in now with this image, or do we not care and are okay with it just disintegrating and not engaging the future?
Cynthia DaignaultNo, I was going to say, I think it's two things for me. It's like a conceptual thing and a pragmatic thing. And the conceptual thing is like, I want the paintings to be slow. I want people to like, you know, contemplate and feel them. And, you know, like having a really beautiful and slow material, like the materiality being that way. slow and considered and you know, well-made and beautiful to me it lends to like You know the consideration the slow consideration of the object like it's not fast fashion. It's not meant to be like fast food It's not meant to be just glanced at you know, it's something you can sit with like and keep with you I mean, that's the conceptual side of it
Trenton ReynoldsI think it's I think it's interesting too that you're I mean a lot you've done painting that is Like a la prima, you're going around from place to place and taking a couple hours to do rendering and moving on. So there is this kind of immediacy or directness or fastness, it seems like, in the subject matter that you choose and the way that you render. So this relationship between fastness and permanence. Does that make sense?
Cynthia DaignaultYeah, sure. Yeah, totally. But even so, even in one of those pieces that you're referencing, I mean, one of the paintings might have taken a few hours, but there's 365 of them. So to me, it is very much that... rub between fast and long like the individual is this you know small thing but the whole you know like the whole of humanity is much longer than than the individual or the single painting to the whole I mean there's also you know there's also the pragmatic for me which is You know, it's funny. I've met artists who are really interested with their work having longevity because they want to live on. Like they want their work and ideas to be here 600 years from now. And it's this form of like that ego idea of like, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to die. I want to live on. Like my work will be immortal. But I don't feel that at all. I think for me, like wanting my work. using really traditional materials and wanting my work to last without falling apart, which is not necessarily a popular idea right now, you know, or it's not necessarily in vogue. A lot of people don't really care about that at all, and their work is like... so flimsy in five, 10 years, you know, so many problems. But I, I also just like, I don't want to have to deal with that. Like, you know, selfishly I don't want to get a call from a collector. The work is falling apart. You know, like I had a conversation with a younger artist recently and he, And she was like, well, that won't be my, like, I was, she was doing something really nuts, you know, that was like totally against the chemistry of painting and the paintings were going to completely fall apart. And I was trying to encourage her, like, maybe she didn't, you know, she's showing in a gallery now, maybe she didn't want to do that, you know? or she wanted to rethink how she was making them slightly. And she was like, well, it won't be my problem. Like, they'll be sold, you know?
Right.
Cynthia DaignaultAnd I was like, what kind of is your problem? Because someone calls you and then you feel, like, embarrassed and you feel responsible. And, like, when the work gets more expensive, you feel really responsible, you know? Sure. Yeah. As a result of that, you know, like, I actually, my work has gotten, my materials have gotten, like, wildly traditional. because, you know, that thing we were talking about, about living in a time of mass consumerism that goes with art materials too. There's so many like products, you know, everything has to be variety. Everything has to be the new thing. So there's lots of like products designed to improve on things in painting. Right now you can buy like 60 different weird mediums, you know, new mediums to do this or that or whatever. Right. But the problem is, like, a lot of that stuff has not been tested. The way those things mix has definitely not been tested. You know, like, whereas, like, straight-up oil and straight-up paint, like, that's going to, like, we know from experience that that will last 1,000 years. You know, so it's, like, yeah, I've become more traditional and, like, eschewed anything that wasn't in use, like, 600 years ago, I'm not using anymore. personally, you know, like with very little exception. Okay. So I want to, I want things to fall apart.
Trenton ReynoldsNo, I think that's, well, and there's a respect for what you're doing, a respect for yourself, a respect for the person that, that is going to end up living with this thing that you're making, right? There's something like just morally that feels right about what you're saying, right? It's like, it's just the right thing to do. You know, it's...
Cynthia DaignaultYeah. With two exceptions, you know, or with a couple exceptions. Like... Sure. I do run a solvent-free studio because I, like, just really called BS on that idea that, like, an artist... should suffer and which includes like killing yourself to make your work work you know like and i you know having a kid and going through being pregnant like only doubles those things i do run a lead free studio now and i used to use lead but i don't use lead i don't use um solvents and i really use limit the use of heavy metals like um as much as possible. I use heavy metal pigments very rarely. You know, and that's caring about myself, caring about my son, caring about the earth, you know, like, and the environment and what, you know, what toxins I put out and trying to limit any toxins coming out of the studio. So, you know, those are the exceptions to my practice not being mimicking 600 years ago. Sure. Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsIn terms of brands, I've heard or I've read you reference Old Holland, Blue Ridge Oil. Are there other brands that you...
Cynthia DaignaultYou know, I try a lot of different kind of paints. Like different people's brands paint is good for different things. Like, you know, you might like... Sometimes maybe you want a paint that's more fluid or I'll get specific. So I use Williamsburg, Old Holland, Michael Harding, Blue Ridge and Robert Doak, pretty much those exclusively. There are some cases where I like one person's color more than another. Like, I really love Robert Doak's vermilion. You know, like he had a great vermilion that I was particularly attached to. You know, you might like one person's cobalt more than somebody else's or one person's Like that's like they're really strong pigments even still I mean they've gotten worse in the past like 20 years But they're still like some of the strongest pigments available by tube But if you're just painting all a prima and you already want something that's like totally fluid like really squeezable I'm like, you know like M. Graham or Blue Ridge or Doak, those are really, those are painting with a lot less pigment per tube, like a lot higher ratio of binder, you know, and those are all walnut oil. Those are all walnut oil paint makers. So the paint's a lot slower drying, which if you want You know, that's another thing, too. Like, do you want a linseed based paint or do you want a walnut based paint? Because if I'm working on something and I want it to be really slow drying and I want a lot of time into it, then I will pick a maker who who uses at least a 50 percent walnut.
Trenton ReynoldsI love this. You know, the percentage of walnut in there. That is so...
Cynthia DaignaultI think when I was younger, it's two things. One, I've always liked making things, you know, hand in hand with writing. Like I always, as a child, you know, I liked art. I liked making things. I was always drawn to doing art classes and doing drawing classes and, you know, kept that up. not thinking I would be an artist. I didn't go to college to be an artist, but it was a big part of my life, and I was going that way even if I didn't know it. But I think the idea of becoming an actual artist as a job appealed to me when I got to college, and I met professional artists, you know, professors, who, and realizing that like for them art wasn't just making it was also thinking you know that there when you're young and you're just taking like a figure drawing class art feels just like doing almost like a sport or something right like oh it's just something my body does or you know but I think once I learned more about or met more artists and it was such a conceptual practice for so many of them that then that felt more like something I was like, Oh, that, that is what I would do with a job. Like it is this joining of parts of myself. Like it is almost like a thesis, a visual thesis, you know, you are saying something. And I think a lot about the work is, as poetry or images poetry or that the images do carry ideas and feelings with them you know like in the same way that an essay can communicate ideas and feelings and in both cases you're leaving somebody with something you know and i'm a non-fiction writer i've never written fiction
Trenton Reynoldswhen you're making paintings do you um I don't know, process them through words sometimes? Are you thinking in terms of written communication as well as what you're doing visually? Or are you able to separate those two things out? Yeah.
Cynthia DaignaultNo, I mean, it's often written. It's often... I think a lot of it, too, comes from the same... Or recently, at least, from the same kind of like... idea soup or stream of consciousness void that the writing feels like it comes from there. Like things just pop out onto the page from like, oh yeah, this is connected to that and to that and to that, like things pop into your mind. And when I'm working on like a multi-panel image piece, it sometimes feels the same way. Like, oh, what about if that gets added? What about if that gets added? Which is almost this intuitive stream of consciousness practice of like what images end up or what content ends up. It's just like paint it instead of naming it. You know and like it's just an image instead of the word of the image. I mean they they definitely feel Related to me as practices and they also feel very different as practices. I mean like Painting is it's a lot easier to just write it down, you know, a lot quicker, you know, not so easier but There's a there's still the physical practice part of painting which is you know why I was happy to talk about materials because like I you know, I say all the time, painting is a material practice above all else, you know, like the ideas or the concepts in the work, like are all secondary or tertiary, you know, to the physical act of making the painting and the material reality of what the thing is, you know, the
Trenton ReynoldsDo you think that's an opinion or that's a belief that is widely held? No. I was going to say.
Cynthia DaignaultNo. I mean, I like.
Trenton ReynoldsI'm glad you feel that way. I feel the same. But I'm curious how you see that, you know, related to how it's more generally thought of.
Cynthia DaignaultI personally, like the MFA system. I mean, like I could gripe about this. Or it sounds like griping, but I don't mean it that way. But like. I'm sure it works for some artists, but I do think it confuses what painting is. This idea that the MFA system created so much talking about work, talking like, "This is what this is about," and you name it, and also the prevalence of conceptual art in the mid-century, and conceptual theory, critical theory. that people sit there talking about like what the work's about, what it relates to, what the concept is like, what the idea is or how it's justified by 20th century, like critical philosophy or, you know, like, um, and if people struggle to understand art and so they default, they default to this idea of like,
uh,
Cynthia Daignaultuh, Being cerebral with it. Like what is it about like or being linguistic with it like putting words to it? but for me like it's it that's like so far from the mark like to me painting is a spiritual practice and It's a material object and most of its impact is felt and and is seen, you know, it's completely wordless. It defies linguistic, you know, description, you know, which is why people struggle in grad school, which is why people like default to like, you know, using words and using philosophy and, you know, to, dipping into other mediums like philosophy to try to explain it. But it's like one should be dipping into like talking more about psychiatry or religion, you know, to try to describe it. Because what it is is like, to me, it's a felt thing, you know? And it's like, I do think a lot of, you know, talk about what the work's about really gets away from that feeling of what does an object mean? How does an object feel in a room? How do we relate to an object and to an image and to a visual object? And what feeling do we have when we see that work? How does that connect to people's ideas?
Trenton ReynoldsI think it also speaks to the anxiety that a lot of us have about having an opinion about something and noticing how we personally respond to things I mean, having an experience with an object, right? Or, or seeing, you know, seeing something it like relieves us of the responsibility of having an opinion and, and sharing that opinion. Does that make sense? Like, you know, that, you know, if, if you say, or agree with somebody else, then you've got the legitimacy, at least of having one other person with the same opinion. Sure. Anyway, I, I worry about that too. It's like, you know, we're kind of, um, I don't know. We're robbing ourselves of the opportunity to just have a richness of experience in life, you know, just to connect on a very intimate personal level.
Cynthia DaignaultYeah. And also just to like, I mean, I think part of it, you know, like,
um,
Cynthia Daignaulton the material reality of painting or people having this intimate relationship to making things and to what the parts are and what materials are and how wonderful great materials are, how wonderful it is to work with a great tool or a great brush or a great pigment. We make very little in our lives and we have very little relationship to our materials or even our food. We are so divorced from where it comes from in the land. how that works with paintings. And people don't have the same material intelligence that they did 100 years ago. With that literacy comes an ability to talk about something and comes an ability to talk about the differences. Like what makes one thing different than another? Like I was talking to a painter recently who was asking me you know, like workshop why her paintings didn't look great. You know, she's like, why don't they look good? You know, like there was a surface quality that was really unappealing, you know. And she didn't even have the words really to be – or enough of a relationship at all to even put words to like what the quality was that wasn't right, you know. And I feel sad for – I feel sad for students who – They don't get any of that in school. There's no talk about materials. There's no education in it. You have to figure everything out yourself. The internet is not helpful. You only learn that stuff from other people, but if you're never lucky enough to get surrounded by a bunch of like-minded painters, then... You know, it's hard to pick up.
Trenton ReynoldsYou just made the analogy to our relationship with food and how it's kind of delivered to us and we don't have a sense of its physical development of it as something that lived and grew up and was fed and all those things. Making that analogy to our relationship with maybe art materials and just materiality in general. Material literacy, I'm going to have to think about that. Or some kind of intuition that we don't have because everything is served to us complete and we don't have kind of a relationship to it as a... an object that comes from plants or from the earth you know i mean think about painting it's
Cynthia Daignaultlike a chemical practice like this understanding of chemistry and how materials go together this understanding like what a solvent is what an oil is what a pigment is like why why what a binder is why they why they last why they look a certain way why they're shiny why they're not like And that ability to, you have to do a lot of tests and do a lot of very rigorous work. Like if you're really engaging with it, there's a lot of rigorous work in testing different percentage combinations for your mediums, like understanding why one drives slower and faster and which is preferable for what you're painting and when it gets slippery or when it gets tacky, whether you want it stiff or whether you want it gelatinous and you know like that kind of rigidity that that would have gone along with like you know having to grow up cooking from scratch you know without recipes like you know those were skills that were really built into life in the early 19th and 18th hundreds and the early century and the early 20th century, you know, whereas we have lost a few of those like tinkering skills, you know, you can learn them. I'm not saying, you know, people don't learn them. I've spent the last 20 years, but I definitely feel like I probably started at a disadvantage to like a Rembrandt or something.
Trenton ReynoldsRight, right. Yeah. I mean, you could imagine having to, you don't paint if you don't actually make the paint yourself and procure the pigments and the oil and everything. Yeah. I think what I've noticed when, you know, as a teacher teaching art, there are moments, and it's what I love so much about teaching, where a student finds a material that they've never considered using, and all of a sudden, like, it resonates in a very... like, fundamental way. And in the material, they find new possibility. And it's like they're off to the races. They might have been painting with watercolor, and it was great, and they enjoyed it, and they, you know, had been painting with it for 10 years. But then they start making a collage, and all of a sudden, like, the world makes sense. And you can just see this, Like this instant aha moment that I find immensely rewarding. And I think a lot of us, yeah, I think people are missing out on that connection with a material, with process, with making, putting things together.
Cynthia DaignaultOr you know what it was for me? It's like I do a lot of grad student visits with people, like studio visits. And I've had this experience, honestly, like 12 times maybe in the last couple years where I go into somebody's studio and they're like struggling and they're having a problem, right? And they know something's not working with the work and in their mind, it's this conceptual problem. It's the content problem. like oh you know like um you know am i painting the wrong thing or this you know like what about the subject or this you know and it and i come in and sometimes it's just this very clear material problem you know and it's like it's like wait a second like what are i remember this specific studio i went in and like the paintings looked like so sickly and sad and like depressed you know like she wanted this like completely other feeling and i was like looking at her palette and i was like what is your wait break down for me what your palette is like what color what specific colors you're painting with you know and the only green on her palette was a phthalo green and she had like And she had like one, you know, solvent cup and it was like infecting everything, you know? And I was like, I was like, and she's like, I just want him to feel like, and I was like, no, this is not, this is no, this is not a year bad painter problem. This is not a like conceptual problem.
You...
Cynthia Daignaultyou need to go by brilliant and like get, get rid of that phthalo. Like, you know, like, and it, it like fix the painting, you know, like, and yeah, I think that's the thing for me sometimes is like, it's all important. Like I'm not, you know, we can talk about all of it, but you know, I, a lot of people seem, a lot of young students seem pretty disserviced by like not understanding that like some of the issues with their painting are like, you know, or medium. I mean, like mediums, like people, it's just like, that's a mess, you know? Like why is this thing so wet? And it's like, well, you're just like throwing 10 gallons of turpentine in it, you know? I can't help you here, you know? Anyway, I want to help people sometimes, but you try, you try.
Trenton ReynoldsIt hurts my heart that you walk into a studio and you've got like those solvent streaks, you know, where they've just trying to bend, you know, paint with oil like it's watercolor and just there's very characteristic kind of dripping that happens with solvent oil. paint um so i've i love your writing um but who who are some of your your favorite art writers
Cynthia Daignaultpeople who you emulate or respect i mean i think you know i i'm into like creative non-fiction writing i guess like people who blend some kind of fiction and nonfiction, like Joan Didion or Sebald. I mean, I really love Sebald. I mean, he's not really an art writer, but he is an art writer. So I'll say Sebald. Who's, you know... I think that, that, that writing really has a quality of one of my painting pieces. I mean, he's a genius, but, um, or what I would want them to be this kind of journey, take people on through many different things and many different ideas that connect, you know, to the deepest ideas in people's life about time and life and death and love and family and, you know, but bringing in all the world and culture into them, you know, um,
Trenton ReynoldsI love that, I mean, the words you use are very careful, but they're accessible. I don't feel like you let yourself get to all the fancier language, the words that are kind of the keystone words for a lot of art talk. And then you'll use... you know, cultural references that are, that anchor what you're saying in a context, I think, in just a really masterful way. And it's just, it's not just informative and thoughtful, but it's like, it's really fun to read.
Cynthia DaignaultI just, I, I, I, you know, I'm a populist at heart, Trent. If you look at my paintings and at my writing above all things, maybe either I have some kind of disorder where I just want to be liked, like, um, but I'll take it as like a populist. I mean, you know, the more people that
Trenton Reynoldsare at the party, the better. Absolutely. I think, well, you, you're really, I guess that points to my, what I complimented you on earlier is, you know, you are really able and open and
Cynthia Daignaultwelcoming, I think. Yeah, welcoming. You just want people, yeah. I mean, like, with painting especially, I mean, it's not to say the other kind of work is invalid. It's not. It's just like, for me personally, I wanted something that, like, my parents, could come to the museum or like the people I went to high school with or like you know it doesn't have to just be for an art a quote-unquote like art audience you know that it's okay if lots of people can like it if children can like it if older people can like it you know like that makes me feel it's just what I wanted for my work I mean it's to me it's equally valid to make something just for your peers or just for like a very small group of people um But I really wanted the work to be accessible to lots of different kinds of people, whether it's in, you know, on view in New York City or in Arkansas or in, you know, Florida or California, you know, wherever.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsCan you tell me why I should care about Shawn Landers? Shawn. I read half of one of his three-inch-thick journal books, and I almost felt like I was getting some understanding of... you know, why I should care. Can you explain? I know you've written about Sean.
Cynthia DaignaultWell, I wrote a piece on Sean. So, yeah, I wrote an essay for his monograph that was maybe 10 years ago. Yeah. and got very deep into Sean's work for that job, for that project. I like Sean a lot, and I think there's a lot in his work to care about. I think a lot of his work at the core, the shortest answer, is it all shares... It's about the metaphor of being an artist, and about the... like thinking inside an artist's head when they're making. So his text pieces were, you know, this attempt to visualize this thing that was going on inside all artists head, you know, like to paint the, the cerebral experience of making an artwork, right? Which is on one level, this self-portrait, like this mental self-portrait. It's also this, you know, like fictional self-portrait of what Picasso might have been thinking. You know, like, I really love those text works for that reason that, They are very tight that way because the painting itself is a painting that depicts the thinking of making the painting. You know what I mean? And I think they're very universal. These wild swing, they're educational and I think they... they visualize a universal experience, which is these wild swings between self-hatred and loathing and insecurity and feelings of grandeur. You know, like, I am a genius. This is the best thing that's ever been made. I am terrible. I'm hungry. I just want to go to a beer. This painting sucks. I'm awful. You know, like, I miss my girlfriend. Like, now I'm a genius again. You know, like. Right, right. To me, he spent a career exploring the psychology of being an artist, which is very relatable for the psychology of being a human. I don't know. I find that very touching because that certainly explains my experience. I have days in the studio where I am awful and the worst person ever. It's like I've messed it up. It's so terrible. And I have days where I'm just like, I am the greatest painter that ever lived, you know?
Sure.
Trenton ReynoldsI'll have to go back and look at his work and, you know.
Cynthia DaignaultYou can read my essay. There you go. Yes, I should.
Trenton ReynoldsI will. I will read your essay. Have you ever read the book, A Portrait by James Lord? He wrote about, it's a tiny book. He wrote about sitting for a portrait for Giacometti. And he documents a lot of Giacometti's self-talk and it's exactly the same thing. It's like, "I'm horrible. I'll never get this right." And he'd finish a day of painting and just wipe it all away. And then James Lord asked him like, "If you're so horrible and you're never going to get get it right why do you do this and then he says something like I'm the only one that could do it
Cynthia Daignaultbecause I am a genius I'm the only one
Trenton Reynoldsthat could do this impossible thing but I'm horrible
Cynthia Daignaultbut I'm horrible yeah I I think there's room for that you know there's room for like getting into the psychology of the artist yeah
For sure.
Cynthia DaignaultAnd he's funny, too. There's room for funny. People who don't take themselves too seriously and let painting be funny sometimes is also, I think, very sweet, very redeeming.
Trenton ReynoldsSo with him, tying him back to what we were talking about earlier, is experiencing his work primarily a physical thing, you know? or visual thing, or is this a situation where the work is more conceptual?
Cynthia DaignaultOh, both. I mean, you know, like, uh,
Trenton Reynoldsdo you experience his paintings and, and enjoy them on that level on the, on the, just the material visual?
Cynthia DaignaultYeah. I think it's, I think it depends which, which series or which work you're talking about. I think they're pretty varied, you know? But if you're talking about a text painting, like, I think text paintings are cool because on that level, you read them. But that's still this phenomenological experience of your body sitting there and you're reading while you're looking, you know, like, and your eyes are moving across the canvas. But you also see it as, like, this visualization of text and feel and think about text, like the... simplest thing like you know a drawing on a cave wall like tying painting back to this idea of mark making and you know making shapes and the brush work is shapes and yeah I mean I think any object is it doesn't matter whose work we're talking about any painting is experienced on a material level I mean whether it's uh you're getting a funny thing or you're having a cerebral experience or you're having an emotional experience I mean that's up to the artist but I don't think anyone's work is devoid of that that experience for me, physical.
Trenton ReynoldsLightning round on materials. Go for it. You have a picture of a bunch of black tubes of paint turned upside down. What black is that? I tried to get close enough to read the pigment and I couldn't do it.
Cynthia DaignaultOh, it's like a secret. It's a secret. Of course, of course you turned it upside down
Trenton Reynoldsso nobody would know. What? I was going to ask you anyway.
Cynthia DaignaultNo, I will say. You don't have to say. No, I will say I knew I was going to do a black and white show. I had made like a piece that was black and white. I wanted to sometimes like a solo show comes from a single piece that I want to expand on. Like I'm like, there's more there. Like I could spin that out. That's often where they start. Like some piece feels really pregnant sometimes. and I want to give birth to its kittens or whatever. And I had made a black and white piece that I was like, there's something cool about the pathos of this. It's very quiet. It gets very close to drawing and like connects back to charcoal. And like, it's really like highlights the mark making and my brush work is a lot about my work. And so I was like, this will be a really like boiled down experience. And yeah, When you decide you want to make a black and white show, and this is a good material lesson maybe, one could just start working. However, that show, I knew that I wanted it to feel just right. I wanted it to be just the right white and just the right black. And I was working wet into wet and so I needed a lot of time and so I needed a pretty slow-drying white to allow. So I ended up, it was probably one of the first times I really did the thing, which I always believed a professional artist did. and I didn't do until I was in my late 30s, which is I bought 10 whites and stretched a bunch of test canvases and taped them off and did little strips and saw with different mediums how long each one took to dry and which one yellowed the most. Wow. which medium it should have. And like I got, you know, then once I picked my white, I bought 20 tubes of black and like sat there and, you know, like made a little test canvas with each tube of black and let it dry and decide on like just the right one that I wanted. And you know what? It was no brainer. Like there are, It's amazing how differently they felt. It's amazing how a really cool black felt one way and a warm black feels a totally different way. The particular one I chose is a really interesting black because... it sits on the warmer shade, like almost towards a yellow, yellowy warm, not like a red warm. It's, you know, sits towards yellow black and it has a very gritty pigment. The pigment's not that smooth. And because of that, when, imagine you put down a wet white ground, like on the back of the painting. So like the painting has like a full wet white ground. And when... When I would draw some black over the white, like put some black on a brush and draw over it, the black pigment is sitting in front of the white. And that pigment is very gritty, so it's very spaced out in the oil. Yeah. And so it gave a kind of luminescence because some of the white's coming through. And it gave a very warm black because the black is sitting on top of the white. But when you work through it a little bit in areas where white goes on top of the black or where you mix the pigment more with the white, it becomes a very cool black because mixed with the titanium and fully mixed... when it wasn't sitting on top of it, when the white is more sitting on top of the black. And the titanium has so many more pigments that it's covering those black ones. So it really gets a lot of the coolness of the white. And so the paintings became, those ones could be more complicated because I could play with areas where I wanted the black to be warm and areas where I wanted the black to be cool. Yeah. you know, rather than just a straight monochromatic of white to gray. Like it gave me this warm gray and this cool gray and a cool white and a warm black. I don't know. It was just like, was it a clear choice when you found it? I mean, for me, I don't know. It was what I wanted, but like if I had wanted something that felt more cool or more like photography or what, I would have picked probably a different one, you know?
Trenton ReynoldsAnd for that series, were you using Kremnitz at the time or were you using a different white?
Cynthia DaignaultNo, I don't know if I made the right choice. I have some like, I have regrets about it. But the, at first, the first time I did it, the first show where I made a black and white one in that show in L.A., I used an M. Graham white because those are 100% walnut oil binder for the pigment. And so it's really slow drying. However, you know, I discovered later, and this is like my fault for not being on it at the time, but whatever, we learn things later. I don't know if you're following, but like, you know, as of like five years ago, zinc was, Zinc is being taken out of a lot of whites, like out of a lot of blends because of its brittleness. Because over time, zinc was getting added to a lot of whites because it makes it whiter. If you put a 10% blend of zinc into a titanium, you get a much whiter white. that has to do with how the pigment sits in the oil. And it yellows because it has to do with, yellowing in paint has to do with the linseed oil coming up and coming up over the pigment. So you have the oil in front of the white pigment so it gets a yellow tone. And whereas zinc, the way that the pigment sits in the oil, not as much oil comes up over the zinc. So, anyway, they were starting, like, over the last, I don't know, 20 years, they were adding a lot more zinc, 40 years, to titanium, but the Smithsonian did some landmark study, like, seven years ago that showed that, like, there's a real brittleness to titanium. Zinc if it's make like in thick layers that think really should only be used on top layers It's like a highlight like a you know a nose highlight on a Rembrandt or a cloud highlight on a Turner you know, but that zinc is not good like mixed in heavy amounts the way that people are painting and like 2021. And so most of the major paint manufacturers took zinc out of their whites. Like you can still buy a zinc pure white if you're doing highlighting, but they took zinc out of the blends, right? And at that time, that was just happening when I made that show. Like, Michael Harding hadn't taken it out yet, Old Holland hadn't taken it out yet, but Williamsburg had taken it out. Like it was in process. And at that moment, M. Graham has still had some zinc in their white. So I have some regrets about it because those paintings are slightly brittle, meaning they just have to be, they have to be really careful because they're on, if you're on panel, it's no big deal. But if you're on fabric, you know, they could crack. So after that show, I switched until, like I would love to use that M-gram because that walnut oil is so slow drying that like the paint is so fluid. But like until they take the zinc out, It's just not like a safe color. So everybody, I don't know, everyone seems to be coming along though. Like Michael Harding took it out this last six months ago. So I don't know. Zinc. That's my new thing. Be careful.
Trenton ReynoldsGot it. Got it.
Cynthia DaignaultAnd we're talking cracking in like six years or 10 years, not cracking in like 100 years.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah. That's no time at all. No. Cracking soon.
Soon. Yeah. Right.
Cynthia DaignaultAnyway, that was like a really long digression. It was like way too technical for anyone, so. I loved it.
Trenton ReynoldsNo, no, I loved it. In conclusion, I guess, just wrapping things up, what are you up to now? What shows are up? What are you working on? What can people go look and see what the latest and greatest with you?
Cynthia DaignaultWhat can people see right now? I have up now, nothing.
Trenton ReynoldsI think I have, uh, you just had like two or three big shows. Yeah.
Cynthia DaignaultSo I have, uh, I have a work on permanent collection at the Baltimore museum of art and I have a work called light Atlas. That's on permanent travel. It might be just came down from the Hudson river museum in New York. Um, it's traveling though. It will go somewhere else. I don't know its next location right now, but it will go somewhere soon. Um, So keep an eye out for that in a town near you.
Trenton ReynoldsWhere do people find, where's the canonical place to search for what you're up to? I use my website. I update my website.
Cynthia DaignaultTrent, this has been so enjoyable.
Trenton ReynoldsThank you so much for making time. I'm so glad you did. Thank you Cindy for talking materials with me and being so generous with your time. I love Cindy's work y'all. Make sure you check out what she's up to. Go see her paintings in person if you get the chance. You can see some paintings and read selections of some of her writing. on her website, CynthiaDagno.com, and follow her on Instagram at Cynthia underscore Dagnou. That's Dagnou spelled D-I-A-G-N-A-U-L-T. And thanks for listening to Dabalon. I'm glad you're there. I will have another conversation for you soon, so come back. Also rate this podcast on iTunes. Make a donation on the website and tell friends and family. And go see if you can make it through a complete Shawn Landers book and tell me what you think.