.aesthetic talk
SAXON BRICE
*From Renaissance to Reality
written + interview Jonathan Bergström
Saxon Brice is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work mixes classical painting traditions with contemporary topics, creating a dialogue between the past and present.
Brice’s practice spans oil painting, traditional draftsmanship, and digital media, focusing on portraiture that recalls the grandeur of the High Renaissance and Baroque periods. However, his subjects are not figures from ancient history but people from today, reinterpreted through modern ideas, myths, and the rapid technological changes around us.
In this interview with LE MILE Magazine, Brice discusses how his work has evolved, from combining traditional techniques with digital methods, to the ideas behind his solo show VIBE // SHIFT. He also discusses his continuing exploration of identity, mythology, and the surreal ways art, technology, and human nature intersect.
Saxon Brice
Madonna and Selfie, 2023
charcoal on paper
“The computer is an incredible tool, but the core of art, or at least my practice, will always be the struggle of the human hand manipulating a particular medium.”
Saxon Brice speaks with Jonathan Bergström
for LE MILE .Digital
Saxon Brice
MOYRA, 2024
Charcoal, sanguine and sepia conté, and gouache on paper
25.5 x 19.5 in
Saxon Brice
JESSI, 2024
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 in
Jonathan Bergström
You’ve worked with classical painting techniques and also embraced digital processes in your practice. How do these two approaches influence and complement each other in your creative process?
Saxon Brice
The computer is an incredible tool, but the core of art, or at least my practice, will always be the struggle of the human hand manipulating a particular medium. Like mp3 vs. vinyl, there’s a warmth and idiosyncrasy to the traditional exercise of art that you just can’t quite capture in digital. I tend to think that the two methods are working towards the same end goal from opposite directions. With traditional mediums and classical techniques you’re using this very real, cumbersome and sensuous material to finesse an alchemical illusion, whereas with digital you’re working backwards from something purely illusory trying to make it real. I’ve been experimenting with digital printing on top of traditional work to play with these questions, but I also love the flexibility of digital for compositional mockups and planning out pieces—change a color temperature or value on the fly, drop in a collaged element, move proportions around, etc.
You recently had a solo exhibition in Los Angeles titled VIBE // SHIFT. Can you tell us more about the exhibition and its central theme?
I’ve spent years since undergrad in relative obscurity, building my creative voice and technical skillset in the dark, so this show was kind of like a coming out party for me as a serious painter. Some broader ideas will be coming next, though the show was also a bridge for those. My friend Sean Monahan just released a follow-up to his 2021 viral essay “Anatomy of a Vibe Shift.” The new piece, “Vibe Shift America (boom boom beat doom)” is a searing account of the recent American presidential election. Whatever your feelings on the new political reality, it has become undeniable that we are shifting from one paradigm into something very different.
Growing up in the 90s, I feel like we’ve been living in Fukuyama’s “End of History” delusion my whole life, one that has taken on a very efficient and pragmatic but spiritually and poetically flat metaphysics. The works in VIBE//SHIFT were meant to be a gentle introduction to my feelings and beliefs about beauty and transcendence. My subjects are almost Jungian archetypes of our age: beautiful, self-consciously performative, and maybe a bit lost, but I want us to treat them seriously, so I felt I had to paint them seriously. I wanted to justify that struggle for something as fragile and precious as beauty, in a modern context that was sincere, rather than ironic or glib.
The paintings in VIBE // SHIFT are said to address ”an age where trends move the world faster than painting can catch up.” How do you view the role of slow, traditional techniques in today’s fast-moving, digital world?"
Man, it’s tough. There’s a current trend of “fast art” in the gallery world—the necessity of turnover and feeding the beast has lent itself to a very particular type of painting. In the classical era, and even up until the mid-20th century artists might take years on a single masterpiece. Searching for the perfect gestural mark to describe the spirit of a thing, or the perfect color or texture to balance all the disparate elements of a painting into one perfect sensory experience. Now the demands of the market and its timelines put pressure on artists to constantly “execute” without much room for the trial and error inherent to a deep search and discovery. I think if we want those types of paintings to continue to be made, then we have to convince the market it’s in our collective interest as a civilization to make time for, frankly, monetizing these slower, deeper processes. I was painting a couple of the works for like a year and a half until I got them close enough to “right” that I felt they could be shown.
In addition to the paintings, VIBE // SHIFT also included live duels and performances. How do these interactive elements connect with the themes in your paintings?
The general idea was to create this liminal bridge between our physical space and the pseudo-feudal world of the paintings. The performances and medieval/gothic set-dec reflect my background in acting, fashion and art direction. Honestly, it was so refreshing for everyone to go along with something a bit silly and have a lot of fun. I love the art world, but we all know it can be a bit stuffy. I think the “Vibe Shift” is also in relation to encouraging physical community and unique experiences—IRL relationships, as it were—especially after Covid. I have to really hand it to In The Meantime, the event space and creative community I partnered with, for working with me to make it such a cool and unique experience.
The tension between “classical beauty” and “contemporary beauty” ideals seems central to your work. Do you see this tension as a form of critique or more of a celebration of the complexities of our current cultural moment?
I have to say, probably critical over celebratory. I think the tension between the two implicitly suggests that we don’t take beauty very seriously anymore, even if we’re more and more obsessed by a facsimile of it. I think to take beauty “seriously” you have to have quiet moments with it, you have to have deep and abiding reverence for it, not just the desire to possess it.
In terms of process, how much of your work is based on live sittings versus photo references or classical paintings?
While I was living and studying in Italy, we basically only did “sight-size” drawing and painting from life. The intensity of that practice, made my skillset grow like 10 years in one. However, back in LA, the subjects I was interested in weren’t professional models, and I couldn’t ask them to sit for 30-50 hrs anyway, so I adapted my process: still beginning with a live sitting and a conversation, but then multiple photoshoots as well photoshop mock ups as I add more invented or old masters-inspired elements.
The challenge then becomes to seamlessly integrate all these elements, to keep them feeling really alive, and not just “photo real.” They’re really not photo real at all, they’re some kind of hybrid between Classical Realism, Idealism, and my own kind of psychological portraiture. I hope it imbues them with a kind of spirit that is difficult to achieve when simply copying a photo.
The paintings in VIBE // SHIFT are said to address ”an age where trends move the world faster than painting can catch up.” How do you view the role of slow, traditional techniques in today’s fast-moving, digital world?"
A lot has been said, and made, on the subject of “identity” in the last several years. Some good, some pretty dull. I think contemporary morays around identity tend to think of it as something obvious, immutable, largely external. The past, for all its faults, looked at identity as a bit more internal and full of contradictions.
That’s my favorite thing about people, discovering some aspect of them you least expect, exploding all of your preconceived notions about that human being or human beings in general. I tried to piece together this series of LA scenesters, hustlers and libertines from all over the modern “identity” spectrum. They all surprise you with their vulnerability, insight, generosity, or just good comedy about the world. I really respect that, and I wanted to elevate it to the kind of timeless humanism you see decorating the halls of great museums.
Saxon Brice
MAGDALENA (diptych)
Oil on wood panel, irrigation tubing, and maquette wire
62.25 x 51.5 in
“In the classical era, artists might take years on a single masterpiece. Now, the demands of the market put pressure on artists to constantly 'execute' without much room for trial and error.”
Saxon Brice speaks with Jonathan Bergström
for LE MILE .Digital
Having assisted artists like Doug Aitken and Jesper Just, how have these experiences influenced your personal artistic practice?
They both taught me so much about how to work with narratives thematically rather than literally as one would in TV or film. I think my time with them also relates directly to your question about the performative elements of my last show. Ever since early high school, I had all these interests—I kept bouncing around from music, to cooking, to martial arts, theatrical storytelling, and visual art. I think cutting my teeth with Doug and Jesper, as well as artists like Duke Riley, gave me this fantastic experience and showed me how all these interests could be pulled together into a larger, more operatic frame. Painting is just the beginning for me, especially after how well people responded to these larger elements in VIBE//SHIFT. I plan on slowly adding more objects and sound to my practice, possibly video, while continuing to play with performance and art direction.
When creating artworks for artists like Florence + The Machine, how does your creative process differ from the approach you take with gallery work?
With any commission work, you’re essentially realizing someone else’s vision. Florence + The Machine was actually submission-based, so I submitted, then I was accepted—done. But with a lot of the other commission work I’ve done over the years, a Katy Perry music video, album covers, or the paintings for movies and TV that I’ve done, I’m always painting as another artist. Sometimes I literally am producing the work of a fictional artist, and so there’s almost this roleplay or even character creation. I end up doing a lot of research, and, like an actor would, getting into the headspace of this character, their environment, their era, etc. There’s still me, of course. I have to believe they hired me because there was something in my work that they responded to, but it’s a very curated version of me.
You’re currently working on a new series titled Neo Spirito, that reinterprets the traditional Catholic art canon. What inspired you to explore this concept?
I’m not particularly religious, though as I get older, I find myself more and more open to these mysteries that I grew up being so cynical and dismissive of. I definitely didn’t grow up Catholic—my paternal grandfather was a very secular Jew, and I was baptized in a lovely but very “Jesus light” Episcopal church in LA.
However, I think this instinct goes back a long way. I recently discovered an old drawing I made in 10th grade of the creation of Adam, except in this version Adam’s outstretched gesture is mutating into a cybernetic arm, as if infected by the figure of God at his fingertip—an AI with its attendant angels. It made me laugh, I kind of surprised myself looking back at it. Whether you’re religious or not, I think these symbols are the oldest and deepest common language we have to describe what it means to be human.
They are the base of our metaphysics, at least in the western world, and for better or worse have been abandoned in droves over the last century. What better imagery, then, to juxtapose against the hyper-novel onslaught of humanity-disrupting technological evolution we’re currently facing?
In this series you’re drawing inspiration from figures like the Nephilim and conspiracy theories involving animal-human hybrids. How do these themes tie into your broader exploration of mythology and history in your work?
Myth is an intuitive, non-rational way of describing and understanding our world. There’s an interesting discussion taking place currently about the difference between factual and metaphorical truth—things that may not be literally true but true enough to our experience of the world, and therefore useful in surviving it.
In our highly rational age, I think many conspiracy theories sort of play that role. Some of course are useless and ridiculous, and those myths won’t survive long. But some, even if the details are wrong, are true enough that they hold memetic value to our understanding of an increasingly complicated and confounding world. Biblical creatures like the Nephilim may not actually be hiding at the core of the earth, but we have been developing genetic chimeras, like goats bred with spider DNA. Sounds pretty mythic to me.
Looking ahead, do you see the themes you’re exploring in these series continuing to evolve? What are the next steps in your artistic journey?
I see myself working through deeper and deeper ideas relating to Neo Spirito for a while and incorporating myths and philosophy from the classical period as well as the near east. I read about a new future-shock dystopian curiosity at least every month—from artificial womb labs the size of football stadiums, to gene splicing, to the creation of artificial stars. I’ve had these concepts building up in my head since around 2018, so I’ll definitely have a lot to chew on for the foreseeable near-term. After that, I don’t know, maybe I’ll start doing watercolors of peoples’ dogs…if we still have dogs.
Saxon Brice
BINARY STA
Charcoal and cured digital print on paper
84 x 78 in
“Myth is an intuitive, non-rational way of describing and understanding our world—true enough to our experience to be useful in surviving it.”
Saxon Brice speaks with Jonathan Bergström
for LE MILE .Digital