Pure abstraction, or art that does not depict identifiable objects or figures, is often considered “difficult” art; it’s much harder for viewers to identify with shapes and colors rather than recognizable imagery. Of course, this difficulty of looking can produce unique and complex visual experiences, as it requires viewers to focus on gesture and material.

In this exclusive interview with LE MILE, Jerry McLaughlin gives insight into his process, inspirations, and the hard-to-define world of pure abstraction.

Savannah Winans:
You studied medicine at the University of Cincinnati before transitioning into painting. How does your medical background inform your artmaking practice?

Jerry McLaughlin:
The most obvious answer is the emotional intensity of medicine. I was a pediatric critical care physician, which means I cared for children with life-threatening illnesses. Even though most children recover and go home, there is an enormous amount of trauma the child and family (and the medical team) experience. As a survival mechanism, I learned to disconnect from my feelings. That disconnect started to creep into my non-medicine life in ways I didn’t realize. I was really “shut down.” If I’m honest, I suppose I was quite “shut down” even as a boy. Medicine offered me more reason and opportunity to perfect that skill.

It sounds trite, but painting allowed me to visit those dark, disconnected places that I had been hiding from. Something about being alone in the studio, working intensely on paintings, in a space with no rules or demands—I could feel myself breathe and open up. I could feel all that sadness and hurt and anger, but not in this dramatic way you might imagine. When I paint, or think about painting, it’s like opening a small valve and this slow, steady stream comes out, letting the tank gradually empty. Only I know it will never empty; I just know it will never get that full again. And that’s enough.
There was a physical aspect to the type of medicine I practiced. I had to do technical procedures on my patients, and that required a lot of manual skill. I loved developing those skills. Painting requires manual skill, and I love that about it. Getting my tools and materials to do what I want is really important to me. I like doing things with my hands and doing things that challenge my dexterity. Finally, medicine and art both require a long-term commitment, both the learning and the doing. You never reach an endpoint. There is always more to learn and more to do. I like that kind of commitment. It’s a relationship.

Have you always worked in pure abstraction, or have you dabbled in representation? What led you to abstraction?

I’ve essentially always worked in pure abstraction. I was never the kind of kid (or adult) that sat around and drew things. When I was 10, the painting that made me want to become a painter was a Jackson Pollock action painting. It’s always been about abstraction for me. I did teach myself to draw and actually developed decent skills, but I never enjoyed it. I don’t enjoy recreating or representing what I see in front of me. I’m interested in ideas and feelings and words. I love abstract and conceptual thought. I must admit, a bit ashamedly, that I don’t even enjoy looking at representational work very much, certainly not depictive work. I appreciate it for what it is, but I really want the work to be abstracted or distorted in some way. I’ve always been drawn to art from the late 19th Century and forward, the “after Monet” period. So, working in pure abstraction was never a choice for me. It was the only path.

Your work is highly textural, so it can only be fully perceived in person. Do you see this as a deliberate reaction to the flattening effect of screens?

I have never thought about the texture in my work in those terms, so I have to say “no,” it’s not a reaction to that flatness. But my work does use texture in a very deliberate way that is connected to the flatness of screens.

All paintings are composed of five elements: color, shape, line, value, and texture. The first four are visual. We need our eyes to perceive them. Texture, however, is different. Although we can see texture, it is the only one we can also perceive with every square inch of our body. We can touch it. In fact, for physical texture, we don’t need our eyes at all. That physical aspect of a painting is something very powerful. Think about touching a tree when you’re walking in the woods, caressing an infant’s cheek, rubbing your dog’s belly, holding your friend’s hand, laying your cheek on your partner’s chest. There is an intimacy there that goes beyond visual. Physical texture evokes emotion in ways that the other visual elements cannot. And that is why I use texture the way I do, to elicit emotion and to create intimacy with my viewers.
While the texture in my work is not a deliberate reaction to the flatness of digital screens, it is a deliberate use of an element that cannot be captured by screens, an element that must be experienced in person to appreciate.

You look to poetry for artistic inspiration, which I find very interesting as poetry is a sort of abstraction of language. How does poetry guide your painting process? Are there any specific quotes or poems that seem particularly important to your recent body of work?

Poetry is a type of abstraction of language. So much of poetry is about moods and capturing a feeling. It’s about using words to capture something that transcends words. But poetry can also be just as much about formality, about a structure around stanza, syllable, rhyme, and meter.

For me, abstract painting is the same. It’s an attempt to evoke a mood or capture a feeling, capture something that transcends the physicality of a painting. In my own work, there is a formality. I set rules around media, shape, texture, color, line, and shape. I have to follow those rules yet still create something evocative and beautiful.
I suppose in many ways I’m using poetry to navigate the mess of feelings that live inside of me. It helps me find and focus my emotions; helps me clarify and distill what I want to say. I usually read before I start painting. Sometimes it's pages of poems, sometimes just a few lines. But when I’m done, I have a clarity that lets me be more focused and deliberate in my painting.

You moved to central Mexico a few years ago, and your series “adobe y negro” is inspired by the architecture and light of your new surroundings. Although your paintings are devoid of representational elements, this series is about a specific place. Can you speak on the connection between abstraction and place?

I’m not an artist who paints about place. My work is much more about the junction of formal ideas, moods, and feelings. But abstraction requires a visual vocabulary, and that vocabulary must come from somewhere. It's quite natural for an artist’s environment to impact their visual vocabulary. We tend to absorb the language around us, and that language comes in many forms: the local foods, the local styles, the local slang, even sometimes the local attitudes. Why wouldn’t an artist absorb the colors, shapes, lines, and textures around them? However, we often choose our environments because they appeal to us, and the potential visual vocabulary of any environment is enormous. So, I think that we absorb the visual vocabulary that feels personal to us based on our own aesthetics and personal tendencies.

People often say to me, “Oh, you live in San Miguel. It’s so beautiful there. It must really come out in your work.” Well, it definitely does, but not in the way they usually mean. They are talking about the bright reds and yellows and oranges of the walls, the flowers, the birds and trees. But that is not what comes into my work. Instead, it’s the grays and browns and whites of concrete and steel, of adobe and plaster, the geometry and edges of modern Mexican architecture. I’m sure there are artists whose vocabulary is not influenced by their environment, but I think for most of us we choose our environment because it speaks to us, and we absorb from that environment the vocabulary that speaks to us.

Your palette is quite restrained, consisting mostly of white, gray, brown, and black. What draws you to these colors?

This is a bit like asking someone why their favorite color is blue. Why are any of us drawn to specific colors? But I am glad you refer to them as colors. People have often asked me, “Why don’t you work with color?” as if black and white and gray aren’t colors, and only blues, greens, purples, etc. qualify as colors.

I guess a large part of my answer is simply that I’m drawn to them. I like them aesthetically. Something about those neutrals feels right to me. And the range of them is vast. It’s amazing how many blacks, whites, grays, and browns there are to work with and discover. They can be challenging colors to work with effectively as well. I like that challenge.
There is also something universal about those colors. They are the colors of natural materials: sand, soil, stone, clay, ash, and char. But they are also the colors of industrial and structural materials: concrete, cinderblock, steel, iron, adobe, and plaster. They are the colors of shadows. I love shadows, and I love all those materials.
These colors carry a mood of the natural and the industrial. Their mood also feels restrained to me, subtle. Restraint and subtlety are important to me. They also carry the moods I want to bring to my work: melancholy, longing, loss, hurt—moods people might consider dark or difficult.

Can you list some of your favorite abstract artists and describe the effect they had on you?

There are so many, but here are a few that come to mind as being particularly influential.
Pierre Soulages. I had started my “oscuro” series and was really enjoying the exploration of black through shape and texture when someone said to me, “You must love the work of Pierre Soulages.” I was so embarrassed, because I’d never heard of him. Of course, I looked him up immediately and loved the work. I ordered some books. And within a few weeks I had arranged a trip to France solely to see his work at the Pompidou, an exhibition of his work at the Louvre, and a trip to his museum in Rodez. I was in Rodez for three days and went to the museum every day. It was a powerful experience for me. It’s not just his use of black in his “outrenoirs” but his overall use of shape and texture and his near obsession with darkness in his work. It changed the way I look at painting. Seeing someone devote their career to darkness was liberating. And, of course, the sheer beauty of the work is inspiring. The richness and lusciousness of his surfaces, the importance of the paint or ink itself as an important subject of the work.

Nicolas de Staël. His heavy application of paint and the building of layers to arrive at actual physical, dimensional shapes on the surface of the work. His rough-edged geometry and the structure of his compositions. I’m particularly drawn to his works with a neutral palette. The subtlety of his coloration through heavy texture and layering is incredible. His paintings make me want to continue to explore the physical, textural aspects of my own work, to continue to explore how I handle edges, how I structure and compose the shapes in my work. The moods in his darker works, those somber moods that come from that neutral palette, that texture and geometry, they bring me to the kind of place I feel when I’m making my own work. I’m actually going to France this winter specifically to see a retrospective of his work at the Modern Art Museum in Paris. I’m excited to have the opportunity to be physically in front of so much of his work, to experience the physicality of it.

Hideake Yamanobe. I came across his work online years ago and was captivated by the combination of minimalism, materiality, and expressivity in the work. They tend to be smaller works. Historically I thought that for most minimalist work to “work” there was an aspect of larger scale required. His work taught me that isn’t true at all. It just has to be done correctly. He’s having an exhibition right now in Cologne, Germany. I wish I could go. I’ve never seen his work in person.

What feelings do your paintings evoke in your viewers, and how do those feelings differ from your own?

When I think about my own work, there are aspects I know I want to be there. I want the work to be visually beautiful. I also want the work to be emotionally beautiful but dark, like a memory of someone we’ve lost, like melancholy or longing. I want my work to feel powerful but in a restrained way. I want it to feel technically well executed, sophisticated, and nuanced in its composition, palette, and textures. I feel all of that in my work, but to convey that requires a specific connection and intimacy with the viewer.
I want people to be drawn to my work both physically and emotionally. I think for those people who do connect with my work, they connect with what I’m trying to achieve. I think it’s tough to not see the darkness, the formalism. Hopefully they think it’s beautiful, too. I doubt anyone walks away from my work feeling happy, energetic, or playful. I hope they do walk away appreciating the technical and formal aspects of the painting and they walk away feeling quiet and feeling touched somehow.

What are you currently working on?

I’m very excited right now. I have two projects going on.
The first is a continuation of the project I started at my artist residency in Ireland, painting with ash, using it as the only pigment and textural material. There is no actual paint. All the coloration comes from the ash itself. Any linework is drawn using charcoal I collect from the ash fires or make from recycled artwork. I use cold wax and acrylic medium as the binders. I’m in love with figuring out all the ways I can make the material do new and different things. Most of the work is on paper, and I build the pieces in only a few layers, sometimes just two or three. The work is very spontaneous and gesturally expressive. My movements, bold and subtle, are immediately recorded. But the line work is more strict. It brings structural and formal contrast to the gestural shapes. I’m exploring various types of ash and various ways of processing the ash to get different colors and textural characteristics from it. I’m also experimenting with canvas and wood panels as substrates.

The second project is an extension of my “oscuro” series: all black paintings that are an exploration of texture, shape, and surface. I’m expanding this series to push more deeply into the meaning of the word “oscuro” (or “darkness,” in English). I’m expanding the exploration of scale to include much larger and smaller works. Additionally, I’m pushing beyond just paint to explore darkness, including other materials such as concrete, paper, steel, sand, ash, textiles, and more. There is also 3D work. This series is much more conceptual, and I envision an entire body of work that could span multiple exhibitions.