This week’s cover, “Jump!,” is by the artist Gayle Kabaker. “Summer definitely inspires me,” Kabaker said about the image, which comes just in time for Memorial Day. We recently sat down with the artist to discuss her work and influences.
You live in the Berkshires. Does that landscape inspire your work at all?
Definitely. I love the lush, green, rolling hills, the flowers, the lakes and ponds. My photographer husband and I went to our local lake to take reference photos for this cover. It was great fun getting kids to jump for us. But I am not at all inspired by cold and snow. In the winter, I’m always looking for ways to get out to paint in the tropics, or at least in a nice, hot climate.
So much of your art features water. When did that start, and why does it appeal?
I grew up in Hong Kong, where we spent our weekends either at the beach or out on our boat. Maybe that’s why I’m happiest near water and in eighty-degree temperatures. It feels like my “soul” home.
This past winter, I was lucky enough to spend two weeks house-sitting in Phoenix, at a home with a fantastic pool. Cousins came over to model for me and one figured out how to stir the pool with a broom handle to create ripples that made amazing patterns. I’d never really looked at the reflected light in a pool before. It’s just magical.
You teach fashion drawing, and have done a cover for the Style Issue. How does that passion play into your art?
I’ve taken a break from teaching this past year, but fashion always seems to work into my art. I just love painting beautiful gowns, patterns, and especially women. It’s almost as if it’s in my DNA. I’m always on the hunt for beauty.
Do any artists especially influence you?
I had a sort of epiphany when I saw David Hockney’s pool paintings at the Met. It was as though a little voice said to me, You must paint people and water . . . A few weeks ago, I got to see his exhibition “82 Portraits and 1 Still Life,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on my way back from painting in Mexico. I’d say he’s a big influence on me right now. I’d love to do my own portrait series of people sitting in the same chair.
When I feel my work is getting too busy or complicated, I look at Christoph Niemann’s, which inspires me to simplify. I love the paintings of Elizabeth Peyton, and an artist named Curtis Fields for his unusual use of color. He was a designer who became a painter later in life. He inspired me to stop using the expected colors, to paint an ocean red instead of blue. It's a great exercise.
For more of Kabaker’s Cover Stories, read:
"June Brides"
“Downhill Racers”
“Falling Beauty”
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