By Dan Cooper
P'Town Women Magazine
2000

Jeannie Motherwell: Painting Again

Jeannie Motherwell has resumed her career, creating intimate collages that speak to all of us.

The name, of course, is familiar: she is the daughter of the late, great Abstract Expressionist artist, Robert Motherwell, and her stepmother for 12 years was Helen Frankenthaler. But that is a mixed blessing:

On the one hand it meant winters in New York's Upper East Side and summers in Provincetown. It also meant having your own loft and studio in SoHo.

On the other hand, starting your own career while living amidst the leaders of abstraction was, well, difficult. After a promising beginning, painting large abstractions of her own, Jeannie Motherwell simply stopped painting—for ten years.

Starting some three years ago, Jeannie Motherwell began painting again: small collages that speak of her life, of the new path that she and her daughter are now on. These are intimate works, so it was appropriate that they surrounded us as we spoke during her recent show at Cambridge's O'Neil Library:

DC: What got you started painting again?

JM: I have an artist friend who had re-started his own career. In conversation, he said, "When are you going to start painting again?" And I said, "I'm never going to paint again; it's just too much work!" And he said, "Why 'work'? Why don't you have fun with it instead?"

And so I did. I started making these collage-like little cards and began sending them to people—like postcards. And then, like a good friend, he kept after me, saying, "Now when are you going to start painting—really painting?" And I did. I started putting the collages on canvas.

And then as I did more, I started incorporating bits of text that had come to me via e-mail that fit in with things I was trying to say in my painting. I've always loved writing and poetry.

DC: The text came after the pictures, fitting into what was on your mind?

JM: Originally, the text came after the painting, but more and more I saw the two as coming together, in a collage sort of way. It wasn't even intentional. It just happened, and I really enjoyed it's effect.

It became a controversial issue for a lot of people, who said, "If you have a painting, why have something that says what it is about?" But for me it wasn't that way. My collages are about life experiences I've had, and for me the bits of text were a wonderful way of enhancing what I was trying to say.

In this one ("Eyes Look Take a Look"), those are my daughter's eyes and that is a Titian breast. My daughter was in the midst of starting her dating career and all that goes with that. I was doing the same thing, after my divorce. So we were doing the same thing, she and I, colliding and connecting on a certain level.

DC: Your daughter's eyes don't seem to be the eyes of a 16-year-old; they're much younger.

JM: Oh, yes. That was when she was six. It was taken by one of her teachers at Rudelle Falkenburg's summer art camp in North Truro.

When I cut the eyes out of the picture, my daughter was mortified. She said, "How could you cut up my face like that?" And I suddenly had nasty visions of Picasso and his depiction of women, so I said, "No, no, no, you don't understand what it does to the face in the picture, etc."

She got over it, and now she very much enjoys the fact that she's the star in the painting.

I don't use things on a personal level, although they ultimately become personal. I wasn't thinking, "I'm cutting my daughter's face up." I was thinking, "These eyes are stunning, and will look good in this picture."

DC: Her fear of cutting up the picture is interesting, because, at some subconscious level, there is a fear of infanticide in all of us. A friend wrote a book, So the Witch Won't Eat Me, that deals with that.

JM: That was also after the divorce and having moved. Like having part of her childhood ripped up. I think that's probably what she meant, and it was such a strong reaction—to my surprise—that I almost wish it hadn't been her eyes, so she wouldn't have had to deal with it.

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