By Dan Cooper
P'Town Women, 2000

Jeannie Motherwell: Painting Again (page 2 of 3)

DC: Tell me about "Labels Are Unfair." It certainly grabbed me.

JM: It's about having a famous father and stepmother, Helen Frankenthaler [they were married when Jeannie was five years old], who is a famous painter in her own right. That was one of the reasons I gave up painting. This sort-of signified my coming out from behind all that and not being so afraid. It may not be the best collage here, but symbolically it means a lot to me.

It expresses my feeling that I was finally moving away from that. When I got married, I took my husband's name, because I wanted to lose the association with the name Motherwell. But later I realized that was silly. You can't ever give up who you are. And that was a way of moving forward for me. Still, you probably noticed that I sign my paintings "JMoth" (my e-mail screen name).

DC: Tell me more about how you sought to express that in this particular piece.

JM: I don't think I did it intentionally. It's just that things started coming out, and I started seeing different elements. And then this poem came in, via e-mail, with this line in it about "Labels Are Unfair." And I realized that's what this piece is about.

I incorporated the D'Arches brand name. That is a fine paper my father used to use, and after he died, my stepmother, the photographer Renate Ponsold, gave it to me. So I asked myself, "Does it really matter what paper you use? Couldn't a cheaper paper do as well?" And, of course, it does matter; a fine paper does do better.

So, it's a kind of pun or metaphor for names and associations and what they really mean. I felt for many years that it was a blessing—but it wasn't always a blessing—to have the name, Motherwell.

DC: There's a lot of black in both those paintings. You've said that black is your favorite color; isn't that odd...black a color?

JM: For me, it has always been a color, and for my father, it was always a color. He used to say to me, earlier on, when I was painting, "You really do understand black!" It's like you ask someone, 'What's your favorite color?' and they say 'Blue.' Well, for me, black is my favorite color, because I see it as a tool for representing many different colors.

DC: But you also use other colors...here in the piece with your daughter's eyes.

JM: They are therapeutic for me. I remember, when I was making this piece, feeling, "This feels very good, this feels very right, this feels very honest." When I was painting years ago and painting very abstractly, I never felt really good, never felt this is really my statement. It may have been my father's or my stepmother's, but it wasn't really mine.

So the whole thing of incorporating realism and also text as bits with the abstract—those contrasting images are what I want to transcend.

It has different meanings for every viewer, depending on what they read into it.

DC: But you give us a hint by titling the painting.

JM: when abstract painting was at its peak, it was debatable whether paintings should have titles, for that gave clues as to what the painting was about. And my feeling is that it's very important to entitle my paintings. For me, it gives them an identity. When I talk about "Eyes Look Take a Look," I know what I'm referring to.

DC: I so like that title, because for me, eye contact is important, and when people wear dark glasses, we lose that. Is that why they're called "shades?"

The modest size of these collages, 9 x 12 inches, many of them, requires getting rather close. And the small font used for the text adds to that.

JM: I thought about that. The text is a way to draw you in to see more of the detail. And, frankly, I don't know if it is always going to remain that way. On the one hand I don't particularly love the font but I don't want to get into things like changing fonts, because then it becomes a design issue. I don't want to make the text pretty, I want it to be functional. I think design serves better in other places than on my canvases.

DC: Well, they certainly do have the powerful effect of drawing you in and establish something like an intimate conversation.

JM: "Stop and Listen," is a more serious work and also more recent.

DC: How recent is it?

JM: Last winter. My daughter was unexpectedly hospitalized. I was supposed to be visiting a friend then, and we had to put our plans on hold because of her hospitalization. That was the source of this piece. It's truly my tribute to her.

DC: Talk some more about her and this collage.

JM: Well first, this is a view out the window of our place in Provincetown—our summer residence. It's a home she and I have known our entire lives. It's very much a part of our blood. This photograph was actually taken during a hurricane and rainwater covered the window, which is why it's blurry. This is my coffee table from our home in Cambridge, so it's the combination of our homes and our connections that intrigued me. I wanted to go on the trip, but I couldn't because of her hospitalization. It's that kind of a metaphor.

DC: You had to be a mother...and the text...?

JM: It was an e-mail from the friend I was supposed to be visiting, about what we should do, and the text was his way of responding.

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