Amelia Galgon

BIO

Amelia Galgon (b. Philadelphia) has lived and worked in Brooklyn since receiving her B.A in Art and B.S. in Computer Science from Lehigh University in 2017. Her work predominately focuses on the portrait and the figure and typically depicts close friends and family as well as her own self. Her most recent work uses the body as a vessel to play and experiment with line and color as a way of exploring queerness and her own queer lens. Her work has been featured in exhibitions across Philadelphia and New York City and in multiple online exhibitions, including with Tussle Projects, Visionary Art Collective, and Philadelphia Sketch Club. Most recently, she received the award for Excellence in Watercolor from Philadelphia Sketch Club in their 2021 Works on Paper Juried Exhibition.

STATEMENT

My work takes a radical look at queer individuals and their bisexual+ experiences and challenges readings of their identity that our culture often asserts based on it’s projected understanding of binary identity, sexual experience and desire. Using lived experience as a point of departure, the work invites the viewer into the space to engage with the body and notice how the playful relationship between the paint and the figure offers a nuanced representation of the subject. The contrast between the emotionally packed subject and the more refined space both celebrates fluidity as it pertains to forming identity and creates a clash between the subject’s sense of self and the exterior world.

Interview with Amelia Galgon

Written by Andreana Donahue

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? What were some early influences?
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing so pinpointing early influences is hard for me to do. As a kid, my family and teachers really nurtured my love to draw and so I’ve always had a huge support system that encouraged me to keep creating. I remember my family taking me to the Wyeth Museum, Rodin Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art. I continued to draw out of joy and I would spend a lot of my time alone with my sketchbook without thinking too much about which artists I was influenced by. In fact, for a while I was primarily motivated, like so many kids, to recreate the images I saw in manga and comic books. That’s probably the earliest artistic influence I can definitively recognize.

I always had this idea that I’d be making art forever, but for most of my life, I convinced myself to put art aside and pursue a more conventional career. I became interested in technology and for a long time, I wanted to be a web developer. After a few years though, I started to feel depleted. I wasn’t spending enough time creating. Now, at 26, I’m still straddling the two worlds of tech and visual art, but I’m trying to give myself the space to figure out what life as an artist would look like for me. I just want to do my best to prioritize crafting a life that would bring me joy, and know art is a huge part of that for me.

Where are you currently based and what initially attracted you to working in this community? Are there any aspects of this specific place that have surfaced in your work?

I’m currently based in Brooklyn, NY. I moved here right after graduating from undergrad with friends who were moving into the city for work and grad school and that made the transition to a new city quite easy for me. I was definitely attracted to the art scene in New York City and Brooklyn, but when I first moved here I spent a lot of my time looking for jobs in tech, while still trying to learn about artist spaces, particularly in the Lower East Side.

It wasn’t until I got laid off from my full-time tech job in early 2019 and began dealing with heightened anxiety that I really started to rediscover the city as a way of rejuvenating my artistic practice. I would go out every single day and sit in cafes for hours to draw the space and the people that would come in. The city gave me the chance to be an anonymous observer and share space and experiences with so many different people. The comfort I drew from that experience continues to influence my artistic practice. Luckily, not long after I lost my job, I got an internship position at Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run gallery in Brooklyn, which has connected me to some of Brooklyn’s art communities and really helped me seek opportunities, find spaces, and take my artistic practice seriously. There is just so much to take in here I’m always excited to see what other artists are doing.

What is a typical day like?

If I can, I really like to take the first couple hours of the day for myself. Much of my morning routine has been crafted from the circumstances of lockdown last year and having my studio at home. After I put on a pot of coffee, I usually spend half an hour playing with my roommate’s cat or reading a book before easing into my day. Any administrative stuff I have to do that day, like responding to emails or organizing my finances, will often be the first thing I do once I’m in work mode. I still freelance as a web developer so some days I work on projects for clients, but if I’m having a studio day I’ll put on some music and revisit or analyze the pieces I’m working on to give me an idea of how I want to proceed or what I would like to try next. I rarely work past 7 or 8 o’clock to help me conserve my energy.

What gets you in a creative groove? What puts a damper on your groove?

If I already have a sense of what I want to do that day, music is my go-to tool for setting the tone for the day. I often put on rap or punk songs with a strong emphasis on a woman's perspective, like Nicki Minaj or X-Ray Spex, to get into an empowered headspace. Other times I want to be in a softer headspace so I’ll listen to Khruangbin or jazz. I try to harness whatever energy I’m feeling that day. If I need more inspiration to find my groove, I always have an art book or catalog within arms reach that I can pick up and look through. Sometimes the internet helps, but I can get distracted while online so I try to stick with books as much as possible. Some of my favorites are Egon Schiele: The Paintings and Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.

Sometimes I break my normal routine by skipping lunch or dinner, skipping out on exercise, putting off errands, and staying up late to give myself even more time during the day to spend on my art. But this is actually what puts the biggest damper on my groove in the long run. If things start to pile up or if I ignore my body’s needs frequently enough I can experience weeks where I don’t have the energy to focus on work. Some days, my back and shoulder pain from sitting at a desk all day gets so bad that I can’t find the motivation to get out of bed, which of course makes the pain worse and harder to recover from. I feel like I’ve been pretty successful this year in finding that balance between work and life, but it’s a challenge that I’m constantly having to manage.

Can you walk us through your overall process? How would you describe your approach to manipulating materials? What about decision-making and editing?

My process usually begins with photography. I just use my phone to quickly capture moments in my life so that I can revisit them later to see if any of the snapshots that I associate with a memory inspire me to make a painting. Sometimes the photographs I take are semi-planned, particularly when I’m taking photos of myself in a certain space. Lately, I tend to be drawn to moments that look both mundane and intimate, so if I take a more intentional, less organic photo, I still try to curate an intimate narrative in my painting. Once I have a few photos, I bring them into Photoshop to play with color and figure out the final composition. Typically when I mix colors for my paintings I like to exaggerate the saturation; my eyes do it naturally at this point. Photoshop really helps me find the color palette and play with color to see if certain hues offer something different from what my eyes would normally pick up. Once I have all my colors figured out, I’m ready to start painting.

I try to start my paintings pretty loosely because as soon as my hand tightens up around small details it’s hard to revert back to painting more liberally. The way that I paint has changed a lot within this last year in order to adapt to creating work in a small space. The pace at which I move my hand has slowed down and the size of my brushes has gotten smaller, which has made my process feel much more meditative. I’m primarily working in watercolors right now and that medium wants to do its own thing at times. Within my paintings, I try to balance out areas where I feel like I have full control over the material with areas where I allow the material to lay however it wants. I’ll often over dilute the paint or make those areas really wet so that the colors can interact with each other or cause details to disappear.

I’m always taking photos along the way to document the work at each stage. Once I’ve gotten to all corners of the painting and I start to feel like it’s nearly done, I’ll snap some more photos and take some time to see if there is anything that sticks out too much in the painting. If so, then I’ll pinpoint what I want to fix and how I’m going to go about it before I go back in and edit the painting. When it comes to editing my work, I try to not do it too much because my hand can easily overwork the paint, especially watercolor. But when I do go back in with my hand to edit a painting, the process is very precise and intentional and always follows longer sessions of just looking at the painting without a paintbrush in my hand. Sometimes my editing restraint results in pieces that I’m not happy with, but there are always elements that resonate with me and influence my approach in the next painting.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work overtime? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

Figures and portraits have always been a staple of my work, particularly because it’s usually what draws me into a painting. A portrait has a way of embodying intimacy in a tangible object and I think I’ve always been subconsciously drawn to that. However, throughout undergrad and years after, I didn’t really give myself the time to reflect on why I’m drawn to certain images. My pursuit in art was much more about refining my technical skills whereas my concepts were very loose.

After coming out of a months-long hiatus from making art due to personal burnout and anxiety during the pandemic, I started to trust my technical skills more as well as think more conceptually about what I wanted to communicate. During my hiatus, I gained enough distance from my work and I started to see that the intimacy in my paintings was a reflection of my queer journey. Although I’m bisexual I never really allowed that part of me to be at the forefront of my art or even in my everyday life. I think it was a way of protecting myself from falling into a certain stereotype. I was afraid of being further ostracized in both queer and hetero spaces. But now I’m giving myself the space to put my sexuality at the forefront of my artistic practice. My identity has felt fragmented and lonely at times, but it’s also layered, complex, and liberating. It’s important for me to start representing that visually and intentionally so that I can work through my fears. I’m really happy to be at this stage right now and I think the work I want to make in the future is going to continue to explore these ideas even further.

As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities. Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?

My work has definitely shifted, but it took a while for me to adapt. I didn’t realize it then, but before I moved out of my studio and back into working from home I was on the brink of pigeonholing my art. I was often unsure of how much I or others would like my work if I deviated from my usual process. When I was in my studio, I would do small studies where I tried to switch up my process a little bit, but I would feel frustrated by the unfamiliarity and felt like I was losing my artistic identity. So I would retreat back to a familiar style. My rigid sense of self as an artist really kept my creativity from evolving from what it was four years ago.

Before the pandemic, my art style did change a bit in response to losing my job and some important relationships. But when we went into lockdown and I shifted my studio into a corner of my apartment in Brooklyn, I fell into a rut. Nothing that I painted felt good. Either because I wasn't working in oil or I wasn't producing on the same scale as before. I also wasn't taking photos of people to initiate my process. These self-judgments, together with the collective trauma of the last year, stopped me from creating.

It was around the time of the new year when I finally felt like I was ready to push myself to adapt and experiment with new materials, techniques, and concepts in my work. Even though I retained the themes around intimacy and portraiture from my past work in my watercolor paintings, I still struggled with the loss of my earlier artistic identity. While struggling with loss, it really helped to stay off social media and only allow a few, close people to witness my creative transition and give feedback. Today, the art I make is more representative of who I am right now. I still feel like I have some growing to do, but now I’m more comfortable trying processes that I’m much less confident about and really pushing through my artistic experiments. Viewing myself as a work-in-progress and recognizing that working through discomfort often leads to a stronger sense of authenticity is liberating and makes me much less concerned with finding a fixed artistic style than I was before.

In a time that seems to be marked by uncertainty, collective anxiety, and increasing social unrest, why do you think the perspectives and contributions of artists remain meaningful? Do you feel a natural relationship exists between your work (or the role artists play more broadly) and confronting established systems—of power, cultural institutions, or otherwise?

Oftentimes it’s an art that allows us to process emotions that would normally be difficult to do on our own. Making art feels like a safe way for me to understand how I’m shaped by my experiences and privately work through my own issues. But often I see art, literature, and music as tools to help me recognize what ideas resonate with me the most and what personal memories they evoke. It takes me a long time to understand why I find the work, book, or song so powerful, but in the process, I’m also learning something about myself that I may not have noticed in my day-to-day life.

I often reflect on which aspects of the environment that I grew up in work for me and the people that I love, which don’t, and what having a positive relationship with myself and others in my community look like. Deconstructing my environment also involves recognizing my privilege of not enduring the injustices around race and class that so many of my friends and loved ones go through and taking their experiences into consideration. While art has done a lot for my personal growth, most of the discourse online and in pop culture around dismantling systems of oppression started in Black Feminist spaces. Engaging in more Black Feminist art and literature has not only been enlightening for me but has also been informative for learning how to flip social norms on their head in my own work as a way of giving a social critique. Over time, small acts of resistance to the status quo can become powerful enough to shift mainstream culture. I use art as a tool to divest from systems of thought and reinvent myself, albeit on a very small scale. But I guess time will tell if my work becomes a catalyst for anyone else to create and continue the cycle of reinventing public discourse.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

There are a few artists that I look at so often that are deeply ingrained into style -- Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Jenny Saville, and Nan Goldin. Some more recent and contemporary influences are Doron Langberg, Jennifer Packer, Jordan Casteel, and Igor Moritz. I’m looking at more art from southeast Asia, particularly Japanese woodblock prints, which heavily influenced Schiele, Klimt, and other Austrian artists in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I’ve also been using Francis Bacon’s work as a jumping-off point for investigating different approaches to painting. I personally don’t like Bacon’s style but there is something about the way he paints his figures that I view as the epitome of queerness and really resonates with me.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

I’ve heard many artists recently share their experiences and thoughts on navigating relationships while keeping up an artistic practice. I didn’t know how to communicate my needs as an artist during many of my past relationships. The emotional energy that is required of me to keep up with my art is what would normally be expected of me to invest in the relationship, so I would compromise on many of my needs. My willingness to sacrifice coupled with my fear to communicate turned into resentment. I also held onto a lot of dialogue around art not being a reliable career and felt inadequate if a partner would express their disapproval of my choices. Some of the tips that other artists would say have been to not date people who are pessimistic about your capability to live as an artist. Others suggest having conversations with potential partners early about what boundaries you need to set in place in order to sustain your practice in conjunction with a discussion of how you can still have a compatible relationship where everyone’s needs are met. I’ve certainly learned from my experiences, but at the time when I was going through them, I felt really alone because I didn’t have people in my close circle who had similar goals and motivations. It was really affirming, particularly for my younger self who was hurt, to hear people share experiences that I resonated with. Since relationships and making art are two big parts of what brings me joy, it was really validating to talk to other creative people about how to allow those aspects to coexist.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

Right now I just want to spend more time in my studio. I’m continuing to come up with new ways of losing control of watercolor and other materials in order to treat sections or layers of my paintings differently. Currently, I’m most excited about including monotype prints in my practice. But I’m still in the process of reinventing.

To find out more about Amelia Galgon check out their Instagram and website.