Saskia Fleishman

Saskia Fleishman b. 1995 graduated Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a BFA in painting. Fleishman is based in Brooklyn, NYC. Recent residencies include: Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, Trestle Art Space, The Otis Emerging Curator Retreat, and PADA Studios. Curious about curating other artists work as well as exhibiting her own, Saskia continues to collaborate with peers around the world. In addition, Fleishman has exhibited her work in Miami, Providence, Rome, San Juan, Lisbon, and Milwaukee. Statement: My current series of paintings and prints are generated through landscape photographs taken on recent trips and images sourced from my family’s collection. These photographs are then recomposed into geometric abstractions, op-art, or color studies based on the theories in ”The Interaction Of Color” by Joseph Albers, in order to deconstruct, reflect upon, and rebuild the viewer’s early memory and perception. I pair flat, smooth and hard-edge paint application aesthetic with textural materials, such as sand, resin, burlap and paper clay, to add unexpected dimension and reflection. The work explore people’s sense of nostalgia while contemplating moments in time, perception and our relationship to memories embedded in landscapes.

Interview with Saskia Fleishman

Questions by Emily Burns

Can you tell us a bit about what led you to pursue a path as an artist? 
I knew that I wanted to go to art school pretty early on in high school. I’ve lived in New York City since I was eleven, so I was exposed to the a lot of art at a younger age. I would take classes around the city with many different artists from various backgrounds while I was working on my portfolio for undergrad. Then I went to RISD pre-college and that sealed the deal for where I wanted to go to college. Once I was going to RISD and majoring in painting, I knew I was on the right path for myself and I wanted to pursue this career.

Can you take us through the process of making a painting? Do you look at any references when working?
I begin a painting with a geometric composition and a landscape photograph. I usually sketch or use photoshop to find a composition that works with the paired photograph. Lately, I’ve been deconstructing the photograph by flipping sections upside down, tilting horizon lines, or cutting out parts of the image entirely. I have an archive of landscape photographs that I will pull from while I create the general composition of the painting. These photos are ones I’ve taken recently on trips or older ones that I’ve found in my families albums taken around the Chesapeake Bay. After determining what the composition will be, I map it out and tape it off on the canvas.

How long have you been making work in the way that you are making now? How has it changed and what has stayed constant over time?
I began working this way after school while I was at Vermont Studio Center, about 2 years ago. During my time at school, I was painting completely flat, hard edge, geometric abstractions on shaped canvases that resembled Al Held works and referenced architecture. At this time, I was studying abroad in Rome while focusing on Op-Art and comparing it to false perspective in renaissance painting and sculpture and the architectural spaces in Giotto’s frescos. I was interested in creating skewed perspectives through architecture and making illusions purely with color. 

After leaving Rome and returning to Providence for my senior year, I started working much more sculpturally by adding, ceramic, form, turf, resin and sand onto my canvases as a juxtaposition to the hard flat edges. I began to dabble in airbrushing but I was still creating most of my gradients by brush at that time. I was tired of working super flat and clean and I wanted to use materials that were more difficult to control. I felt like my work senior year was unresolved and I was confused as to what I wanted to say or where I wanted my inspiration to come from.

Once I graduated I felt like a weight was lifted up and I was free to draw from what I actually felt personally connected to, which happened to be sunsets in Maryland and “The Interaction of Color” by Josef Albers. Then I went to Vermont with a pile of family photographs, a bucket of sand and an airbrush and started the early paintings from this series. Something just clicked and all my interests finally began to come together. 

It was funny, I was at my parents house in Maine the other month and they have this painting hanging up that I did in high school and it looks identical to something I would make now. It was a sweet full circle moment.

You have written that your paintings are “generated from landscape photographs taken on recent trips and images sourced from my family’s collection taken around the tidewater Chesapeake Bay area.” can you tell us more about this location and why it is meaningful to you? What are some of the unique features of this landscape that most often appear in the paintings?
This location is one I will always think about and return to. My mothers side of my family has lived on the eastern shore of Maryland for generations. My parents met in St. Michaels while my dad was there for work and I was raised outside of Annapolis on the bay in a beautiful old farm house until my parents relocated to New York when I was 11. My grandma has lived on the eastern shore her entire life and still lives in the same house where my mom grew up. Every time I visit her I’m so filled with peace and inspiration. The landscape around there is magic for me- it feels like something deeper is happening. 

Socially, the eastern shore is a heavily conservative and republican place. My family members were some of the only liberal progressive people that lived there in the early 1900s. My grandma will take me to where our family or her friends used to live and certain memories are evoked. She’ll go on to tell a long beautiful story about those times and connect them to the present. The landscape is filled with intense history and life cycles that I feel very close to. 

Visually, the bay has wetlands, marshes, and the water is often still so it reflects differently than other bodies of water. The air is thick and humid. You can look across the bay and see a sliver of land on the other side, hovering over the water. That image that is engrained into my mind and repeated frequently in my paintings. 

Joseph Albers', The Interaction Of Color is an important reference for you. How do you integrate these color combinations and elements into the paintings?
Many of my compositional choices are based off of the color study compositions in The Interaction of Color. For example, the slash motif, a square within a square, or pairing two images side by side on one canvas. Some pieces are directly based on the color studies and others stray away from them. 

Albers’ book has been an integral part of my practice and personal philosophy since taking the Albers color class and reading the book. In each lesson, we see a color printed on paper change right before our eyes, depending on what color is being influenced by another. We learn about temperatures, mixing, vibrating colors, transparencies. But the book is not just about color, it provides an alternative way of thinking and consuming the world around us where nothing is absolute and everything is relative. Through simple color exercises, his book teaches us to reevaluate how we judge our predetermined systems and memories in the world. All edges and boundaries are blurred in the exercises and what we think we know is put into question. The books exercises can be interpreted in many different ways and can be applied to politics and psychology. 

Can you tell us more about the significance of the color palette in your work?
My color palette is taken from the photographs I work with. About 90% of them are taken either at sunset or sunrise. I became obsessed with sunsets because of their beauty but also because they emphasize how fleeting time can be. I get excited about how different the sky can be depending on where you are in the world and how quickly it can change in just a few seconds if you are paying attention. 

Frames are an element that appears frequently in your work. What is the function of the frame for you?
The frame originally referred to the photographs I was referencing but now the frame has become a way to point to what is left out of or removed from the image we are left with. I also use the frame to acknowledge that the painting is an object and that I am creating something physical rather than an illusionistic space. 

You often work on burlap, which lends a unique textural element in your work, which you also combine with very flat gradients, and raised, textured, sandy elements as well. Can you elaborate on the juxtaposition of all of these different textural elements and surfaces on one canvas?
All the textures work together to create layers of illusions and depth. I began using sand mixed into my paint as a way to make clouds, land and water because I wanted those elements to create themselves instead of rendering them. I will pour the sand/paint mixture onto the canvas and push it around with a paint brush until the texture resembles what is in the photograph. Then, I will use the airbrush to directionally srpay these elements. This picks up the texture naturally and imitates sunlight and shadows hitting the clouds or the earth. 

This airbrush technique works with the burlap too because it is so coarse and uneven. When I spray the burlap, it picks up all these beautiful textures and the weaves. I also got excited about leaving part of the burlap exposed so that you can see through the burlap holes into the space behind the painting. It appears as if the painted portions of the peice are now floating in front of the wall behind it.

Creating hard edge gradients on burlap is very forgiving because it is such a rough surface. It hides any imperfections that spraying gradients on canvas would highlight. At the same time, working this way is helping me accept more imperfections in the paintings.   

You mention in your statement that you think about the malleability and impermanence of memory—is there any specific reason or story that describes why this is of particular interest to you?
The development of early childhood memory has played an important role in my work as I revisit my childhood memories frequently. I like to ask myself what is missing in these memories I’ve carried with me all of my life, did these events even happen, if they didn’t why are they in my head, and how are they different from what actually happened. 

These ideas about memory carry through to my adult life too. I think about how we suppress, change or revisit our memories and how our psyche works in accordance to this. 

In my work, how I deconstruct photographs to hide or to remove part of the landscape image are gestures that hint towards reevaluating our memories because they may not be exactly how we recall them to be. 

Can you tell us about your studio? What do you need to be productive there?
My studio is a small space in a building with a bunch of different artists. It has a window which I’m jazzed about. On days that I’m painting, I usually try to get there between 9–10 am and stay until 6ish without leaving for a break. I find that listening to music, podcasts, or rewatching movies make me feel good and productive while I’m in studio. 

Can you tell us about how to navigate the need to either stay focused and/or leverage distraction as an asset while working? 
I’m pretty good at staying focused and getting into whatever it is that I need to be in. Going out with my friends, exercising, cooking, watching a movie or tv shows, and social media are good distractions that I need on a day to day basis. I want to add more of the good distractions into the mix. 

For me, being stressed out is the only distraction that is so unproductive and harmful. I’m really trying to be better at it but there’s some days I just can’t get out of my head whether I’m in studio or out. 

Who are some of the artists you look at most often?
Tauba Auerbach has always been a big influence because of the illusions she creates. Tomashi Jacksons’ work and how she applies color theory. Avery Singers’ insane airbrush work. Alex da Cortes’ sincere and humorous pieces- especially the his video work. Letha Wilsons work mending landscape photography and sculptures together. I look at landscape painters like Elenor Ray and Jonathan McAllister. 

Lous Dodd, Alex Katz… Hilma Af Klimt, Anne Truitt, Agnes Martin, Mary Heilmann, Vija Clemins, and O’keef of course! And I will always be a sucker for Turrel and Flavin. 

I also look to film for inspiration. I love road movies like Thelma and Louis and Paris Texas.  

You have lived in Brooklyn for the past few years after graduating from RISD. What drew you to NYC and what is the environment like for you as a working artist? 
I’m very lucky that I’ve lived in Manhattan since I was 11 and my parents had moved to Brooklyn while I was at RISD, so moving back home was the logical thing to do. All my friends from school were moving to New York and most of my friends from high school were still here. I’m comfortable living in New York and setting up a studio wasn’t difficult for me. Since I am from New York, I have an everlasting love for this place, but I am itching to broaden my horizons. I’d love to have more space and be closer to nature. 

Whats up next for you?
Some things are up in the air right now but I am in a group show curated by Kate Mothes at Tiger Strikes Asteroids NY coming up in June and hopefully I’ll be going on a residency this year too! 

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us!
Thank you so much!

To find out more about Saskia and her work, check out her website.