interview by Jennifer Samet for Hyperallergic
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Helen Miranda Wilson: I made pictures almost before I could talk. I knew it was me, in the way that you know what you like to eat, and your favorite color, and what you are attracted to. But I always did it on the side; I didn’t really capitalize on it. I flunked out of Barnard College and worked some shit jobs, and hung out with friends in my hometown. It began to feel like I was on a dead-end street, so I asked myself, “What can I learn to do better, well enough to have it be a job, that I already like to do?” And I applied to the New York Studio School.
The tuition was very low then — about $600 or $700. I asked my father to pay it. Back then, you brought in a portfolio of actual works and a group of faculty would interview you. Leland Bell and Nicolas Carone were there, but by chance, Mercedes Matter, the head of the school, was not in that day. I told them, “I really want to come here and learn to paint and draw from life.” Of course, the thing that was not said was, “And I can pay full tuition.” If I had asked for a scholarship, I probably would not have been accepted.
A month into the first term, I had been trying to learn how to use oil paint. At the first critique review, Mercedes was there. My drawings were in better shape than the paintings — which were mostly small, as they still are by the way, because that’s what I like to do. I am hard-wired for it. Mercedes looked at them, and she looked at me, and her lip curled. She said, “How did you get into this school?” And, turning to the other faculty, said, “Where was I when she was interviewed?”
I had a mother who was very supportive and I didn’t have an inflated ego. So Mercedes’ words did nothing to me. I looked at her and said, “I’m here to learn how to paint.” She fell silent. She was totally disgusted. But by the end of my second year, she offered to buy one of my paintings, which she didn’t usually do for anybody.
JS: Are there specific things your teachers discussed that you still think about?
HMW: We had an eight-hour studio day, which is a lot. It was great. I got just what I needed. When Mercedes was teaching drawing, she was completely immersed in it. She believed in teaching people to see. I cansee, because I went to that school. It is like being able to taste, hear, and feel things by touching them.
One day, I was drawing from the model, and the model’s body was very foreshortened. I was struggling with it, and Carone came over to me and said, “The feet are closer to you than the head.” That was the light bulb. He wasn’t being condescending. You can look at it and measure distances, but, conceptually, you have to think about what you’re working from in three dimensions, and I wasn’t doing that. That was the beginning of really being able to draw from life.
If I’m working outside, for example, I’m trying to get all the different elements down in relation to each other. But, I’m also trying to think about how it all feels, and, if I looked up, how deep it would be up into the sky. That’s the same thing as realizing that the feet are in front of the hip. You have to understand that your eye is reaching through deep space and you have to translate it. I’ve always flattened things. I have an astigmatism. That’s one of the reasons it was so physically sexy for my brain to draw and look into deep space.
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