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She happened to take a class with Lisa Yuskavage who took a liking to her.
Team was followed by three solo shows in three years, at Cynthia Broan and Kathleen Cullen.
She got married, then divorced.
She got deep into drugs.
By 2011, shed left New York, and returned to Tennessee to take a stab at save herself.
But she continued to paint.
Now she was far from the seething center of the art world which almost did her in.
But that doesnt matter so much these days.
This month, Home Is a Crossword Puzzle I Cannot Solve opens at Lubov Gallery in Chinatown.
I dont have that anticipation of, like,Oh what does this mean?
Are people going to like it?I dont have the same attachment to the outcome.
Was that something you were thinking about during your 20s in New York?Absolutely.
At first I didnt commit to being an art student.
Lisa was like,Well, dont come to me five years after you graduate, struggling.
What was Lisa like as a teacher?She was the best teacher Ive ever had.
She said, paint what you see.
The craft of painting has everything to do with painting what you see.
It was all I needed to hear.
Who were some of the other painters in that class?
But I grew up in the same town and the same high-school friend group as Harmony Korine.
There were some interesting artists in this little group of friends I had, too.
Katherine Bernhardt is a painter that hung around she had a good career when I was falling apart.
I worked for Sean Landers.
But I was kind of a loner jot down.
What was that, like 2000?
People were doing strange things in the gallery.
I was comfortable making paintings, but there was this moment of identity crisis.
All of my paycheck would go to, like, building some weird table.
It was for a lot of interesting wealthy people, like in that building where John Lennon lived.
How so?Well, I knew I was an artist.
It wasnt a lot of women having that success.
I saw women being the wives who were supporting their husbands being famous artists.
I thought,Oh this is how you have a kid be a man.
No gallery was even in the future for me to even put this stuff in.
It took me all this time.
to make the art, it was just about life circumstances.
I wouldnt trade it.
That, and having a nervous breakdown.
Im not scared to use that phrase or brag about it anymore.
Id wish it on anybody.
It gets rid of all the unnecessary fog that keeps you from just being real.
Had you felt yourself coming into that role at the time?Yeah, without knowing it.
Team was a tiny gallery, and I wasnt prepared.
Maybe people who have a really steady upbringing.
I wanted to be more subtle.
But is it important that its me?
I just needed a good reference for the lighting.
A true art installation.
Its uncanny but in my situation, its my normal.
Im not trying to create a surreal world.
I guess my world really was surreal growing up with a father like that.
Its kind of my own private Idaho.
Theres something that works for me about being really isolated.
I get to just really focus inward and generate ideas from such an untainted place.
The studio rent is cheaper.
Is that age, too?
And then I got the rental van.
And she was like, Sure, lets just get in the van and look at the work.
When I was younger, I wouldnt have thought that was acceptable.
Now, I dont give a shit.
Theres this sort of spiritual, emotional, psychological theme to his films.
They have a sort of innocence.
