AL: Hello, welcome to Sargent’s Daughters. I’m Allegra LaViola, the owner of Sargent’s Daughters, and this is Suzannah Wainhouse and Robert Nava. We’re here to talk about Suzannah’s show, Mute Swan.

SW: This work is called Protecting the Invisible, which is a concept that I am always thinking about.  This painting in particular is kind of a cumulation and the arrival of all of the players that had to show up for this series. You have some very ancient images here, you have this idea maybe of a spaceship, you have the old and the new, the past and the present. 

RN: I’m seeing the sun over this smile and perhaps a dinosaur figure.  There’s kind of an overall energy, or some kind of a push with these lines and the movement of either an implosion or explosion. 

SW: It’s definitely like a birth.  I feel like this was very much a birth of many things, and definitely an explosion of sorts. With the snake and the octopus and these sort of spirits, sort of lingering neither here nor there, and definitely the sun.

RN: I kind of when I first saw the show, I got the idea that, as directional as the lines are, with a sort of flow and movement of the eye, they’re also very thickly painted and have a staunch-like kind of slowed down quality as well.  I had this incredible feeling of stasis and flux at the same time, with directionality and velocity.

SW: The velocity here is pretty intense, and there’s a lot of movement in the paint. Many, many layers – this painting probably had at least 6 or 7 paintings on it before it became what it is now.  I feel like you can really feel that energy behind what we’re looking at. It’s very much alive. 

AL: You’ve spoken before about your interest in revealing the past and having the mistakes or the layers of life be visible in the painting.  I think that is something that makes these symbols recede and come to the forefront at different moments as well.

SW: I think remaining vulnerable is so important, and these paintings are very much about success and failure in their own right.  Those things happen on all levels, to all people, and that's very much a common denominator here.

SW: There’s the idea of failure and defeat, and then a triumph, a moment.  It’s a gasp, where you know you’ve hit on something that speaks to the invisible. I can't put my finger on it; I can’t really write about it; I can barely speak about it. As a visual artist, you have the ability to show those feelings with that level of vulnerability.

AL: Failure is an interesting concept, too. How do you know that a painting is succeeding or failing?

RN: Sometimes you don’t.

SW: And throughout that process there’s pleasure.  It’s such an important thing to remember that throughout those highs and lows, those successes and failures, you can experience quite a bit of pleasure.

AL: But people are scared of the word failure.

RN: Just the pressure of the speed.  The nature of society now feels like everything has to be a success every time, and you have to forget about the whole notion of failure.  Often, some of the best discoveries happen through failure, and I think what could be a failure in a certain time period could easily be a success in another time as tastes keep changing.

AL: And failure is important.  If it is really, truly a failure to–

SW: To move forward.

AL: To embrace.

SW: To move forward, regardless of success or failure. Like I said, all things move forward. 

AL: Robert, do you feel like your symbols and Suzannah’s symbols are connected or draw from similar sources?

RN: I’d like to think that the structure of meaning can come and go with any kind of viewership at any point in time. I like the way that Suzannah’s forms activate something which, in my reading, is very ancient.  There’s a lot of ideas of time and space. For me, when I look at Suzannah’s work, I like that it’s taking something that can reach a lot of people’s subconscious.  It’s universal and can be both literal and very abstract.

AL: It seems like there is a commonality here in your work and Suzannah’s work, in talking about these symbols. Robert, in your work too, you’re taking well known and iconic forms, but the challenge is seeing them in a new manner.

SW: I think that maybe they come from a similar mythology. We all have only a certain amount to work with at the end of the day; there are circles and squares and lines. And we have worship, and there’s a lot of excitement and adrenaline in these stories. The commonality is Robert’s desire to tell the story and my desire to tell the story as well, and the crossover lies in the ritual of story-telling.  I think our images are different, maybe there is a little bit of similarity there, but I think what we share is the desire to tell the story.