Interview with Gordon Massman

Produced by Chris Munkholm 

VIEW PHOTOS FROM GORDON’S JULY 2022 OPEN STUDIO EVENT
TAKE A VIRTUAL VISIT TO GORDON’S STUDIO (JULY 2023)

Gordon Massman in his Rockport studio.

Last December, COSMOS met with Gordon Massman in his Rockport studio, for a firsthand look at his immense canvases of color and forms.  Our chat began with the obvious question, how did a poet transform into a painter? Subsequent to the visit, Gordon followed up with introspective commentary on his conduit to visual art and the new action in his studio:

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How would you describe your transition from poetry to painting?

After forty-five years of writing and publishing poetry, I realized that I could not take the written word any further; I had exhausted my capability as a writer while the creative muse still flourished within. Organically, I started expressing myself through painting. The surprise was that painting found joy where poetry found heaviness. I never sang while writing but singing (and dancing) fill my studio. Painting releases a part of me that I believed unborn. Only large canvases can contain my heart and even then, I spill over. 

Do similarities exist for you between the two artforms? What are the key differences?

I do not believe similarities exist between poetry and painting save for the fact that they spring from the same inexhaustible spirit. Yes, both tell stories, both validate, but language confines and resists faithful translation while painting expands and needs no translation. Painting impacts immediately. Literature requires the intermediary of literacy.

I Love You, Baby, 72 x 170 inches. Shown in the studio.

Have you been formally trained as an artist? Do you work on your own technique?

I have not been trained as an artist and believe that formal training, as regards abstract art, to be overrated. The university cannot make powerful and original poets or abstract artists. In my opinion formal education in the creative arts pulls toward pre-molded mediocrity. It can, in fact, ruin the impressionable. True art of any genre must be fierce, uncompromising, and independent. While I hold an MFA in creative writing, my power as a poet derived from reflecting on, analyzing, and learning from real life experiences. I do not methodically work on technique. It evolves as I evolve.

You are operating at a prolific rate of output. Can you share something about your process, and how you enter your painting state of mind?

I rarely—sometimes it's a necessity—do anything that I do not love, and I'm always "all in" with what I love. I love painting, as I loved writing poems, and with headphones blaring paint for hours every day. It seems like minutes. My process is mundane: I go to work every morning with or without inspiration and paint. Technique-wise, I shut down my intellectual function and paint like a lion tearing fresh kill. If my hands are not metaphorically bloody, then I have failed. I call what I do "Primitivism" in that I paint raw and impulsively and worry not about polish, ever. Emotion infuses my brushes, not concepts. I suppose I am prolific, but that is a byproduct of my engagement with passion. 

What artists and poets have influenced you in your 50 years of creativity?

The Insemination of God, 120 x 144 inches.

Sticking with the 20th century, in poetry it was the freedom of the Beats—Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Kesey, Burroughs & Co.—that fired my spirit. Their jazzy rejection of dry academia with its adherence to conformity and the "canon." Similarly, it was the Confessionalists who had the courage to make visible their inner struggles—Sexton, Hughes, Lowell, Berryman, et al.—who grabbed my attention.

In painting, again staying with the 20th century, it is the Abstract Expressionists that most speak to me—Pollock, Krasner, Rothko, Gorky, Hoffman, and all the others—who broke with traditionalism to forge a new way of seeing. 

It is fair to say that I most enjoy art that turns its back to the polite and acceptable. I do not think in the current world that manners have much to do with fascinating art. 

What motivates you to paint, and why do you paint abstracts? I have noticed, too, that many of your paintings are unfiltered, even pornographic. Why?

Abstract art permits freedom of movement, gesture, stroke, impulse, spontaneity, voice untethered to the kind of meticulousness representational art requires. It unfastens my inner buttons to my storm of emotions and sets them free. I have great respect for representational artists, but such strictures and minutiae work against my sensibilities. I prefer liberation from tradition to adherence to it. Form without substance—technique showcased—bores me, whereas substance without form has the potential to ignite. I personally have seen landscapes, seascapes, cloudscapes, portraits—external simulations—done to perfection through the centuries and have no need to see more. The frontiers of originality reside in interiors, not exteriors. Abstract art is my medium. 

I cannot speak to motivation without getting psychoanalytic. But I will opine that money and audiences corrupt art. My sole motivating factor revolves around emotional honesty, regardless of profit or fame. That demands an unfiltered soul.

Gordon Massman’s studio.