Peter LaBier

Peter LaBier is a painter, an art editor, and at one point loved Michael Jackson.

We all loved MJ at one point.  But none of us can paint the mythic, warmly unsettling images this man does.


Chief Magazine: At what age did you decide to really pursue art? How did you know it was what you wanted to do? 

Peter LaBier: I was always trying to make things when I was a child. I made drawings before I could talk. I don’t think I would have articulated it as “art-making” then, but it is essentially the same process. I think I have always known that I wanted to make things or rather, that it has continually proven to be a satisfying way to communicate and express my ideas.

What kind of kid were you growing up? What were you into during the developmental years?

I was pretty quiet; I liked drawing. I also liked to build structures with wooden blocks in my bedroom. I enjoyed dancing – I loved Michael Jackson.

Where did you grow up, and where are you living now? Feel free to compare and contrast the two. 

I grew up in Northwest Washington, DC, and I now live in Brooklyn. New York has a lot more going on – I think it is a great place to live if you are making art. It can be hard, though.

Goya, especially later in his career, is associated with depicting mythological creatures, especially large, violent mythological creatures, as in Saturn Devouring His Sons.  How much, if any, does Goya’s work come into play?

Yeah, I really love Goya’s work – his late work, too. I am interested in mythological characters from various sources – sometimes art-historical, sometimes from fiction like Donald Barthelme’s Dead Father. Ultimately, I try to absorb these source materials and have them floating around in my head. I like what happens when old ideas are recycled and reintroduced. My girlfriend is reading Bulfinch’s Mythology right now, and we talk about these ideas, too.

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Two of your more recent works are somewhat abstract portraits, calling to mind some of the characteristics of de Kooning’s work. Considering how divergent your style can be from one work to the next, you presumably have a range of influences, a list which probably includes some painters whose work is more abstract as well.

Yes, I definitely love some artists who verge on abstraction, although I tend not to be as excited about work that defines itself as purely ‘abstract’ or ‘figurative’ for that matter.  Recently, I have been looking at a lot of Albert Pinkham Ryder’s paintings.  His work can be really abstract, although I doubt he was thinking in those terms.

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Several of your pieces show men, perhaps giants, wading through bodies of water... Are these drawings part of a series?

Those drawings all come from the same source. There is a fresco painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Domenico Ghirlandaio of St. Christopher crossing a river with baby Jesus on his shoulder. The fresco is quite large, and originally I tried to remake it on the same scale. I never felt that the painting I made of it was very good, but the imagery of the colossal man in the water was stuck in my head. It ended up making more sense as a series of drawings. 

The focus of some of your work seems to be on deconstructing the human form down to the more basic geometric building blocks. One piece has human heads on sticks like balloons next to a human-like shape with a triangle in place of a head. Some of your human figures are also filled in with grid-like lines. What is your intention with your use of geometric fundamentals like these?

I am very interested in how drawing and mark-making can be used to describe volume and space. I think a lot of the time I experiment and make work with this fairly conservative and formal premise in mind.

Your work indeed runs the gamut from fairly descriptive facial portraits to almost purely abstract or geometric shapes. Which style do you find more successfully expresses your vision or is the style that you more enjoy trafficking in? 

I don’t think too much about style in my work, but more about different types of imagery I want to work with. I’ve always liked the idea that you can sort of do whatever you want from one body of work to the next, or even from image to image. In the end, your interests and your vision will most likely have consistency or at least be intriguing. 

Skeletons show up in your work; one is wearing what looks to be the headgear of a Buckingham Palace guard...

I think I have a soft spot for the skeleton form, especially in artwork. James Ensor does some great stuff with skeletons. I was probably thinking about that painting of his, Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring, when I made that painting.

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The way that you use shadow can be an especially dynamic means of emphasizing contrast, particularly in a piece with a supernatural or spiritual theme. What symbolic role do shadows play in your pieces?

I hope this doesn’t sound like a cop-out, but my use of shadows and darkness, especially in my drawings, tends to have more to do with light than with symbolism. I guess there is an obvious connection to drama and angst in the use of such heavy contrasts of light and dark. Often it is about setting up a mood or a context for shapes and figures to inhabit. Sometimes it can be way more interesting when a supernatural or bizarre image is rendered with a bright palette or a lighter touch. That is something I have been doing more and more – it’s just less obvious.

In your drawing, Gang Greeting, the four figures, one of which resembles a rotting corpse waving at the viewer. It’s as if the rotting corpse is welcoming me towards death. The result of the waving is a sort of eerie vibe, but I’m not sure why. Was this eeriness a desired effect in some way?

Yes, I was hoping to give each of the figures a deadpan, automated gaze.  That is partly why they are all lined up in a row.  I wanted it to feel like they were assembled there, for a meeting. 

Having all four figures make eye contact with the viewer and detach from the other remaining figures serves to underscore isolation between all four figures – they’re oblivious to one another. In fact, do the people in your work not often interact with each other?

It depends. For that series – dealing with gangs meeting, facing off, and as you know, greeting – I wanted the figures to be loose and comical, while conveying a sense of purpose.  It was sort of an intuitive decision to portray the figures as interacting on the surface but disconnected at the core.  Maybe it comes from how I interpret early Egyptian painting – the repetition of figures is so appealing to me, but it also feels alienating.  This is just my gut reaction – no basis in heavy scholarship on the subject.

One piece of yours reminds me of a Bosch painting, and another shows a small, red figure which may or may not be a devil character sitting on a man’s shoulder. How pervasive is religious imagery throughout your work?

I think there is an element taken from religious imagery, like my variations of St. Christopher with Christ on his shoulder, but for me it is more simply about finding a striking image. Religious subjects taken from Renaissance paintings or anywhere else often carry a great deal of fantastic imagery precisely because they are fantasies. So in that sense, religious imagery may appear in my work, but not in any literal sense.

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Another painting has an emaciated blue figure standing beside a beefier, red, devil-like figure. You seem to use colors in suggestive or symbolic ways. Do you sometimes see color as a way of projecting values about your figures?

Yeah, I think color itself can convey feeling and emotion – not necessarily the ones you would want them to. I find it most stimulating when those feelings triggered by a color are hard to define or pin down.

One painting of yours that I like a lot uses broad brush strokes and depicts three standing figures, similar to the way that Picasso displayed his figures in Three Musicians – similar, that is, if the middle musician had gotten bored and started masturbating. By the way, is that indeed what’s going on here – a little masturbation?

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Maybe. That painting is from a series where a lot of strange things are going on – weird, silly stuff.

In this painting in particular, the paint in some places seems to have been doled out in short, thick brushstrokes, almost as though you were using a chopstick instead of a brush. Did you use a different brush? Has that style of yours been phased out?

I’m not sure – I made another painting like that recently. It is just a matter of how thick the paint is laid on. I don’t always think it is such a good idea to make work like that, and, to be perfectly honest, I sometimes worry that those paintings are too silly.

In what other ways do you think you've progressed over the years?

I have learned a lot about cleaning brushes – which may sound boring – but has gone a long way in terms of clarity in my work.

I’m curious about the relevance of the face that you painted with a covered-up mouth, any present-day social commentary going on here?

Not really. I don’t think I would try to make work about social issues right now – that would feel too didactic to me.

Do you like hearing feedback from the audience, or do you prefer to detach from it?

I’m not sure. I don’t tend to get very much feedback from “the audience” – I would welcome it but probably not take it that seriously. It seems like most valuable feedback comes from your close friends and people you respect. Some of my friends get loads of unwarranted feedback, most of which seems crappy.

What’s the craziest comment you’ve ever gotten about your work?

A friend of mine once said that I make “crazy person” art. I guess that’s more about craziness in my work than an actual crazy comment.

Tell me about Red China magazine – how did you get involved, and how integral are you in the selection of the artists that get featured? 

I basically got involved at the start - Founding Editor Alex Smith kept saying we have to start this magazine and that I should be the Art Editor. I was sort of unexcited at first, mostly because I am lazy, but it has proven to be rewarding and something that I am very proud of. I think Alex is a real visionary, and working with him and the other editors continues to be a joy. My main role in the magazine is to pick the artists and the artwork we feature. 

Do you frequent the gallery scene much, either in Chelsea or Brooklyn? 

I try to get out and see stuff. Sometimes I go though periods where I miss a lot of shows, but I am trying to get better about that. I think it is important to see what other people are currently making and thinking about. 

Which artists are you really into right now who aren’t getting enough attention and that more people should check out?

Tim Lokiec is really great; you can see his work at LFL gallery. Svetlana Rabey, Mariano Chavez, Joshua Abelow, Clinton King.

What do you hope to accomplish or what kind of work do you see yourself doing over the course of this year?

I’m not sure what kind of work I will do, but I am going to try making some drawings on a larger scale, possibly some monumental mountain-like faces.

Okay, one final thing: tell me a story about a time when you almost died or when you got away with something crazy that you want everyone to know about.


Several years ago, I performed an intensive, emergency leg surgery on an elderly, pale-faced man that may have prolonged his life for up to 10 months. 

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Website

www.peterlabier.com

Photos

Nick Chatfield-Taylor

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