In Bed-Stuy with Cathy Nan Quinlan 

Recently, Adam Simon visited his longtime friend Cathy Nan Quinlan at her Bed-Stuy studio to see the latest paintings, inspired by Nicolas Poussin’s Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term (1632–1633), which hangs in London’s National Gallery. During the visit, they talked about The ‘temporary Museum, the Talking Pictures blog, and the salons Cathy has hosted in her home.

Adam Simon: So, it looks like everything on your painting wall is connected to the reproduction of the Poussin. Is there a particular reason you chose that painting? 

Cathy Nan Quinlan: Well, I love Poussin and I particularly like this one* because it’s dancers. And, so I, after Trump was elected, I was just so full of hate for people, and I didn’t see the reason for painting or writing about art. 

AS: Wait, can I stop you there? 

CNQ: If you like (laughs). 

AS: I just don’t want to lose that. You said after Trump was elected, you were hating people and so there was no reason to make paintings. That sort of assumes that making paintings is a way of connecting to people. Is that the way you feel? 

CNQ: Yeah.

AS: And that you must feel like there’s people that can connect with you on the level that the paintings demand. Is that one way to put it? 

CNQ: Well, I hope they don’t demand too much.

AS: Maybe demand is the wrong word. 

CNQ: Okay, I think I paint for people, or if I write about art, it’s for people. 

AS: And if you lose faith in humanity, then there’s no reason to paint. 

CNQ: That’s right.

AS: That’s interesting. I wonder if I feel that way. So, you were feeling let down by humanity after Trump was elected and then what happened that led you to these paintings? 

CNQ: I don’t know, I was looking through the Poussin book and thinking about drawing some of them and, you know, I just started drawing and really enjoying drawing like, the curve of the arm and all these different …  you know, in a way Poussin doesn’t overwhelm you with emotion, but in the little ways, it seems like he’s very loving. So just trying to get the arm the way it curved, or you know, just the movement of it. But this painting is a happy painting in a way. 

AS: It’s a bacchanal! It better be happy. 

CNQ: But the woman on the right is about to hit the satyr. 

AS: Oh, with something in her hand. 

CNQ: Yeah, she has a pitcher. 

AS: You think she’s going to bonk him on the head with it? 

CNQ: Yes, and the woman beside her on the left is restraining her or putting a hand on her arm and the woman who’s being ravaged or starting to be ravaged, is also kind of restraining her and has a sort of smile on her face. But still, there’s that hint of rape in it and then on the other side, the babies are kind of … she’s maybe giving them wine, sort of squeezing the grapes into their mouths. And then one is just lying on the ground, and it seems like it could be easily trampled. 

AS: It looks like that baby’s had too many grapes. 

CNQ: So, I was thinking, you know, that maybe this painting shows a way of accepting the world as it is instead of my dreams and desires for it. 

AS: But you didn’t mention that the central dancing couple is two men. 

CNQ: Yeah, well, he’s holding the hand of the woman in blue on the left and also the hand of the naked man. 

AS: Yeah, and of the naked man. So, it certainly is bacchanalian. Yeah, and it could be like a dive into a kind of utopian dream world as an antidote to what’s happening around us.

CNQ: I don’t know how utopian it is with the you know, those things that suggest it’s not. 

AS: Yeah, but they’re dancing and it’s … Yeah, no, it’s weirdly contradictory. You’re right. 

CNQ: Both the woman that’s looks like she’s going to bonk the satyr on the head and the woman whose neck he’s got his arm around, the expressions on their faces don’t match the possible violence. I mean, she’s looking like she’s maybe intrigued by this, and he has, if you look behind her at his outstretched foot, he’s got a satyr leg that’s not like the other dancers. 

AS: Oh, that’s right. They’re fully human. Yeah, so there’s a lot going on. So then is the red one a finished painting? 

CNQ: I haven’t decided.

AS: But it could be. So, then that makes me want to ask why you don’t make a realistic copy of the Poussin.

CNQ: I don’t know if I really could capture the delicacy in the faces and all that. I don’t think I’m good enough to do that. But then also maybe in the end, I don’t know where I’ll go, but for now I think it’s the movement that interests me. With Poussin, even though people are in motion, they’re also kind of static. That’s not a criticism. It’s just that his figures have this deep serenity in their composition.

AS: Yeah. It’s like a frozen moment. There’s so much action, so much activity that you really feel the frozenness of it. 

CNQ: You know, I don’t feel it as frozen. I think it’s almost that you must put the motion in with your eyes by looking at the details and catching the, like the horizontal movement, the way one arm leads into another arm which leads to a shoulder, which leads to a dress. 

AS: Of course. There’s that kind of wave moving through the whole thing at the shoulder level. 

CNQ: I think really one of the reasons I wanted to paint it is that I’m just enjoying this deep looking at the painting. That, and I wasn’t getting a lot of joy from painting before that.

 AS: No, not for a while? 

CNQ: Yeah, maybe for a while, or, you know, I’ll show you something I was doing before and you know, I was sitting around looking at them, thinking about what I might want to do next, or what they were showing me or something. And, this I think is one of the better ones. It just took a long time, most of which I was just …  and anyway, those are the ones that turned out best, but I was having a lot of failures and I was starting over a lot.

AS: So, is this what you just were referring to having had a difficult time with? 

CNQ: You know, just putting paint on and then long periods of thinking between putting more paint on. I’d think, look, think “ugh”, then I’d have to sit down. This way, with the new paintings, I can just, I don’t know, just enjoy myself, let’s say. But without any real thinking about showing them or doing them for other people at all. 

AS: Um, but are these other ones not done at all from observation, or are they done partially from observation? The lower ones?

 CNQ: Yeah. No, totally not. 

AS: Even though they have this landscape feeling. I mean, they almost look like they could have been done from an actual landscape. Like a dense garden in the one on the right and more of a distant view in the one on the left.  So, it seems like you often end up going back to working from recognized masters. I mean, not necessarily going back as far as Poussin, but certainly Morandi. 

CNQ: Yeah, I’ve done a lot of working from other artists. Burchfield, I spent a long time on, even though it was just one or two paintings. 

AS: Yeah. Who else, Morandi, Burchfield, Poussin? Have there been others?

CNQ: Oh, there definitely have been others: Canaletto, Cezanne … 

AS: But the answer that you make these paintings that are somewhat abstracted or, in the case of the red one, very abstracted, because you don’t think you could make a very successful copy doesn’t sound like the real answer.

 CNQ: Well, it’s not the real answer because I don’t want to make a copy for other reasons. I want to make a copy of how I see it, something of what it is about it that intrigues me, my experience of it. I sort of find it while doing it and maybe um, you know, like what you see here, the drawings or whatever, is my way of learning from it. And then once I’ve learned it, I can do something else.

AS: It’s a very nice drawing. 

CNQ: Thank you. 

AS: For the for the readers of Two Coats of Paint, they should know that you do something called The Pencil Review where you and others will go to an exhibition and draw the paintings. Is it always paintings? It’s not always paintings, is it? 

CNQ: I drew Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs once and I’ve done sculpture twice. The idea of it is that before photography, ideas in painting were disseminated through drawings.

AS: So, you go to a gallery exhibition and draw it, and then it gets posted on your blog, I do want to talk about the Talking Pictures blog and also other things that you’ve done because that’s something that you and I share. We both are painters. We both put a lot of time into the studio. But we both have had other more public projects. Would you say that your other projects are about shifting your focus to community, to the idea of community for an artist? Or something else?

 CNQ: I suppose that I was kind of trying to build a community that was in opposition to the art world. I mean, I don’t think that’s possible, but, just as it is now, the money and the, I mean, I really see that as destroying visual arts right now. 

AS: I just read your Jackson Arn piece and it was classic Cathy Quinlan. It had your love of painting, which you felt he shared, and your love of the need to be able to get drunk at a party, and your total distaste for the art world. It’s all in that article.

 CNQ: I mean, I believe in painters, but the painters I believe in are usually now not the ones that are being shown. And I don’t even want my paintings to be sold for fifty thousand dollars or go to art fairs, I just want to have this little space to…

AS: If your work were suddenly worth fifty thousand dollars, would something be taken away? Would that be something bad or detracting? 

CNQ: It would take away the possibility that a more modest person could buy it. 

AS: Yeah, I guess, although there are ways around that. But it’s not because …I mean, there is that book, which I don’t think I ever fully read, the Lewis Hyde book, The Gift, and I think that book suggests that the merchandising of art in any form is taking something away from it. 

CNQ: Yeah, I don’t believe that either. I mean, artists should get money for their work. I hope that some people that have my paintings that I gave to them or they bought for not that much will still care about them enough to take care of them. But I don’t think the prices now reflect any scarcity or they just, I don’t know, the art is more treated like assets. 

AS: Oh, no, I mean the difference is that people that have your paintings, either because they bought them or because you gave them to them, are much more likely to keep them for the rest of their lives than if they owned a Jasper Johns. I happen to have had a conversation with a person who was creating the catalogue raisonné for Jasper Johns, and she told me it was kind of sad because many of the paintings had not remained with one owner for very long. There’s too much of a need to turn them over to recoup the investment. 

CNQ: Yeah, well, yeah, and then there’s also the very expensive artworks that sit in storage because that’s the thing I really wouldn’t want if I was a more successful artist, that museums or rich people buy them and store them. 

One thing I was thinking is that I’ve always done a lot of exploring of genres, you know. And I’ve always wanted to do people, like a group of people or something. But I’ve never really gone there in a way that was interesting because I think I just found it difficult to paint people lovingly, you know, the way Poussin does. I thought when you painted people that it was very loving, actually. 

AS: But you’re painting people. You’re doing it through copying Poussin. 

CNQ: Yeah, I actually saw somebody in the subway that looked exactly like the woman on the left. And I was just like, oh my God, she’s so beautiful. She looked exactly like that, even the hair. 

AS: I mean neither one of us have done much painting of people. I’m using stock photography and you’re using Poussin. 

[phone rings]

CNQ: Hi. 
Can I call you later? Yes, it is. Yes, it’s an April fools joke. 
Okay, I’ll call you later. (Hangs up)

On Hyperallergic, maybe you saw that they said that Trump cancelled America’s participation in the Venice Biennale.

AS: Michele told me that. She didn’t realize it was April 1. I never questioned that it wouldn’t be true. 

CNQ: Anyway, you put something into them that made them, you know, like the little painter is extremely emotional to me and the child with the mother, the very much older one, the baby. 

AS: You’re talking about my work? I’m here to talk about your work. 

CNQ: No, not, but I just meant that, you know, you did have a period at least when you were saying things about humans.

 AS: Well, yeah that’s interesting because I mean it’s an interesting take on your work. So, have you never painted a portrait or something like that? 

CNQ: Yeah, but it’s been like a long time. I mean, I think I started thinking of the person in my work as the viewer. I mean, the viewer who was looking at the painting was kind of the point of it. 

AS: Let’s talk about the other projects that you’ve done while continuing to make paintings. So, the ones that I’m aware of are the blog, The ‘temporary Museum, the salon in your basement, which was going on until fairly recently, right? What am I missing? Anything? 

CNQ: Well, I think that’s them. 

AS: So, can you describe each of them? 

CNQ: Well, The ‘temporary Museum started when Su (the filmmaker, Su Friedrich) and I had a loft in Williamsburg. It really started when I accepted that people just didn’t like my work. 

AS: What do you mean? 

CNQ: I couldn’t get a show and I didn’t feel a great love for my work from people looking at it. I feel a lot more of that now, actually. But then I started looking at other people’s work and I was looking at Larry Webb, an abstract painter from Williamsburg and I thought, he’s really good. And I had thought that before about other people too. Also, I read a poem by Seneca that says it is your duty to praise what is good. And then I thought, I’m going to show people. There were not so many people doing that, I mean, it had been done, but not so many people were doing it. And in the beginning people didn’t necessarily want to show there because they thought, this is not going to be career building to show in a person’s home. 

AS: Were there more than just one or two that said no? 

CNQ: Yes, or they would do it and they wouldn’t invite anybody to come. My idea was to show good painters that didn’t have a gallery, but they weren’t taking it seriously. So, I had the idea to ask Gary Stephan to show with me and explained to him that if he did, other artists would, and he was really nice about it, and it worked like a charm. Then I borrowed a Rackstraw Downes from Barbara Epler, which also worked.

AS: Oh, yeah, I could see that. Good for Gary and Barbara that they were willing to help. So, what were the circumstances of The ‘temporary Museum? There would be an opening? Were they usually group shows? 

CNQ: There was no opening, and I charged a dollar.

AS: Oh, you charged a dollar. I remember somebody reacting negatively to that. 

CNQ: Yeah. They would really be shocked. And it was like, “I don’t want to pay a dollar.” I was like, “Well, you’re not coming in then.” And then people were just like, “Why don’t you have openings?” But I started seeing openings as places where people never look at the work or talk about it at all. But I did have talks, and I would open it on the weekends and people would come just individually and pay a dollar. And I always gave them tea or something. And then I asked everybody that came to tell me a painting they liked and one they didn’t like. I had lots of really interesting conversations, you know, with artists, but also with people that just didn’t know anything about art. 

AS: And you tried to continue that rule of like and not like with your salon in the basement. 

CNQ: Yes, I would get people, in the case of just one person’s work, which was called “Six Paintings,” to say which was their favorite and which was their least, because even, you know, critics quite often treat a person’s body of work more or less as a whole. But, if you read the book on da Vinci by Kenneth Clark, he actually said which ones he thought were better, which ones have parts of them that are in terrible condition or had been repainted. 

AS: Well, to say something’s in terrible condition or has been repainted is different from saying this one is not such a good painting. 

CNQ: Well, I don’t know if he’s ever saying it’s not good, but he’ll refer to the awkwardness of the figure in the early work, you know. He’s looking at a da Vinci and saying it’s awkward. 

AS: And for you, and this is off the point of talking about these other projects, but do you know what makes a good painting or what makes a mediocre painting? 

CNQ: I’m not thinking I’m the last word on a painting at all, but I see how a painting affects me and then I just try to describe it. That’s all I expect other people to do, although … 

AS: Yeah, I think that’s one of the things that you and I don’t have in common. I’m never sure what makes a painting good or bad. I feel like you have a more definite idea about that than I do. 

CNQ: I will say what I feel about it right now, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how I’ll feel about it another time. I just like to explore how I feel about it right now. And there’s certain things like, you know, I’ll get sort of bored. Like there’s a lot of paintings out there right now where it’s got some central figure, the ground is unimportant, and you only look at the painting as a whole. There’s no point in looking at any part of it, and then I will start to feel like, well, that’s really boring. And so, you know, perhaps somebody else comes along and makes that important to me, but for right now, I’m very bored with that. 

AS: Someone like Amy Sherald? 

CNQ: No, well, not her so much. I really like what contemporary Black painters are doing with portraiture. I was thinking about somebody like Dana Schutz. She’s painting more multiple figure paintings now, but they are almost sculptural in a way that to me there starts being like a background around it. You know, it shuts off the paintings. I didn’t love her work before that, but I liked that it was scenes of chaos. 

AS: Back to the salon, because we kind of went away from that, can you say a few words about that in the way you did about The ‘temporary Museum? 

CNQ: Well, that was mostly say, an idea connected to a show that opened on Friday, and on Sunday, there was a conversation, and I tried to think of ways to make it a real conversation. I mean, sometimes I would just start off with, say, something about how people have a much more vivid conversation about food than they do about art. I mean, a critic might go to a Michelin restaurant and think the oysters are really a great appetizer, but the guinea fowl wasn’t so great. You know, they would say that. They were critical. And I’ve also noticed that there’s a lot more restaurant reviews and food reviews than art reviews. And that’s because it’s considered a more vital interest, which wasn’t the case when we came to New York. 

AS: And then the blog, can you summarize what the intention is? 

CNQ: It just goes along with my idea that I think, you know it’s funny because Poussin thought this too, that an artwork doesn’t really live until it’s talked about. And that’s what his salons were about, according to one thing I read. He thought that until people started expressing their opinions about art, it wasn’t really living. And I see how little people discuss contemporary art now, at least not while looking at it. Like one person told me, oh, we criticize it after we leave. So, I just decided to give my opinion, you know, because I think a lot of that reluctance is because you don’t want to piss anybody off because then you won’t get a show or then you won’t be accepted by your fellow artists. But I feel like I have nothing to lose. 

AS: And that definitely characterizes your writing on your blog. The idea that nobody can tell you what to think and you’re going to tell us what you think. 

CNQ: Yeah, but I don’t want to tell you what to think. I really … I mean maybe people think anybody who writes about art is writing as an authority or pretending to be one. But I don’t think that. I think that a good critic just gives me a chance to look more deeply. And then disagree with them or, which is what the whole blogosphere is, or at least it’s what it was, right? It was just somebody’s personal opinion on whatever, and it’s a kind of almost anti-authority approach. It’s like basically saying everybody should have opinions and yes, I mean, I even think that the best critics are like that too. They’re inviting you to, you know, they’ve looked at it longer, they’ve thought about it, but they don’t stop you from thinking other things, in my view. I mean, I was really stunned when I first came to New York and expressed an opinion at an opening. The person just turned away from me. The show was Mary Heilman. And then later I found out why she was a good painter. 

AS: Who turned away from you? 

CNQ: I said, “what’s good about this?” because I’d seen a lot of paintings like hers and people were talking in very reverent tones and all I did was ask, and the person just said something like, are you a painter? And then they just turned away. But then later I found out she was the first person to do that with these blocks of color in the way she was doing. So, she’s not my favorite, but it gave me more appreciation for her, but the guy didn’t even bother to tell me. Maybe he didn’t even know. 

AS: I mean, I also feel like the best times of looking at art are when you don’t like something, but then something changes in your appreciation of the work. And suddenly you do like something that you didn’t like before, and so you’ve been transformed by the act of looking. 

CNQ: Very true. 

About the artists:

Cathy Nan Quinlan is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown at Lesley Heller Workspace, Norte Maar, Storefront Gallery, Valentine Gallery, SRO Gallery, Parallel Art Space, Studio 10, Centotto, Storefront Gallery for Rent and the Sideshow Gallery. Her work has been reviewed in The New Criterion, Hyperallergic, The Wall Street Journal, NY Arts, and on Two Coats of Paint.

Adam Simon is a New York artist and writer. His most recent solo painting show was at OSMOS in 2024.