Studio Visit with GL Richardson

Originally recorded November 21, 2021.

George Irwin of Western Gallery visits with GL Richardson, whose work centers on spray paint and oil on aluminum panel and who is based in Outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a wide-ranging conversation about the artist’s work, process, and studio practice.

Transcript note: Speaker labels were assigned from the source audio where available and dialogue context otherwise. Paragraph breaks were added for readability, and verbal filler was lightly edited. Joint labels mark rapid or overlapping exchanges. This was prepared from an automated transcription, so minor transcription errors may remain.

Studio-visit clip—November 21, 2021

Watch the original video on Instagram (02:31)

Participants: George Irwin and GL Richardson

GL Richardson: There's usually three things that my work could really be speaking to. It's, or that are happening in the work. First it can be a conceptual thing I'm trying to do. Another could be technical like I'm really trying to work on some process and then the other is emotional. And so this one is less conceptual. Sure. And more trying to get to an emotional state of calm because a lot of my work is energetic and Not like not in a bad way. I don't think it's just I don t focus on portraying there's like the easy calm That I would focus this so this was an emotional challenge for me

George Irwin: Trying to get you a new place and stretch my legs in that direction. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, I mean is the title you know like telling a horse easy. Easy now.

GL Richardson: Yeah, so I think that the perspective is you get to look in on a horse in a moment

George Irwin: where it doesn't know that you're really there because horses will almost always

GL Richardson: look over at you and you'll see their ears pointing in the direction of focusing and this horse is half asleep and so you get to step into a place that you usually don't need to be unless the horse is really, really comfortable with you. You're easy like you two have an easy relationship and I think that so that informs the title as well as the

George Irwin / GL Richardson: standard easy. Yeah cool. I love another thing so I'm gonna say I

George Irwin: I love the color palette and the way that like the greens interact there with the pink and purple, and come across not as green. It's really cool. And I know you mentioned to me previously that a lot of this came from starting with

George Irwin / GL Richardson: warm colors in...

GL Richardson: bodies and like the actual physical bodies and all these pieces in this body of work are warm colors. Like this rich pink, red here with leave and as we go over I can point it out but it's going to be obvious every other body. A lot of

George Irwin: reds and pinks. Yes.

Studio-visit clip—November 14, 2021

Watch the original video on Instagram (02:00)

Participants: George Irwin and GL Richardson

George Irwin: there have been a couple key leavings, right? And so maybe there's some of that in here.

GL Richardson: I don't know. I'm just guessing. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Okay. So title of the piece is Leave. This piece comes from, I guess after I made my job I had a lot of people reaching out to me asking me how I...

George Irwin: How did you do it? Yeah, how did you it?

GL Richardson: And so I just wanted to make a piece that kind of speaks to the fact that there is no how really. It's extremely simple and we tend to make it very complicated, like well, I can't leave because my, I have rent and those things are valid but they also just sort of get in the way and give us excuses. And so the title answers the question. I like that.

George Irwin / GL Richardson: You leave, that's the answer to how?

George Irwin: So the subject in it too, I've seen in a new way after chatting with you right now as well. I mean, I think that the popular Western mythos of the cowboy is riding off into the sunset and obviously there's that aspect of leave But you know, you're talking about being inspired by Duke and your experience at the ranch as a cowboy made me taught you.

GL Richardson: Yeah, absolutely. Or just kind of illustrate how simple it really was like how many complications and thoughts swirl around when you're coming up with how are you gonna do it? And then just realizing that the actual key was just doing it pulling the trigger and that after all those things kind of fell away. All those reasons why not to do it, they figure themselves out.

In-person studio visit—November 9, 2021

Watch the original video on Instagram (12:03)

Participants: George Irwin and GL Richardson

George Irwin: Alright, we're at G.L. Richardson Studio out here outside of Santa Fe, out kind of in the sticks a little bit. Super pretty country but pretty far from things. And that was... Remind me your dog's name again? June. There's June down there. She is a border collie hanging tree.

GL Richardson: Oh right.

George Irwin: all right and G.L. and his girlfriend Anna just moved in here a couple months ago found a found the spot with great luck and look at this studio is amazing big loft yeah well um so G.l. I know you use spray paint and oil and and you like to work on these panels can you kind of show me around a little bit

George Irwin / GL Richardson: like how this how your setup mm-hmm so this is all extremely clean because

GL Richardson: you're here yeah normally would be a huge mess but this is these are the

George Irwin: tools of the craft here I noticed all your paints were pretty well sorted until I shoved them all in a pile. I'll put the iPad down.

GL Richardson: No, that's... I'll get back to that another time at all very shortly. But yeah, got a huge array of colors here which is pretty nice. It's like almost being in the art store sometimes.

George Irwin: You can just reach over and grab the one that you need. That's cool.

GL Richardson: And I use Montana spray paints I don't have a clean one of the caps but I typically use the gray cap with the blue circle on it. I don' t know what they call it, but it lets me get a really nice gradient and they've got a ton of different caps. It's kind of incredible and opens up a lot of new doors. I'm excited to try out some new ones. I've only tried that one cap so there is definitely new stuff coming with just that change to the application. But yeah it's typically, well not typically if I'm working on aluminum, it's primed with a DTM primer which is what they use for metals and really boats, prime boats with DTM primer you sand the panel down that gives it tooth then you apply the DTM Primer then you can apply like a golden primer on top of that there's a lot of cleaning between the different applications with alcohol, dry times too, letting it sit

GL Richardson: for a second before applying coats of DTM. And then from there typically go straight into oil and start working at like a lot times this border color that you see is that is the background itself I work within the confines of that. Other times I will touch up the border but usually the border is oil. That kind of, that'll show you what's going on

George Irwin: underneath everything else. That gives you a good kind of like strong base that's not spray paint. Exactly. And get you know, you get the quality of the oil.

GL Richardson: Yeah. That's cool and from there it's just it's lots of layering. Sometimes oil oil spray paint other times spray paint for a lot and then bring it back a little bit of oil. It really is just whatever the piece is asking for. Like this piece is an oil base, multiple oil bases and then spray paint primarily on top and then came back in with a little but of oil like I said it just changes with each one and the feeling of trying to come have come across. It's nice when little things like this happen. There's an element of randomness To spray paint that I like it is very it's a very intentional thing that I'm doing but sometimes there's just stuff you can't

George Irwin: Really predict. Yeah, like so like that concentration of splatter is Sort of yeah

GL Richardson: Because I've been spraying a lot and the cap was starting to get a little clogged

George Irwin: Yeah got like wet paint hanging there again blowing off exactly

GL Richardson: And I sometimes you say damn that really messed things up other times. You're like that looks pretty cool

George Irwin: Yeah, so we these are the pieces in The GL is made for then Impermanent Collection and Let's see do you work on this easel? I do okay and on the wall

George Irwin / GL Richardson: I was gonna ask if you worked on the wall. Yeah, I work on the law and on the center blocks. Oh, right that makes sense a lot of

GL Richardson: times I'm bouncing between three four pieces at a time But this is kind of like it's on the easel then it's getting Getting more love probably gotcha. That's like the main workspace for painting at least My work with stencils to spray paint kind of have to And so this work table over here on this side

George Irwin: where I can lay things down, apply varnish, mix colors.

GL Richardson: It's just a nice big surface that I like to sand and do that. And then also cut the stencils.

George Irwin: Is this... I'm curious, is this cowboy up here? Is this a stencil for... Yeah, that piece over there? Sure it is. And did you use it primarily as a stensel or did you used it like for placement or both?

GL Richardson: I actually didn't use that. I used the inverse.

George Irwin: Oh, gotcha! So that's the negative part of it. Or the positive and you use the negative. Cool. Now that I'm looking at this piece, can you tell us about this one?

GL Richardson: Yep. This one is called Man Rides Off Cliff. And has a similar theme to Leap. And it's something that keeps coming up. I've got a lot of pieces where people are jumping or leading or taking some type of risky move and so that's what this speaks to, just going for it, kind of jumping into the chaos.

George Irwin / GL Richardson: This is an avalanche happening.

GL Richardson: And yeah, having the... it's a little different because I showed a sequential fall.

George Irwin: Three different frames.

GL Richardson: And yeah it speaks to the same feeling.

George Irwin: Nice and then you've got a couple other pieces over here too. We briefly looked at your the Pegasus earlier and I like these. I like this piece too. This one and a couple others, Four on the Floor went to a collector earlier a month or two ago. I feel like that one has a lot kind of like... this was an earlier series I think it has a lots in common with this one here, the stereo in the middle and then maybe even a little bit with this serios piece.

GL Richardson: Yeah, these are all about the same time too. With this and especially for the floor, there's like an iconographic element strongly in the middle, contrasting colors that ties into whatever is happening in the piece for the floor. It's a rider coming across a large field. And it was a gear shift. one, a writer in a canyon. And I was... I still am into vinyl quite a bit and that happened for a long time but I was just getting re-blown away by how vinyl actually works with the needle in the groove and how when you look at those grooves under a microscope that is the literal translation of the music into its cut out.

George Irwin: Dude, this piece just got a lot cooler to me. I didn't catch that. Is that what you're suggesting with the canyon? Oh man, that is so cool.

GL Richardson: And that's specifically stereo because obviously there's mono records and so this one having the two sides, yeah, I just re-envisioned it as grooves and vinyl.

George Irwin: That's awesome. Cool, man. Let's see. This is also shipping station. That's good to have that. This giant table is a major thing to have.

GL Richardson: That's awesome. So important.

George Irwin: Snooping around looking at different stuff. This is usually chaos. But... A little bitty study down there? It's pretty cool. I'm going to do it again. I'm just going to go back and look at the Got the axe up here It's nice. It's it's nice to see this on a smaller scale too that still it still works well

GL Richardson: I mean, it is a study so I could easily see myself

George Irwin: Doing this or a variation of this and something larger. Yeah, I love chopping wood. Oh my god

GL Richardson: One of the great pleasures of life I think yeah having a really

George Irwin: Solid strike. How many hours do you have to chop a day get ready for winter?

GL Richardson: We're not quite there yet we just moved in and apparently people that care before they didn't use their the chimney the wood burning stove for three years, oh wow and Weighted a little bit too long and all the chimneys sweeps are super backed up right now Oh, we had our first freeze so it's a bummer, but we've got a chimney out back and Cool. So I've been chopping a little big for that

George Irwin: Cool. There's the cowboy we were talking about. Bunch of brushes, paints, you know, normal artist things. And that's about it. I mean, it's got a little sitting space over here, reading space or something. That's great. Still in the common. What an incredible space to have, Gio. This is awesome. It really is feel so lucky to be here. These are some big ass brushes and big round brush is something else.

GL Richardson: Oh yeah, Alan's been with me for a long time. These things have a way of sticking around. But I've got the nice brushes there and some... They're not really nice though. I saw you get a little video of this

George Irwin: And I think some artists might really be like, what are you doing?

GL Richardson: But sometimes I just want to reach over and grab a brush that I don't care if I ever have to clean it. So I just have these kind of throw away brushes there. It's just like, you know, quick and I'm really bad about my palettes, cleaning my palettes and my brushes so...

George Irwin: That's the less sexy part of being an artist. Exactly, exactly. Oh, I didn't even see this. This is a cool little drawing.

GL Richardson: Oh thank you. As you can see, my brushes are really nice. Yeah, for peace I post a while you're riding fits.

George Irwin: Oh yeah, I remember that. Cool. Well thanks Joe!

Artist-narrated studio profile—October 25, 2021

Watch the original video on Instagram (00:47)

Participants: GL Richardson

GL Richardson: I'm GL Richardson. I'm a painter here in Santa Fe. This is my brand new studio. The very first work I made here was as body of work for Western Gallery. I try to take the West and all the rawness that is there, whether it's experienced or heard through stories or seen in film and bring that into my work conceptually, emotionally, and technique-wise too. So yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah.