Transcript
Speaker: You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer. This is Ken Volante with Something Rather Than Nothing and for this episode we have Mitra Mitchell who is a painter I discovered recently
Speaker: just fell in love with her paintings and just really wanted to talk to her and thankfully Mitra, we have you here on the podcast. Welcome. Hi Ken, thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. I was wondering Mitra, after seeing your paintings and
Speaker: I was wondering if the art or painting, how you've developed as a painter, has it been something you did when you were younger and just kept going or did you encounter it later in life? I've always been a painter. At a very young age, I hid myself inside of what I call the theater of painting. And one of my earliest memories
Speaker: was gathering my dolls a few broken bits of crown and stealing a bottle of my mother's red nail polish from her bedroom, which in order for me to even sneak into her bedroom required an extreme amount of courage because I knew if I was ever caught
Speaker: I would feel the tongues of hell lashing against my flesh, and I would hear the snapping of my little bones as I was beaten. Not having a dollhouse for my dolls, I naturally crawled into the corner of the room with my assemblage of parts and proceeded to draw elaborate patterns of flowers and rosettes and sacred geometry onto the wall for wallpaper.
Speaker: I painted the most beautiful red tapestry onto the carpet with that nail polish, and the dolls became extensions of my body. Even the house that I created was really my body. It connected me to those walls and the carpets, just as I am connected to my skeleton, the flesh, and the blood that streams in my veins.
Speaker: And then I was forced to fill the wrath of the consequences of creating something. All of this may have been a collective hallucination can, although nobody has yet been able to explain to me what a collective hallucination really means. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know. I mean, I've heard the, I've heard the phrase, uh, put out of collective hallucination, whether we share in the same, the same, the same reality. And within that, that, that art world, uh, that you created out of, out of danger, have you felt that dynamic in, in, in your creative process overall that you were,
Speaker: trying to get away with something, trying to create something different. Yeah. Yeah. It's always been a battlefield. It's always been a type of nightmare, a type of journey into something dark and having the courage to travel to that place and to stand on the edge of something.
Speaker: It's always felt very terrifying for me, but I've always done it. And in fact, the very few people in my life that are close to me, I only let a few of those people in, they have to make it through the gauntlet first. When those people are around me for real, they know that
Speaker: When I go into the studio, the feeling is one that is like the feeling of fire. I never sort of go into it.
Speaker: Oh, doo, doo, doo, doo. Oh, here I am. You know, it's always ritual and flames and fire and, you know, horror. And, you know, I better get the fuck out there and make something now, you know, because the the gods are angry. You know, that's how it feels.
Speaker: So as far as you as a creator, and thank you for sharing that process and the process, I think what you're pointing to is that sometimes folks talk about the creation as a type of solace or a happy retreat, right? And for artists, it's not necessarily that. That can be a path. What about the art that
Speaker: that you personally prefer as an artist. But what I'm referring to is with your description of creating your art and what you create, are you attracted to other artists that you feel go through a similar process? Or is there something else as far as the art you personally enjoy of others? Yeah, the art that I personally enjoy, it seduces me.
Speaker: It's got to seduce me. If it doesn't seduce me, then I'm not going to spend my time there. So it's all different types of art forms, but of course, the magic of painting is something that lures me in.
Speaker: And of course, most of the artists that I prefer are the ones who speak to a confusion, transformation, because, you know, of course, transformation is an ugly thing. I mean, if you've ever looked at something being born or created in nature, I mean, it's horrifically beautiful. It's not a pretty thing, transformation. I mean, you can even
Speaker: think about, you know, Greek mythological stories. It's never just a simple sort of process that just unfolds in the most beautiful way. I mean, it's something that kind of makes you cringe. And that's the art that I prefer. And I'm well aware that that's not, you know, for everybody, some people prefer rainbows, unicorns and butterflies sort of without all of the, you know,
Speaker: spiders, lizards, and snakes. But I just sort of view it as you can't have one without the other. So that's kind of what I'm looking for is that shadow land. Yeah. Mitra, do you see more of that art? Pardon to interrupt, but do you see more of that art now? I mean, with the pandemic, various visible social upheavals,
Speaker: Do you see that art is more informed by upheaval now? Or do you see that as more of a highly personal process that has less to do with what's going on in the world? Well.
Speaker: in reality. So we're talking about in reality now. So in reality, there's a, there's a reckoning coming in reality. Now, you know, there is a, uh, shifting of power and mother nature is going to have her way with us, whether we want it or not, because there's the reckoning coming. Um, but the interesting thing is that,
Speaker: for so long really until this pandemic. Most of my life was a pandemic already. So now I feel normal.
Speaker: You know, before now, you know, all the funny wars and the black boot in the face from all the fascists and the grotesqueness of boils and postules of the black plague and the anxiety of being a child and never knowing what it feels like to be hugged and existing without the certainty of any kind of safety net and a world filled with strange monsters and evil people and, you know,
Speaker: you know, psychosis. I mean, that's, that was my life before now. Now, you know, everybody around me is screaming going, Oh my God, what are we gonna do? The safety nets are all gone, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I'm nodding my head and I'm looking at them. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, death is all around us all the time. You know, so I hate to say that I don't feel empathy for people suffering. I mean,
Speaker: In fact, now I feel like that's sort of my responsibility more than ever to like, help sort of guide people to the shadow land so they can find the answers, the keys, the things that they're looking for to come back out to make it through life, you know, this is
Speaker: This is the reminder. This is nature's reckoning with us. We're removed from nature to the point where we've built concrete walls around us and we think that we can control everything around us.
Speaker: We created a monster. You know, it's Frankenstein's laboratory. And now we're all surprised when the monsters come, you know, unhinged. We're all like, oh, God, you know, here's the monster. Well, we created it. You know, it's here. You know, it's it's all around us everywhere. You know, it's just that not everybody saw it.
Speaker: Some of us did. I mean, we're always the zebras on the outside of the herd telling everybody, oh God, the lion's there, better get ready or it's gonna eat you. And nobody wants to listen to us, the seers. Nobody listens to us, so we stand there guarding the edge of the pack. I mean, that's what a highly sensitive person is.
Speaker: You know, but most of the time people don't acknowledge, people don't want to because the thing is they see, they look in your eyes and they see it and they're scared. So they look the other way. And that's why I hid myself in the theater of painting because I knew what I was saying was terrifying people. But I mean, I'm going to still say it. I just had to find a way to do it.
Speaker: You know, just to question myself. So now, you know, people have gone into into isolation. And that what they don't realize is that there's a reason why. Right. Did you feel you mentioned you mentioned as far as
Speaker: with you seeing in your analysis of the situation, a situation that you had felt as the pandemic rose. You didn't mention that you certainly felt maybe even more of like a responsibility to say, I don't know if it's responsibility, but how do you deal with that? Because part of it like internally, psychologically, you're like, look, folks, I've been creating things. I've been talking to you. I've been saying these things. And then it's here. It's a complicated emotion to be like, geez, now you realize it versus
Speaker: You might have some coping skills or ways to understand what's happening, right? So that's some weight to that. Yeah, it's tough because when you live, you know, every day of your life as a memento mori, as a reminder of your own mortality, you know, every day you're
Speaker: you know, it's a kind of exorcism, you know, and every day you're sort of laying it all down in front of you. You know, you live life a certain way. And so, you know, when death is there, you know, you don't, in a way you're sort of not worried.
Speaker: because death is my ruler. So I'm not scared of that. In fact, you know, in fact, I think about it all the time. And one might say, oh, well, if you think about death all the time, then you must be worried about it. But it's not a, it's not a word. I mean, it's just a, it's in the forefront of my mind all the time.
Speaker: And so it's not something that, I mean, I've been living in the medieval world, right? And now all of a sudden we're in this sort of neo -medieval time and everybody's waiting for the Renaissance to come back. And I'm just sort of like, this is familiar territory. And, you know, I think about, of course, you know, my favorite painter office and, you know, he's the painter whom nothing's known.
Speaker: You know, there's a welcoming inscription, you know, that's carved into the entablature of the architecture of the chalet, the grand chalet, where he lived at the end of his life. And it says, mortal, how vain your pride, the worms will grow fat on your rotting flesh. And I love that quote. It's sort of the sobering reminder
Speaker: that we are sort of beneath things. We're not on top of everything, controlling everything all the time. Right. Mitra Mitchell, I have a big question for you. I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts. What is art?
Speaker: Well, the very question asks us to sort of start grasping for straws. And, you know, one may not believe in magic, Ken, but something very strange is happening in this exact moment. I mean,
Speaker: Art for me, I mean, it really is, and I know I'm going to be shunned for saying this and, you know, people always shun me no matter what I say, so I'll just speak it from my heart. I mean, art is the brink of insanity. It's going to the edge. It's taking yourself to the place and then recognizing that you're standing on the edge and then
Speaker: You feel the heat being sucked from your forefinger when you do that, when you stand in front of a painting and you say, I'm gonna make something. It's a chili god that's on the other side of that thing. And I've been there many times without having the proper tool set to know how to deal with that.
Speaker: Feeling but now, you know as I'm in middle age I Feel I feel you know that I'm on the tightrope without the safety net now and it's okay it's okay and That's why My favorite interpretation of that question is really embodied in a quote by Francisco Goya Or he says
Speaker: Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters. United with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. That's beautiful. So I really do believe, and this is why the discipline of the act of painting for me is important, because having ritual and discipline
Speaker: and the ability to humble yourself and understand that the form itself, you know, is its own thing. And you sort of bow down in front of the beast. You know, it's called the beast of painting for a reason. And, you know, you know, when I say that to people, they think, oh, you must have such a lofty perception of yourself. You know, I don't think it's lofty at all.
Speaker: In fact, I would think to think otherwise is to be lofted. So for me, that's what it is, sort of bowing down in front of the beast. You had, you had mentioned Mitra and I want to focus in on it because it struck me in asking the question, what is art? And when you were speaking about more of the tactile connection
Speaker: the your fingers the body the fingers in in in that i was just so struck uh by that because it's certainly the most deeply grounded in almost magical idea i haven't asked this this this question right at that spot and the finger in in in what you described there what are you feeling at that moment what what is it i mean this is what
Speaker: Where are you at that moment? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I discovered the subtle science that is painting making because I'm, you know, possessing a predisposition for certain things. It's a fun game to play when you bewitch the mind and you know, you ensnare your senses, as they say. But it's just my way of saying I love you. And
Speaker: I'll ask you Ken the question. Do you ever go out walking after midnight? Absolutely. Yeah. So for me, that's like what painting is. And all of your guards are let down, you know, when you go out walking after midnight. I love that. I love that. Yeah.
Speaker: I wanted to ask you about an upcoming exhibit you have. I know a lot of time I talk to artists on this show and there's been a, you know, being able to display things and, you know, there's been disruption to those patterns. I was wondering if you could talk about your upcoming exhibition and just kind of your thoughts behind it.
Speaker: Yeah, this upcoming exhibition is entitled Other Disguises. And for a while now, I've been exploring my characters a little more deeply because, well, I didn't say this before, but, you know, I'm a figurative painter, so it's narrative. And these characters, I mean, one could call them a creation of sorts, but, you know, they do sort of appear to me and a lot of them
Speaker: you know, come from kind of a mixture of putting sort of together different body parts, basically, you're sort of creating your own monsters. So it's a type of objectification, which I take a lot of flack for a lot of time, a lot of the time, honestly, because when you're dealing with figuration, you're not
Speaker: You know, if you're not making a strict portrait of somebody, um, you know, people get confused and, um, you know, artists understand or anybody who's, you know, created something, you know, understands that the person in the picture is not always a specific, you know, person who can sort of swear an oath on a holy Bible that they exist or not.
Speaker: you know so it's creating something i mean it's it always blows my mind because you know people love film and they watch you know movies and they're like oh i recognize that that actor is playing that part okay but for some reason in paintings i think people have lost the ability to understand that and i wonder oftentimes if it's because you know people don't
Speaker: experience paintings anymore. You know, they, they look at pictures of paintings on the internet. So they look at pictures of things through the digital screen. But, you know, a painting is a sensual, a sensual, an essential surface. It's a man made out of powdered pigments. And, you know, many of them are from the earth. Of course, some of them are, you know, heavy metals and others can be synthetic, you know, they can be synthetic manmade things, you know, after the 19th century or so on.
Speaker: But in the secret knowledge of painting, painting was interpreted as a sort of mystical thing. And it had a kind of mystical nature to it. And different religions across time and space have viewed it that way, that there's a kind of a purity
Speaker: in the way that you approach something. And I just think today, and there's nothing wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with digital, because of course, I love Instagram and I love sharing information through the monster of the internet, but it's not the way any painter prefers to share their work. You prefer for someone to stand in front of the painting.
Speaker: You know, I mean, that's what I would prefer, but, uh, most of the time people, you know, they might not care to do that or whatever, you know, and that's okay. You know, kind of like shove someone's head in front of your painting and say, look at it, you know? Um, and so, you know, but when, and it's probably, I probably say that because I'm a painter. So when I'm looking at a painting, I'm, you know,
Speaker: pulling out my x -ray vision and sort of looking at the painting, you know, so I want to know what's behind the screen, what's behind the curtain, what's behind the veil of the glazes of the paint, you know, what's underneath all that stuff. So yeah, I mean, so in this show, Other Disguises, it's sort of about that. It's underneath the veil, you know, of the facade of things.
Speaker: And, you know, that sort of manifests in lots of different ways. And one could say, you know, we could expand on the archetypes if we wanted to, but it's not, uh, it's not, it doesn't have to be as strict like that, you know, either. So.
Speaker: Yeah, I wanted to and I so appreciate your thoughts because part of the thing of me hosting this right now is I'm thinking of quite a few things that you said at the same time, you know, of, you know, of listening to you, there's one, there's one
Speaker: a little spot I wanted to stop you on and tell you my reaction to it and how it helped me understand a lot when you were talking about obviously the physical painting in front of you and the way that you look at it. I have a similar experience, but I'll tell you the profound difference.
Speaker: I'm the type of person as well at the, you know, looking at paintings in a museum who will duck down at strange angles seven and a half feet away looking up at it and just looking and investigating what's underneath. But for me,
Speaker: that experience is a profound wonder of how such a thing is possible, just from where I am. So I really connected with the way that you look at the painting in the 3D and the feel of it and how different a flat digital image to reflect that is going to be. It's a profound difference. Yeah, yeah. And when you're a painter,
Speaker: the pigment is the medium and as much as the surface, you know, and, you know, one could even kind of get into the content and the conceptual sort of aspect of the illusion of the painting too could be one's medium, but the physicality of it, you know, just the paints themselves. I mean, I have a special relationship with, you know, kind of the symbolic place where my mind goes when I'm mixing like certain pigments.
Speaker: It's like, you know, we all have memory, you know, we sort of attach memory or it's a feeling, right, that you want to attach us to something and they sort of, it's a sort of connotation that you, that you assign to something. And, you know, I like to play that game. You know, the fun thing about art is you can change it up any time, you know.
Speaker: Like, so for me, you know, cerulean blue right now, I just imagine it's like I'm Odysseus, you know, and I'm like traveling on, you know, the waves of, of the ocean. It's sort of, it's the traveler archetype for me, the color, cerulean blue. And then, you know, the flake white is like the sculpture. It's like you're sculpting out the form, you know, and cause you're, the highlight is emerged forward.
Speaker: pull forward so it it and there's a physicality to the weight of the flake white so it sort of jumps forward in space spatially and then i just can't help but think about you know like a megalangelo marble you know and and so that happens you know and sure i could change that and i could say oh the flake white is some sort of crazy white horse of the psyche you know coming forward like some sort of deranged beast you know i could kind of play that game too i could i could change it up but you know
Speaker: it's like I kind of have certain go -to feelings where I let the paint take me over when I use it in that kind of way and then you know cadmium rod you know is a color that's going to get you sort of right in the gut and you know it's something that I only use really sparingly. It's like when I use it it's kind of like the way that I
Speaker: would approach like eating a cheesecake. I'm like, Oh God. Um, I can only have like half a bite of that. You know, like I can only, it really wouldn't be wise to have any more than that use sparingly, you know, like in the food guide pyramid, it's like, you know, it's at the very tippy top of the pyramid and you can only eat a teeny bit of it for a reason. Cause otherwise it wouldn't be too good for me.
Speaker: I gotta tell you, I could listen to you talk about color for quite some time. I love your wonderful descriptions of color. I'm enjoying your descriptions. They're fantastic. One of the things I wanted to know, I have a couple
Speaker: a couple more bigger questions for you, Amitra. And you had mentioned earlier about where you need to go with painting and your connection to it. Do you have a choice to paint? A choice? Well, you know, once upon a time in a land far, far away, many, many moons ago, they asked,
Speaker: What shall we do with this one? And the gods spoke and said, she shall be a painter. Well, how long, master, should she have to be tortured this way? And the old gods dribbled in response, saying, as long as it takes, a painter must fulfill these labors before she can earn her keep on the mountain top.
Speaker: And shall I scream or laugh or both? Both. It's the aguey tendon. You know, it's, it's, it's, there is no escaping it. Okay, Mitra, you got the, you got the listeners ready. Why is there something rather than nothing? Ah.
Speaker: Well, you can't have the light without the dark. You can't have the sun without the moon. You can't have the life without the death. You can't have shame without exaltation. You can't have something without nothing. And all you have to do is just ask that guy standing behind you. Your schizoid friend who's just dying to get out.
Speaker: mic drop. Mitra, tell us again, let the listeners know about the exhibit again. How do people who are interested in your painting, your art, where do they find you on said internet, how can they connect to the things that you create?
Speaker: Yeah, the show Other Disguises will be on display at Hauska Gallery in the central West End here in St. Louis, Missouri, in the good old Midwest in the spring. And then you can also find my art through the Sager Broadest Gallery in Columbia, Missouri. And of course you can find me making my art on Instagram and Facebook. It's just Mitra Mitchell.
Speaker: You know, Mitra mitral .com is my website, which, you know, you can go there too, if you want to, but to see the most, I guess, up to date, you know, information would be social media. And then of course, you know, you can meet me, you know, in the astral plane as well. So. Incredible. Mitra.
Speaker: A deep and profound thanks for joining the program. I've really enjoyed talking to you and honestly learning a lot from you. So it's a deep pleasure and thrilled to have you have joined the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, thank you, Ken. And like I told you before, you're a rare human being and it was fun to be able to tell you the honest truth and you were able to take it. Absolutely. And for that, I I've got to learn a lot and I'll be thinking a lot about what you've had, what you've had this year. And again, thanks, Mitra Mitchell.
Speaker: from something rather than nothing. Have a great day. This is something rather than nothing.
