Artist 2 Artist 2026: Amelia Biewald Talks With Mary Gibney About Her Work
- Amelia Biewald
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Amelia: I am very drawn to your use of color and how the admixes are both a little odd and seemingly natural at the same time. Can you talk a little about the ways you choose colors?
Mary: I do love color! I don't plan a particular palette, just mostly work it out on the canvas. I discovered neon pink and orange paint a few years ago and they now show up in every painting. I also use Prussian Blue as a black substitute almost exclusively.
Amelia: Do you keep an artists sketchbook? If so, do you sketch these compositional for your paintings out before hand as a working model, or do you just intuitively attack the canvas?
Mary: I have multiple sketchbooks and I do some very rough sketches before starting a painting but I make many changes to shape and color directly on the canvas. If I have a too-detailed idea in mind before starting a painting it feels confining. Sometimes I think I'm almost finished... and then I'm not. Occasionally I turn the painting upside down and start over. That's usually only after a long struggle of trying to make things "right", and often trying to preserve an area I really like or looks "good". But whenever I give up that particular battle it's very freeing, and it makes way for new energy.
Amelia: There is a sort of “nether space” or twilight you bring forth in your paintings, a space both near and far at the same time. Do you work through this during the development of the painting, or is it usually preset notion of how thing are going to be before starting?
Mary: I think the spatial weirdness is partly a result of my not really knowing how to use perspective but mostly wanting to put everything in the painting at once. That makes for a bit of an off-kilter feeling, with characters and objects maybe both large and small in the same scene. But I like that unbalanced aspect.
Amelia: As an artist who tends to produce a lot of work, how do you think your process has changed in the past few years? What factors may have contributed to this?
Mary: Being a Rosalux member is very freeing for me. Knowing when I will have a gallery show means I have time to play around to get inspiration, without self-judgement I need open-ended freedom to capture random ideas, most of which won't be used in paintings. I use multiple sketchbooks to mine my subconscious and determine the emotions I want to show in the work. In the past I did many series of portraits - mugshots, wrestlers, baseball players, sideshow entertainers, faces in the crowd from Weegee photos. My paintings were smaller and more literal. The last few years I've painted imaginary scenes on larger canvases, which gives me a lot of freedom to mess around with capturing an emotional and humorous vibe.
Amelia: I can see some of your paintings working as illustrations for works of poetry, or lyrics for songs. Do you write as an artist or ever produce work as a reaction to texts or music?
Mary: I don't do either but I do play records when I paint, I have a turntable in my studio. And I get tons of inspiration by reading about other artists' processes and their relationships to a particular scene. The little book by artist and poet Joe Brainard called "I Remember" is funny and weirdly inspiring. Other favorites are Adam Moss' The Work of Art, interviews on the work of making art. And I'm really enjoying New York School Painters & Poets by Jenni Quilter.
Amelia: Thank you for giving us insight into your work and creative process, Mary. It's been a pleasure discussing your journey and the evolution of your art with you.
Mary: Thanks, Amelia. It was great to talk with you about my work!