About Art

190. Spencer Lewis


Listen Later

Spencer Lewis, born 1979 in Hartford, Connecticut, lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of California, Los Angeles. Known for his gestural paintings on cardboard and jute, Lewis uses flashy bright and colorful notions executed through streaked lines, smears of paint and rough strokes that suggest the impulsive creative process underneath. With chaotic, almost infinite layers, Lewis's canvases conceal and simultaneously unveil a brushstroke, a gesture over the other, stories and moments culminating and accumulating on the painting's densest parts. Despite the apparent unpredictability of Lewis's compositions, they are based on a methodology and structure. Lewis is, in fact, interested in pictorial organization and image-making. Consistently concentrating towards the centre of the canvas, Lewis's brushstrokes frantically tell the different layers of the same narrative. In a podcast recorded live in his LA studio, he and Zuckerman discuss wanting positive things, paint as a fluid object, seeing and feeling distance between ideas, cities, being courageous, finding novelty, what art is really good at, timelessness, how artists want to be free, having an anxious attachment style, why people like complexity, what feels big, the space of color, how and why you need a studio, how to make great paintings, his phrase “for me to make a painting,” how art is still about beauty, remembering that making art will feel bad, and how gratitude works every time!

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

About ArtBy Heidi Zuckerman

  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8
  • 4.8

4.8

83 ratings


More shows like About Art

View all
The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker Radio Hour

6,805 Listeners

The New Yorker: Fiction by The New Yorker

The New Yorker: Fiction

3,352 Listeners

The Political Scene | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

4,085 Listeners

Savvy Painter Podcast with Antrese Wood by Antrese Wood

Savvy Painter Podcast with Antrese Wood

893 Listeners

Creative Pep Talk by Andy J. Pizza

Creative Pep Talk

2,012 Listeners

Arts & Ideas by BBC Radio 4

Arts & Ideas

303 Listeners

The Week in Art by The Art Newspaper

The Week in Art

214 Listeners

Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast by David Zwirner

Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

433 Listeners

Talk Art by Russell Tovey and Robert Diament

Talk Art

492 Listeners

The Great Women Artists by Katy Hessel

The Great Women Artists

526 Listeners

The Art Angle by Artnet News

The Art Angle

366 Listeners

A brush with... by The Art Newspaper

A brush with...

141 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,436 Listeners

The Interview by The New York Times

The Interview

1,599 Listeners

Critics at Large | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

663 Listeners