THE FOCUS

Nancy Cheairs, Conversation, 2022, 24" x 20" Anna Mages: Could you elaborate on the process behind your work? Do you begin with sketches then experiment with color? Or do you find yourself working more intuitively? Nancy Cheairs: I don’t have one method for constructing a painting. There are times when I work from my large sketchbook filled with small drawings of visual vocabulary. The drawings are on transparent paper and are taped into my sketchbook. I might arrange some pieces in a co...

Wesley Roden: In an age of short form media, do viewers ever find your work to be refreshing for how it warrants closer inspection? Do you appreciate viewers slowing down? Beth Edwards: I am heartened by anyone who spends time with my work. I work very slowly. My work builds incrementally over a significant period of time. Every painting, every show, makes me more cognizant of the passage of time. Time is literally embedded in the images. WR: Seeing the...

Elise Cochran: When would you say you first started experimenting with text alongside images and what drove you to do this? David Underwood: I started adding text in some of my artworks in 2012, with an artwork titled, “Shift In Thinking.” Now some thirteen years later, my ongoing “image-text” series is the dominant body of my current work, with more than 250 artworks completed. I’ve always been interested in how the title of an artwork can possibly direct the viewer to either gre...