Mary Limonade
You paint in a variety of canvas sizes, with some as little as 4 x 5 in. to others more than triple that size.
Your small paintings are only small in stature, for they pack as much detail and evoke great feelings as much as any of your bigger ones. What is the charm in painting in such small sizes? Do you have a preference for painting smaller or larger canvases?
I worked a lot in my bedroom before which probably made me paint smaller over last years.My work on wood attends to be bigger and bigger as I have more space in the studio. I like the different scales, from very little size as small as a matchbox to big murals but I find small sizes more intimate. I like to paint very small places full of details and I like to paint big perfectly flattened spaces. I can't really choose one or another that's why I started to mix it. I have to tell that I'm easily bored and I need to have fun with scales to enjoy, I like to change anyway!I would love to make bigger works in the future but it's a bit more complicated because I paint on wood most of the time, and the bigger it is, the heavier it is. I could paint on anything else but I really like what it's feel like to paint on wood.
Are your paintings influenced by scenes that you’ve witnessed or are they scenes created from your imagination? Moreover, are the texts that accompany your figures conversations that you’ve overheard or personal anecdotes that you wanted to share with your audience? Are there specific visual elements or techniques that you consider signature aspects of your work, which make it distinctly yours?
Most of my paintings are part of memories. I like to mix them with thoughts from my daily-life and and references of my childhood or teenagehood. I paint places where I spended times, places which resonates inside of me. It's a mix of dreamlike elements and factual memories. Sometimes with hindsigh, nostalgia or the bitterweet feeling that remains. I don’t like to talk about my feelings, or just to talk. Painting words or thoughts probably helps me a lot in my everyday life. It helps me to talk about my internal feeling of loneliness or eternal anger that I can feel as an autistic person, how I can feel stuck in my body and my mind sometimes. I think that writing stuff helps me also to grief,
My mom used to say to me "You are such a grave", she's probably not totally wrong, but I try to express what I feel in other ways. So in my painting I can say "Fuck that shit" or "I want to die" without fighting with myself or hurting anybody. There are no consequences in my paintings, it's a safe world for me.
Some of your paintings quote music lyrics from a wide breadth of artists: from pop superstar Britney Spears to alternative singer-songwriter Beck and even extending to genre-defying singer Kimya Dawson.
What is it about these lyrics that resonate with you? And how do you choose which lyrics make it onto your final canvas?
Sometimes I use lyrics, I really like the way that quotes can resonate and be interpreted differently, it's playful for me to think about that.
The Britney Spears’s song is a good exemple, I realised I heard this song a million times as most of us on this planet. We always sang it as a light song, thinking about Britney at school with her chewing-gum. But as soon as you made somebody else says those words, it feels just totally different, more deep or dramatic. I think it's really interesting and I like to think about how people can feel the same and litteraly different about the same words. How that context works is important.
Also, I'm very impressed by song-writers and poets. People who are into expressing feelings with words. I like to play with my interpretation of what those people wrote. I came from a musician family, music was always around me. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, for me eall music is interesting in one way or another.
Everyone has favorite songs, mainstreams or not, in their life, songs makes them think about someone they love or a special moment. That's why there are such connections with my own memories and feelings that I try to express within my paintings. It helps me express my own feelings too. Music brings so much emotions, from immense sadness to tremendous joy and that's a way I found to share it too.
You identify your art within the genre of naive painting, and so what do you think are the strengths (and possible weaknesses) to being a self-taught artist? What was the journey that led to you establishing your art practice? In addition, what are some lessons or tips that you have learned, in which you believe that no formal art education could have taught you?
That's a good question. I always felt mixed feelings about it. When I was younger I always wanted to learn HOW to draw or paint, going to an art school or so. Unfortunatly (or fortunately I could say), I left school at the age of 14 or 15.
I had a lot of friends who were into art and graffiti. I always wanted to try everything and I felt for a long time that I was not able to do anything long enough to be good at it. I was kind of waiting for learning the special thing which would be mine and felt bored before I manage to have a good skill. I did a lot of different things in my life from working with disabled people, teaching french to immigrant people and even make-up on advertising sets for tv. The good side of it is that I know a bit of everything. At the end, I found that what I was looking for was there since forever. I just had to paint to discover that the key is just to do it. Doing what you want to do.
What I mean is that the journey was not what I expected. I was lucky enough to cross paths with Jiem 10 years ago who was really enthusiastic about my work and helped me to focus and not to give up on lower days. That's when I started to think again about painting as a serious thing in my life. The mainly strenght to be a self-taught artist is that everything is possible I never ask myself if it's the good way to do it, I just do it. When I paint a scene and I don't have space enough to fit everyting it, I do it anyway. I don't think an academic artist would do this way. I studied music at the conservatory, it feels almost impossible to improvise as soon as you've learned such strict rules. I guess I won't paint the same things at all if I would have gone to art school.
Not having techniques sometimes feels frustrating of course. At some point I felt in love with naive-paintings which for me is the most playfull way to paint.
You frequently collaborate with the artist JIEM, and your art styles blend so seamlessly to create really harmonious, well-balanced paintings that still contain unique details that attest to both of your personal styles. How do you make sure that your collaborations represent both of you equally? And is it always equal or are there times where someone’s style or idea is represented more than the other? How do you find the right balance in collaboration? And what strengths does JIEM have that you think personally adds to your work?
Yes, we like to work together. It helps each other in so many ways!
I guess the way it feels harmonious is because we have common passions and interests, we love the same aesthetic, we have a lot of references in common that build our common universe. It's not always equal but it's not a question for us. It can happen that one of us made 90% of the painting itself. There is no question of who did what. There is no mystical recipe. We just do it.
Each of us has our own strenghts of course, for exemple I'm able to fit anything I want in one picture which can make a weird combination. Jiem is the master of cloudy skies, accumulation of things and lively spaces.
I also think that painting together helps us a lot to understand and define our personal approach and what we would like to develope individually in our paintings. Jiem is more into dense and very busy paintings in a way, more in touch with style, without unnecessary details to understand the painting. And I like empty and flattened spaces, sometimes mystical, dreamlike environnement with very few detailed elements. I think the strenghts Jiem adds to our work is rawness, new colors combination that I would never do. It also adds surprises too. It's always a good feeling to see the progress of a painting when the other one works on it.
Last great piece of media (book/show/music/movie)?
Few weeks ago, I read "Fun Home" from Alison Bechdel. It's a comic book about the author's childhood in the family funerarium home in Pennsylvania and her relationship with her father. It feels like a maze into the deepness of the intimacy of her family secrets and connections. It resonates a lot with my feelings and history in a way. I really like autobiographical comics. The drawing itself is really cool also.
Click Here ︎ to see Mary’s work.
Jacob’s Instagram: @marylimonade
Interview by Tiffany Kang
@by_inyoung