Portraitist and painter Joan LeMay infuses a tonic into her paintings: a warmth, openness and curiosity, and an unmatched exuberance. Viewing art as a soothing, healing force, she sees the act of communicating with the emotional and energetic core of her subjects, herself included, as one of connection and projection. If you’ve met her, or interacted with her online (she also handles our social media accounts!), you’ll know that this “exaltation of humanity”, as she calls it, is present in anything she touches. This week, she invited us into her world.
1. Always a powerhouse, you’ve had some interesting projects in the works this year. Can you tell us a bit about what all you’re working on and what your workdays are looking like right now?
Thank you for saying I’m a powerhouse! Of late, I’d like to be Young Frankenstein-style lashed to a lightning rod or something, as I have been operating at a much lower voltage than I’d like…and there’s a lot that needs to get done in the next handful of months. Currently, I’m on deadline with Random House to finish up a batch of 120 paintings for the follow up to my and writer Alex Pappademas’s Greatful Dead book Friends of the Devil, which is the follow-up to last year’s Steely Dan book Quantum Criminals (on University of Texas Press). This spring, I opened my commission books back up for the first time in a long time, so I have a list of really interesting and heartwarming subjects to paint for people. Since I co-formed one band (Viennetta) and joined another (Bull Thieves) this year, I’ve also started getting back into one of my first loves: making flyers for rock shows. I’m poking at some personal work–a slow-going giant pastel, a series of de Chirico-inspired still lifes, Holga photography, learning elementary video editing–on top of all of that. And I’m applying for a number of grants and residency programs for next year, because there’s another big personal project I’d like to work on, but I know I’ll need dedicated time and space outside of the home to bring it to fruition.
In terms of what my workdays look like right now, they’re absolutely all over the place. I had open heart surgery eight weeks ago, the first month of healing was rocky to say the least, and I’ll continue to recover from all of it well into next year in one way or another. I’ve just started baby-stepping back into work. I look like nothing happened on the outside (well, aside from my new scars), but my body is very much still regaining its strength and stamina, to say nothing of my psyche. Anyone who has gone through this or something like it knows that it underscores the fact that you can only do what you can do in a day. I’m up on and off around the clock, working and sleeping and eating at weird hours for variable chunks of time–I am absolutely not mad about this as I am a night owl anyway, but the unpredictable nature of my energy stores is not helpful in terms of things like “planning” and “estimating when I will have something done”. I feel like my body’s the boss and I’m just kind of along for the ride for now.
What a Shame, 2024.
2. Do you approach your commissions and professional projects differently from your personal projects? In what way(s) are those processes similar/distinct?
I absolutely do. My personal projects are between me and me; they are essential to my ability to process my life and they’re how I can say what I can’t say otherwise. There is an urgent pull, there can be anger, total immersion, lust, hope, despair, competitiveness (with myself), a bordering-on-unbecoming self-importance. All I care about at the end of the day is if what I made works for me. I have so many unbirthed ideas right now; I’ve got a lot in me that needs to get out, and not nearly enough energy to discipline myself into executing much. This means that I am presently frustrated.
My commissions and professional projects are the bulk of how I make a living, and I really use a completely different chunk of myself on them. Painting commissioned work for people is deeply satisfying and a big honor–you’re painting something that will be part of people’s homes and lives for years to come. It’s a very personal thing, and I don’t take the task lightly. I’m often memorializing and/or exalting people or animals I’ve never met, so I’m trying to get at what I understand to be the spark of their being through what I get from my reference images and discussions with the client. Illustration projects–like the book cover I got to do this year for Corey duBrowa’s great book about the history of the EP An Ideal for Living (HoZac)--are just a joy; they’re fun, they’re–I absolutely hate this word and kind of this concept (maybe because I equate it with flippancy), but they’re playful. I laugh a lot while painting characters for these books or or coming up with artwork concepts for other books or records. I enjoy the visual problem-solving aspect of it, too.
Fagen and Becker Diptych, 2022.
3. Since your surgery, how have you been finding ways to be gentle with yourself in your practice?
I wish I could take credit for having found ways to be gentle with myself, but I haven’t. It’s often like a rat-and-buzzer experiment. If I stand for a while at a weird angle while painting then straighten up to look at the piece and there’s a stabbing pain in my upper ribs, I’ve been buzzed. I stop because the alternative is more pain, which is less kindness-to-self and more just not being reckless. I suppose if there’s gentleness there, it comes in the form of acceptance. I am extremely grateful and lucky that I will indeed heal up, and I totally accept whatever the deal is on my path until then. Maybe there’s gentleness, also, in how genuinely grateful I am to be as far along as I am on any given day.
4. You’re a big music lover. What have you been listening to while painting?
I’m having a moment where I want to listen to a lot of Chicago records I spent time with in the late ‘90s: The Sea and Cake’s The Fawn and Oui, Jim O’Rourke’s Eureka. There’ve also been ‘70s Brazilian artists in rotation: Emilio Santiago, Antonio Adolfo, Lo Borges, Gal Costa. Everyone should listen to (not Chicago-affiliated or Brazilian) Elysian Fields’s new LP What the Thunder Said.
5. What’s something that’s been energizing you, or getting you excited, relating to your work lately?
I am excited and thankful every time I pick up a paintbrush or a pencil lately because it’s like, my God, I can still do this after this long break. I can still do it, and I will be able to do it for longer and longer periods of time as the year progresses. I will feel very energized as soon as I see the light at the end of the book tunnel. Right now, I’m in what Brene Brown calls the “messy middle”. I won’t be here for too much longer, though.
Collect Joan LeMay:
