Interview: Paul Pachter

Paul Pachter and M.J. Kjarr meet and talk about Paul’s most recent work. Recorded October 4th 2004.

M.J. Kjarr: There is a well documented history of artists exploring the sea, the land, and the sky. But, as you are a keen sailor yourself, your investigation seems very personal. I was wondering initially if this represented a survey of a particular part of the coastline which you related to?

Paul Pachter: Well, initially I set out to document the Waitemata. I was driving around the South Island last summer with Karen and my kids, and we were trying to sum up a keyword which suggests our respective practices. We both suggested that it was the landscape. You said something which relates to this in one of my critiques when you suggested; why don’t I just go out and paint the landscape. I was going to build these observation platforms and go into twenty four hour rituals of recording the landscape and defining my motivation, which was basically to connect. But I realized that I already knew the connection, because of my love for the sea. You know, sitting there for hours watching the coast glide past and observing the grays and the blues. I can do that forever and I know it. Also, I am inspired by the memories that attach to the land and the stories of the people who have lived and traveled to get to this place.

MJK: Your recent painting has become increasingly focused on experiences from the marine viewpoint of the New Zealand landscape, in particular the sky. Is this related to an egalitarian, outsiders view of land and ownership?

Paul: Yes, and also I suppose that is where the sky comes in. Because the sky is so difficult to cultivate. We do pollute it, and we buy it; you know the sky is actually for sale with television, radio and mobile technology etc. But it is a lot less obvious and therefore it is harder to grasp. With regard to the ocean, it is so treacherous, we can only skim over it. The moment you go into it, it seems endless. But once you go under it you are gone.

MJK: In a recent discussion, Jeremy Blake recapitulated that the purpose of abstraction is the demonstration of philosophical nuance. In particular I would relate a similar nuanced approach to your recent developments in this series. Oehlens has also talked about retaining content in a similar vein, being an explorative way of working?

Paul: Well, when I paint that content, the sky, I never really paint ‘the sky.’ It’s all the same stuff really, whether it’s the sky or the water or the land. I’m painting the form or the feeling of the form. I could spend hours watching clouds shifting and draping each other. So I am actually working from memory although I use various references that I have, such as photographs; but when I am out there I can see the weather coming, I can see what’s in front of me and also what’s falling away. It’s not literal to me, rather, it’s about time, experience and memory.

MJK: This is kind of what made me think of Jeremy Blake or Oehlens for instance, in that there is a nuance there that you are trying to capture. I wanted to relate your working process conceptually to seemingly different artistic models in order to draw a parallel viewpoint. The idea of nuance was evident to me in the earlier works in this series which have a more notational, recording quality. For instance you may happen to be working from, and marking out certain geographical viewpoints such as a place on the Auckland Harbour, but also as something which could be anywhere.

Paul: Yes, it is universal and it could be anywhere, but it (nuance) is also about loss. I mean that it is an abundance of information and when you interpret it as an abstraction, it is about loss. And that is also what the conceptual element of the work is about; about cultivating wilderness. This then becomes what we know as our landscape. The moment is actually long gone, but you still essentially know the feel of it. That’s why we all go to the bush or for long walks. It’s what reminds us daily of what connects us.

MJK: I recently read something that Paul Strahern mentioned about the limitations of our intellect in comprehending something outside our frame of reference. This strikes me as an ideal approach for painting, ie. an exploration that can be notated, but never grasped?

Paul: Are you meaning metaphor? I was reading a book called ‘Uses and Abuses of English,’ which had a section on metaphor. Metaphor’s are there, for example, for you or I to talk about or to explain things that would otherwise take page after page to describe in words. For me paintings are likewise about things that we know but we can’t talk about.

Paul Pachter interviewed in conjunction with Pachter’s show with photographer Karen Crisp at Artstation, Ponsonby, Auckland, October 2004.