Why did you decide to become an artist?
When I was a student at the Museum School in Boston, my flamboyant painting teacher liked to proclaim that you don’t choose to be an artist, and if you don’t need to be one, better to do something else. As pretentious and suspect as this sounded to my 19-year-old mind, as with most cliches, there is truth in that statement. All to say, I did not choose to become an artist. As a kid, I played music daily and envisioned my adult self as some sort of academic researcher or journalist. But as far back as I can remember, I always drew and painted. At seventeen I spent a year at the New School for Social Research studying the social sciences. Whenever I had time, I rode uptown to the Art Students’ League to attend figure drawing classes. For my New School feminism class I chose to write about “The Situation for Women in the Contemporary New York Art World”. At that time, I did not identify with these women. But thinking back, I believe I was searching for a road map. Then at eighteen I went off to a liberal arts college, ostensibly to continue studying social science and to play music. A semester later I was using the music composition paper not to compose string quartets, but as a background for experimental drawings. So as my life-long interest and involvement in visual art began taking center stage, I left college, moved to Boston and enrolled in art school where I studied drawing, painting and sculpture. This did not feel like a decision but more like a necessity. And no regrets, forty years later.
Tell us about some other jobs you have had other than being an artist?
Chinese fast food server, laundress, stable hand, children’s party planner, flutist, typist, administrative assistant, mother, physical therapist and I still work as an Alexander Technique teacher.
What are you currently working on?
I am working on a series of mixed media paintings focused on bodily experience. This interest has been evolving for many years and is related both to my work as a physical therapist and Alexander Technique teacher, and my personal journey of recovery from several accidents. I am interested in expressing what it feels like to do ordinary human things, like swim, or be eight months pregnant, or practice qigong exercise. I try to paint experience from the inside out, rather than focusing on what people “look like.” This impulse is largely a reaction to years spent admiring remarkable (and not so remarkable) paintings, where the subject is often, at least in part, the male gaze upon the female figure. My own interest is in the possibility of creating an engaging image in which the subject is not so much appearance, but the lived experience of moving through one’s days within a female human body.
Which habits help or hinder your creativity?
Hindering work is easy! Worry, judgement, too much time in my head removed from nature and not enough time drawing creative inspiration from others. Forcing change, forcing imagery, and striving to make “good work” are traps often needing circumvention. Letting work hang around long enough that ideas for resolution appear on their own is very beneficial. The busy brain is my nemesis. Too much news is a problem. Again and again, I look for a balance between absorbing some of the world’s difficulties and finding means to offer my share of help, all while staying focused on the artwork. Engagement in creative work does not always have obvious social merit in a time of crisis such as this, but helping people to stay deeply connected and to know themselves and each other better, which art can support, is fortifying and often necessary sustenance.
So, what helps my creative process? Patience, in particular, not rushing to “get to work” when entering the studio. My intention is to approach painting with anticipation, curiosity and willingness to take risks. When I struggle to settle into my work, I remind myself of the interconnectedness and continuity between all things, breathe, and try my best.
Where can we find your work?
I am not much of a social media maverick…yet. My Judaica prints, which I exhibited last year at the Northampton Center for the Arts, are on my website: abbiesteiner.com.
I will publish more work on the website soon. Stay tuned.
Feel free to contact me with inquiries or ideas: abbiesteiner3@gmail.com