INTRODUCTION. Listening to John Valadez hold court at the studio in which he worked during his recent residency (review here) at Fine Art Solutions is like hanging out with someone who used to paint Renaissance Popes in his youth and now, mellow and philosophical, follows his own idiosyncratic pursuits. He’s led a full, active life, which shows no signs of slowing down. He still works in his home studio, where he continues to experiment and innovate. He still travels. In fact, he and his wife are about to head off to France. (His second time there was for a 2104 residency in Bordeaux.) He talks about his art in pragmatic terms, not abstract. Not in terms of Chicano culture, reverse culture shock, alienation, and disenfranchisement. For him, it’s about craft. About eye to hand coordination. About the introduction of two figures on a canvas, on a mural, and then, like a voyeuristic matchmaker, letting them get to know each other as he follows along and then transcribes the exchanges.
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JS: What are your artistic influences?
JV: I like the Surrealists because I like anything that triggers the imagination. As for America art, I like the subject matter of the Ashcan School, George Bellows and Reginald Marsh. I especially like Marsh because he had this great eye and a consistent style. I like what he painted because that’s the kind of imagery I like to paint. I like some of the Mexican Muralists. I like Orozco’s work better than Rivera’s. His work gives off a sense of power. When I was in school I was drawn toward artists like Goya, especially his small pieces. I like Goya so much that in 2014 my wife and I made a very brief trip to Boston to see a Goya show at the Museum of Fine Arts. I also really liked the Mannerists because of their stylized way of painting.
JS: What were your interests when you went to college?
JV: When I was in high school, I had good eye-to-hand coordination, so I could draw really well. Then I went to Cal State Long Beach. They had a very good, very traditional art school. It was based on eye-to-hand coordination. I was very fortunate because they didn't teach like they did at Otis. Otis had you make figures out of spheres and cones and triangles and boxes.
I worked for a community center when I was in college and had a space where I could work. I had work study during the summer so me and a bunch of guys would get together and work with kids making murals. We did this for 4 years. I was used to this freedom. I didn't have money, but it didn't matter. I had the freedom to do my work. I could work big. The wall would move with ideas.
JS: Why did you begin to use photographs?
JV: I felt I could pretty much draw anything, but my imagination was a little too impatient for all the time it took to render something on paper. So I started to photograph things before I would begin to work on them. Over time, my camera became my sketchbook. I have a friend who recently passed away. He said, “John, your working method basically pre-dated Photoshop,” which is exactly what I was doing. I wanted to create my own reality in the work.
I’m always going to be a realist and it’s always going to be photo-based because I don’t want to have a style. It’s hard to explain. It is a style but it’s actually just realism. The only reason why it’s photo based is because I want the correct structure of the subject. I don’t want it to look like a photograph even though it does because there’s actually nothing that looks like that in reality.
Another major influence was photography, especially mundane photography like Lee Friedlander’s. There’s a sense in his work as if he’s walking down the street and he sees and then photographs a cloud or a street sign. He just sees things and then photographs them. With street photography, you capture a moment If you have a complete composition in the frame, and if you don’t, then you won’t.
JS: But these weren’t just portrait sketches, were they?
JV: No, they weren’t. My idea was to subvert the genre by doing portraits of people and other subjects in a highly rendered way that no one would traditionally want to look at, yet the draftsmanship in execution would intrigue the viewer to view the works closer.
My first Chicano statement about death was the paintings I’d make of the road killI’d see on my way to Long Beach State. The idea was, you wouldn't want to see it, right? But what if I used classical techniques to paint them beautifully? Then there was a kind of portrait, Decapitado, decapitated, which I tried to draw really well. I did this to play with the viewer’s mind. I knew you wouldn't want to look at it, so my challenge was to draw it so well that you would focus on the technique, but not the subject matter. That for me was fascinating.
I’ve never been overtly political except in my first portraiture work. I would consciously paint people that other people wouldn't want to look at. I would paint them larger than life and dare people to look at them. And I would dare them to buy it. Nobody did, until Peter Norton bought a couple of these works.
I did one piece, a diptych, called Pocho Crudo (See below). It shows a bloody face with this feathered headdress on top. It was one of those subjects that was so horrible looking that I wanted to paint it. Even I got sick painting it. My daughter used to help me with the undercoats of my paintings. After a while, the palette would look like it was leaking blood and puss, so she said, Daddy, I can’t do this. I’m getting sick. Now that I’m older and more mellow, I just want to paint humorous things, unless something gets me going. - What would get you going? - The whole Palestinian thing. The world is a mess. - You mean the new American Embassy in Jerusalem? - No, I mean the coming of the Antichrist!
JS: What goes through your mind when you paint?
JV: Three things, actually. First, how I want to paint the way a writer writes. A painter begins with a face, a figure, a couple of figures together on the canvas. The writer begins with a character, a situation with two characters together. This pairing creates a tension and the painter, like the writer, has to try to figure out what the figures/characters are saying to each other, how they are going to resolve the situation. This way, the painting tells you where to go with it. I really like working that way because nothing’s pre-planned.
Second, a movement towards some kind of transcendence, beyond style, beyond technique, beyond subject matter. Transcendence is my drug. It’s where I want to go.
Third and most important, entertainment. I want to be so intrigued by something, so interested by what I’m working on, that I can’t wait to come back and finish the thing.
JS: What do you look for, consciously, unconsciously every day as you walk and drive about?
JV: I’ve always been interested in things that people don’t find significant at all. I find things fascinating that people just look past. When I was living downtown for 15 years, I’d find little areas between buildings where there’d be a faded poster, a pair of jeans, some trash. After a while, it was homeless people, etc., juxtaposed against the urban backdrop. There was beauty in all this. I think it came from when I was a kid. My mother never drove, so I hardly ever went places. I had to use my imagination to find interesting things where there’s otherwise nothing interesting to be found.
JS: You like painting cars. But you also have a metaphor for convertibles. Explain, please.
JV: I’ve recently been fascinated with painting cars as metaphor. I enjoy the idea how, when you’re in a convertible, you’re in our own little space. This is a very Los Angeles idea. The space inside a convertible is our little protected area or a stage. If we’re doing something in our protected area and there’s a car next to us and they’re in their little protected area and if you bump into each other, it becomes this thing that would evolve into potential road rage. I’ve always thought that if a car had a top then there’s something weird going on inside we could view in judgment.
JS: How did you become politically aware?
JV: When you’re young, you’re trying to find a place for all your anger, confusion, and accumulated knowledge. We then begin to see the contradictions of American idealism played throughout the country and you develop this whole awareness of class consciousness.
JS: What was your relationship, then, to the Chicano movement?
JV: Being a Chicano in those days meant to take part in that socio-political stance towards the Vietnam War, unequal education, justice, and opportunity. Being Chicano was both a political movement per se as well as a sign of youthful rebellion. For instance, people would ask us, Why are you a Chicano? Because it bothers you!, we’d say. That’s the way it was. I claimed the label because I wanted to be part of something larger than myself. Being called a Chicano was and still is a very controversial thing. By being labeled a Chicano artist, I was able to show all over the world, even though my work is not overtly Chicano. Nowadays, being a Chicano is becoming archaic but there are still people who use the label for purposes for which it was not originally intended. At the end of the day, though, my work is still about realism and I still have a lot of fun.
This awareness of being Chicano may have started when I was in high school and was having an argument with a good friend, I thought about something, when out of nowhere he called me ‘Pancho’ to help him win the argument. - Isn't that derogatory? - Yeah, and, mind you, he’s was second generation Hungarian. I became grateful though because it made me realize how, as you get older, you understand that people join the various identifying camps of American culture because things are so competitive, and you want to win so you’ll do anything to get an advantage. It’s disappointing but it’s okay, that’s just the way it is.
JS: What are you working on now?
JV: I’m working on sculptural ideas using paper mache forms made from twigs and sticks from my pepper tree in the yard. Also When I lived in downtown Los Angeles for 15 years, I would collect telenovela magazines because I liked their covers. I have a large a stack of them now with various titles. I would collect Mexican crime magazines also. At the moment I’m experimenting with smaller pieces made from these collections. I’m going to pursue these ideas. It’s very liberating for me because it says a lot a lot of things about Chicano or Pocho and using popular Mexican pulp. Pocho means an Americanized Mexican. I call myself Pocho more than Chicano. I’ve got a pepper tree in the backyard I want to work with as armature, etc. I want to see how elaborate I can get because, even if I’m not trying to do it, papier mâché is like making a piñata so, again, it’s like using something that’s discarded, that’s not thought to be serious and then making something out of it. Transcendence is always the final goal.
JS: Finally, what do you notice most about today’s Los Angeles art world?
JV: There’s so much art now, so many artists. It’s like they’re waving flags in front of your face because they have to compete with each other. It seems to be a period of glut but the innovation, talent, and pure ideas always come to the surface.
Pocho Crudo 1996-98, diptych, oil and acrylic on canvas, 110"X66"
