From musings to the canvas, Cusack uses oil painting to reflect on society and evoke powerful emotion
Interview: Artist Peter Cusack
From musings to the canvas, Cusack uses oil painting to reflect on society and evoke powerful emotion
Art is often referred to as a medium with multiple purposes, from personal expression to societal commentary and beyond. Further, it can be argued that the significance of art lies in its capacity to reflect and shape the human experience—a vast undertaking that Torrington, Connecticut-based artist Peter Cusack addresses in his oil paintings. With a subdued palette, ethereal figurative exploration and an enveloping depth, Cusack’s paintings provoke emotion. To learn more about his career, practice and what he hopes will come next, we spoke with the artist.
How did you first get involved in creating artwork, and what did that journey look like for you?
I was an English major, and I did a lot of writing. I went into publishing, but I was looking for something creative to do on the weekend. I would look at art magazines and I thought if I could just create a competent painting on the weekend, I would be thrilled to gain some confidence in the art world. Then I started taking classes on the side. I came across an artist in Brooklyn, who had a good sense of foundation work, and I started working with him. I got good enough to where he recommended that I go to specialized training in France. So, I quit my publishing job and moved out there for a year when I was 28 years old.
It was very intensive training. It was the first time I left the United States, the first time I left my identity of who I was, and stepped into this incredible landscape, history and philosophy. Once I got that initial training, I returned to America and tried to put it into practice, which was very difficult. I was in a very isolated experience in France and then back into the chaos of New York, having to make a living. I started at the bottom and had to find my way up this learning curve. I did lots of odd jobs from graphic design and serving to freelance illustration and teaching at various universities, which I still do. Eventually, I realized that it was time for me to take out the original artist, the original idea, and see what’s inside myself. That’s when I moved to Connecticut, got a studio, and started doing my own work and exhibitions.
It’s been 25 years of really looking at everything and learning. I think there’s a nugget in all of us that is the model for what we’re going to become—we all have that representation of our future selves. There was a lot of time [spent] learning a language and becoming proficient. It was that connoisseurship and taking in all of what is in the art and cultural worlds, creating a new point of view. I was talking to the student about how you can do things wrong but make it elegant. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but still has a sense of elegance inside. I think that still carries through my work.
What inspired you to start oil painting as your medium?
I think what drew me to oil on canvas was, as a connoisseur, I was looking at art history and learning. What moves me about oil painting—oil on canvas, or oil on board because that oil work is the emotionality of the old masters—was that I could feel in, a very palpable way, the emotional qualities. Painting is one of our first languages, and I’m aware of that. It’s persistent. Even though there are a lot of changes in the art world, painting continues to be, I think, the most engaging vehicle because it’s very dear to us—there’s a very relatable human mirror for us. I always talk about it being such a flawed space where there’s been lots of different cultural aspects that have been fought on the canvas, and it’s always been a very dramatic space. That’s the arena that I want to be in. That’s the arena that speaks to me, that high-wire drama of painting.
How do your experiences and cultural observations of society influence your work?
I think what’s unique to our society is that we have a very concrete existence—we’re carrying a very concrete, existential concern for our planet. We’re at a point where we’re really seeing the effects of climate change, and even though it’s very scary to talk about, there is a lot of discussion out there about what might happen in five years. What is the turning point? What’s the point at which we don’t turn back? So, that sharpens up your emotional position when you’re an artist and you’re thinking in the wake of this great existential unknown, “What do I do?”
One of the first things that I got rid of was irony. I don’t think we have the privilege to be ironic anymore. And, I think sensitivity is a very important point of view for art because, in my work, I’m exploring that the human poetry and condition of facing an unknown in the natural world is in our very beloved earth. I think I’m addressing all of those societal concerns with sensitivity and porousness. I look to nature as a healer, and I look to nature as not being separate from us. Recently, there’s a motif that’s been coming up in my work, which is just a stone. I feel like the presence of that stone in my work represents wisdom, but it also represents a beckoning, like nature is calling for us to find balance with it.
I use nature and it’s for serenity. In our commercial and digital world, I know that I retreat into nature and find myself there again. I know that my soul can rest in nature. I bring it in because I think it’s an important relationship that we should cultivate.
I’m also very much curious about the individual—a lot of my paintings are about individuals’ experiences, and without an applied narrative, I really try to see the experience of being human in its most basic terms. That’s why I’m always drawing the body and its place in space. It’s definitely what I’m responding to—not politically, not with irony, but with truth and sensitivity.
What motivates you to pick up a brush and create meaningful pieces?
Motivation can be difficult. Practice is very important—getting back to the chair and working is very important. But, for me, what motivates me finally is when I’m surrounded by paintings that are on my walls. All I have to do is remove those paintings, and then I’m compelled to put something back up and that’s a wonderful feeling. I think my curiosity, my love of contemplation, and my work, all end up keeping me company. So, if I don’t have anything on the walls, I’m going to paint something. That’s the bottom line motivator.
If I don’t have anything on the walls, I’m going to paint something. That’s the bottom line motivator.
What feelings come to mind when you pick up a paintbrush and start working?
That first feeling we’re kind of coming out of is fear—absolute fear. It lasts for a few seconds, but it will get me; it will push me. That fear will push me away from working. But, once I pick up the brush, I still feel fear but then what kicks in is my experience as an artist and my body’s knowledge of this practice. I’m getting better at trusting my body’s knowledge. Once I get involved, the experience will move me into the right place of creating. But, that first [feeling] of fear and despair is awful. The fear is our internal voice and it can be very disruptive. It takes time to learn how to combat it. The opposite of the fear is how essential it is for us to have these practices.
What type of emotions are you trying to evoke with your pieces?
Spatially, I want there to be a union. I want the painting to bring the person into a grounding experience that they feel present and out of their world. When you watch two people tango beautifully, you’re mesmerized, and moved out of your worries into the rhythm. That’s really where I want my viewers to be. In that rhythm, there’s meditation and there’s room for contemplation and balance. When I teach drawing, I talk about how the process of drawing is coming out of your mind into your body. As you lose your mind, you leave room for whatever is in the universe that loves us to come into our bodies and embody us. We really move into a space where we have this feeling of being at one and at peace. I don’t want my viewers to feel tortured. I don’t want to illustrate a story about depression or even about joy. I think our lives are more complicated and richer than that. The richness of our complicated lives feels good when we touch ground into them. That’s mimicked in the color.
What motivates you to pick specific colors over others? What meanings do you think each of them hold?
When I was an illustrator, I used color in almost a commercial advertising way, using bright colors, maybe even leaning toward garish colors to get attention. When the pandemic hit, we were all locked down and there was a sense that we were all in the same experience. During that time, there were a lot of political issues. During that whole period of unrest, all the color in my work drained, and I was left with the question of what color works. Why this color? The color drained out of my work, and then it began to reassemble itself. And, I think how it was assembled was based on unification rather than advertising. There are aspects of it, this idea of unification and ensuring the surface of the canvas is unified. There’s a term in abstract expressionism, all-over painting, where instead of there being one focal point, the focus moves out to the edges of the painting, and then beyond, forming this unified field. That sense of unity could be a reaction to the need for unity in our world and really getting on top of problems that we have together. Maybe it was manifested in the color where now I’m interested in, how the color sits on the canvas and creates a unified field. There’s one tone, one big vibration rather than jarring moments or separation.
What do you have in store for the future?
Most recently, I’ve been seeking to connect with creative minds from other disciplines. The art world is sort of a rehash of every corner of the art world that you go to. So, I have a wider sense of things. Ever since I was a kid, it’s been a gift and a curse. I’ve been looking to connect with people who are thinking about design and how to create space—spaces for our sensitivities and our humanity. I love connecting with those people in architecture. I’m really interested in sacred spaces. These new concepts architects are developing for new ways of living have given me a lot of inspiration. So, the future is about connecting to other disciplines, from architecture to music. I think getting out into the world and collaborating and developing dialogues with other disciplines is very important going forward.