Power, An Ether: An Interview
with Elizabeth Schwaiger
by Courtney Simchak
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The intensity of Elizabeth Schwaiger’s work is immediate, but the complexity of the images processes slower to the eye. Her paintings travel through energies and time, as she deposits, obstructs, and reveals through each layer of paint on the canvas. The longer your gaze rests on the images and atmospheres of her work, the more its emotion and deep thought resonates a profound message about power, ritual, and presence. Schwaiger speaks with Newfound’s Visual Arts editor about what motivates her painting, what the process is like, and how the ephemeral nature of power and the facility of ritual takes precedent within her compositions.
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COURTNEY SIMCHAK: How did you get started with painting? What draws you to use the medium of painting for the work that you do?
ELIZABETH SCHWAIGER: Although I had taken art classes in school, it never really clicked the way I wanted. I happened to take an art class as an elective in college after a particularly demanding study abroad language immersion intensive in China, learning Mandarin. To my surprise when I returned, I could draw what I saw with an accuracy I never had before. I think the language program changed my wiring. I saw painting as a new and engaging challenge.
Painting allows me to explore diverse concepts and visual elements as widely as I want while still providing needed boundaries that I can push against and still gain a certain sense of direction and location. This balance of the constraints of the medium and the freedoms of the medium work as slowly but consistently widening circles within which I can work.
Additionally, the way viewers approach paintings begins with an inherent sense of gravitas and that is a terribly useful dynamic I take advantage of to introduce the concepts and emotions I find important.
Think of some analogies of power: the flow of power, tide of power, current of power, drunk with power. It’s not that I’m thinking of this field, this ether, as power itself, but as a matrix of power dynamics that include areas of greater or lesser magnitude or intensity.
SIMCHAK: Your work has a ghostly tone to it—a presence and absence of something at the same time, especially the figures that are included in your work. Can you talk a little about how the concept of power dynamics plays into your paintings and how you use this “there, but not there” to explore that?
SCHWAIGER: When I’m layering different mediums and images on top of one another, I’m obscuring some aspects and reinforcing others. In this way, formal compositional power differentials become a visual investigation of competing impulses, conflicting realities, or even the unseen multifaceted interpersonal power dynamics of any given situation.
At the moment I consider abstract mark-making in my work as mapping multidimensional effects of influence and thought. I think of it like the old concept of ether. I don’t mean to sound like I’m advocating an outdated scientific theory; it just happens to be a very useful framework of analogy to build representations of power and influence and to delve into how these dynamics move through a space creating ripples in behavior, in social interaction, and in the way we process the world around us.
The common understanding of power is that it’s an ability or quality an individual may possess in varying degrees. Reimagining power as movement or vibration within the medium of ether negates the idea that it’s an innate ability or even possible to possess. Instead, power is concentrated within an all pervading but—and this part is important—malleable field, that one can be surrounded by power in varying magnitude, but that this is perhaps more a product of location and arrangement than inevitability.
SIMCHAK: So you reimagine power as not something that is or that one has, but something one experiences? A transitory state that is exacted with purposefulness, but not self-sustained and a state that is dependent on how it is informed by place and circumstance?
SCHWAIGER: Think of some analogies of power: the flow of power, tide of power, current of power, drunk with power. It’s not that I’m thinking of this field, this ether, as power itself, but as a matrix of power dynamics that include areas of greater or lesser magnitude or intensity. These areas of intensity are harder to monopolize and their use is more fragile and transitory, as you said, than the way we think about it in everyday conversation. I don’t necessarily think that power works this way, at least not right now, but maybe by thinking about it in a different way our collective belief could enact change. Maybe collective belief governs the dynamics of power.
I could draw what I saw with an accuracy I never had before. I think the language program changed my wiring. I saw painting as a new and engaging challenge.
SIMCHAK: This concept of ether and abstract-mark making is very interesting to me. It makes me think of automatic writing or psychologist Carl Jung’s attitude toward myth and archetype and a map or record of the collective unconscious. Your description of these influences of power and thought sound like how people describe the unconscious—which is to say, information is picked up, but is not necessarily consciously acknowledged or digested. It works invisibly in the background. Do you feel that the influence of power works this same way? How do you think these subtleties and dynamics became more consciously apparent to you?
SCHWAIGER: Yes, that’s a good association. I think it probably does work largely on the unconscious level invisibly and in the background. Though maybe there’s some “visible” components that we acknowledge with our conscious thinking—an iceberg type model of power in relation to the conscious/subconscious. Instead of knowing for certain what’s beneath the surface, I enjoy taking guesses and I hope my paintings encourage others to guess as well.
SIMCHAK: In addition to power dynamics, you’ve explained how important ritual is to your work: “I arrived at the idea of ritual, which I came to identify as a human invention to intercede and manipulate power differentials that would otherwise remain outside of one’s control—even if only by addressing the personal anxieties created by such situations of relative powerlessness.” I think the concept of ritual and its relationship to power and powerlessness is extremely important. What in your research inspired you to tackle ritual within your art practice, in relation to power and how it is used?
SCHWAIGER: I think at some point I realized that a common thread throughout my work investigated powerlessness. My interest in ritual then followed because it’s a tool to ameliorate the anxiety that accompanies powerlessness. Though in many cases the situation itself might not ostensibly change, the way in which the individual or society relates to the situation shifts and a sense of agency returns. In that way ritual, and perhaps purpose, might be the only useful tools for the truly powerless. That sort of paradox is infinitely interesting to me.
SIMCHAK: I think in the increase of anxiety in America, as well as the atmosphere of powerlessness in current events have definitely brought an increased interest in ritual—both personal and in a community sense. Social media has been a revolutionary influence in ritual; a sense of control—not matter how large or minute—can be exacted in a public and private space simultaneously. How do you explore this in your life and work, outside of your art practice? How do you think others can explore these relationships?
SCHWAIGER: It goes without saying that social media has redefined the bounds of public and private space. That’s had a significant effect on ritual, given that ritual often straddles the bounds of those two territories. You could say ritual and social media are both the inheritors of the “public secret.”
I have hang-ups with social media personally, though. Those who know me best know that I’m a very private person and that such broadcasting of my own life leaves me more anxious than excited. In painting itself I find my global voice, the way I want to communicate with the world, and so I am willing to at least use social media to share these. That’s a long way of saying that I find social media to be the pits, but Instagram is at least a good way for me to pre-exhibit work without having to fill a post full of text or personal anecdote, and a way that I can deflect the societal pressure to engage more fully.
My explorations of power dynamics have indeed been affected by social media, but more so by independent research and engaging with the world outside of digital space. As far as my advice to others goes on exploring conceptual relationships and hidden dynamics, I of course encourage them to do so through art (music, visual art, performance, movies, food, yes—even some social media posts count). At its core, art is a gateway to look at life more deeply, so look beyond the entertainment value of any of these artistic modes and look for real meaning. If it’s good art, the meaning is there somewhere.
SIMCHAK: What is it like to be a professional artist? What do you find challenging and rewarding about it?
SCHWAIGER: The rewards are those anyone would guess at: freedom, having a creative outlet and a public voice, control over your own schedule, having an interesting occupation that leads to interesting friends, travel, etc. The main challenge is this: when it’s all going smoothly in the studio and things are really working it feels amazing, but it doesn’t feel like it’s a result of anything in particular that I’ve done—on the other hand though, when everything has gone pear shaped, it feels like it’s absolutely my fault. That private hypocrisy may say more about me than about artistic practice, but it is without a doubt the largest hurdle in my profession.
After earning her master’s degree from Glasgow School of Art in 2011, Elizabeth Schwaiger was named one of the top UK art graduates by The Catlin Guide and has exhibited throughout Europe and North America.