evolve: How did you come to do art? What brought you to start painting?
EV: When I was five years old, I was drawing all the time, so my parents gave me a book called “Masterpieces for Young People”. I poured over paintings by Botticelli and Raphael and all the masters like other kids do with children’s books. They told stories to me. It made a huge impression and I still have the tattered old book. My father colored one of my drawings in , framed it and hung it in the living room. My parents encouraged me from a very young age, so I've always thought I was going to be an artist.
When I was a junior at the University high school in Iowa City, where my father was teaching at the Writers workshop, I was singled out to attend a college painting class across the river. Early on I got some very favorable boosts. I then went on to attend four different art schools. I dropped out of all of them. Some I lasted for only a couple of weeks. They weren't teaching what I wanted to learn, which were the classic techniques of the Renaissance master painters. I dropped out of one college because they didn't allow turpentine, another for telling me I was too tight and to loosen up and paint with a broom. Another I left because there was no discernible curriculum that had to do with oil painting. I had not one mentor or teacher I could look up to in any of those institutions or in my life at all. I was naturally pretty strong willed on my own so I taught myself by going to museums, copying masterpieces and learning from books with titles like ‘Techniques of the World’s Great Painters’ and ‘Studying with the Masters’, where there are actual direct quotes from the masters, like Rubens who would say things like, “Be sure to keep whites out of your shadows”. I was in heaven and felt I had all I needed with these magic recipe books.
e: What made you so interested in those old masters and how they were painting?
EV: I don’t know why the passion for the old masters was in me. It just was and still is. I can swoon at the paint strokes of a Velásquez or the beauty in the lines of a Da Vinci drawing. Some people worship other things like athletic skills and music. For me it’s always been painting, sculpture and drawing. The classic masters appear to have been the height of those art forms or at least a good reference point if you want to get good. There are very accomplished wonderful paintings being made today, like David Hockney and so many others but Titian and Velasquez, those guys are the highest height of art aptitude for me. I know that I'm not there nor will I ever be. But sometimes, looking at their paintings and reading their words, I get to feel a little tiny bit every so often of what it feels like to paint like them and that’s enough for me.
e: You were inspired by the beauty, or the kind of atmosphere those painters are able to create?
EV : All of it. The beauty, the atmosphere and the message. For instance the images in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo were supposed to give people something to believe in and live for. I felt the messages in the allegories and visuals of then were important and that it’s still important to give a visual pep talk. To stay brave and hopeful and kind. I'm trying to make new allegories that people can relate to. I believe a picture has the power to make an impact on the human spirit. To look at paintings of women protecting their children with way over the top heroic images, I would hope would give the viewer some sense of comfort and importance. I also like to invest everyday mundane tasks with majesty and honor. I’m not at all religious but I think of these paintings as a kind of prayer.
e: It sounds like that you are going your own way, outside of art discussions, were these kinds of allegories are much too literal for modern art. But for you, it is important to find ways of expressing a certain meaning or a certain message through the art and using those kind of methods.
EV: Yes. And I get enough positive feedback from people to keep going . I made a series of portraits of minimum wage essential workers during the pandemic last year. When I showed my subject their portraits, they were so grateful to be seen at all, let alone painted. Their reactions meant so much to me. The process of making these paintings is what keeps me humming. I feel like I'm serving something. My father was most proud of me when I was working in our small town, painting murals in the underpass or raising hell at town meetings when developers got out of hand. It's not for wealth or fame, it's trying to put something out there to help the planet.
e: How do you come to the theme and the image that you want to work with?
EV, Usually from reading the current news. I have two new paintings I’m working on now. . I got outraged about the monarch butterflies that are becoming endangered because of insecticides and the destruction of their habitat. This kind of news inspires and grieves me. I’m painting a woman with tears rolling down her cheeks as a man sprays Round-up in a field behind her. For the tears I had to reference a Titian painting, ‘The penitent Magdalene’ which has the most masterful beautifully painted tears. To get a somewhat well painted tear took me all day. The other painting I’m working on is about how tons of abandoned fishing nets are entangling and killing all kinds of sea life. That inspired me to make a painting of a mermaid ensnared in derelict fishing line. I’m having an exhibition in Provincetown in June and another show in Indianapolis in September. the theme is about how humans are having a terrible impact on the planet. There’s an actual brand new word for that, Anthropocene. Which means for the first time in the history of the world, humans are changing the world, and not for the better. I try to blend beauty and humor and catastrophe. Fore instance, I want to paint like Botticelli, but instead of blossoms at the feet of Venus, there's a bunch of plastic bottles and crap.
e: What makes you work with this kind of mythic or mythological images, like the mermaid or angels? A lot of your paintings have this kind of mythic quality to them. Why do you use those kind of images?
EV: There have always been winged creatures in all of art. Images of them today, are often corny and cloyingly sentimental like bad hallmark cards but I use these mythical images, because my first loves were Raphael, Botticelli and Da Vinci and they painted angels. So if they thought they were appropriate to paint back then, why can't I keep at it in the 21st century? There are many people who believe angels are out there and sometimes I believe they are too. It’s highly likely there are realms we can’t see.
e: You also paint a lot of females, women in all kinds of ways. Why is that?
EV: First of all, I am a woman and this is all I know. I want to change the way women are perceived. The misrepresentation goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. I made an image of that with the words beneath, “Eve. The first victim of fake news propaganda. Accused of ruining everything in the Garden of Eden. When all she was doing was reaching for some knowledge,
they should have thanked her.” All the paintings that I really loved of Rubens and Raphael and Velasquez, showed women laying around naked, doing nothing. They had no vigor, no muscles and no discernible intelligence. They're beautiful, but that's not the reality for women, especially mothers. After I had my two kids, I saw motherhood as more like the Marines. An extreme vigilant life style where you have to be ready to jump into action at any moment with a clear head and nerves of steel. I’m painting from a female trajectory, trying to
make up for false representation.
e: You want to show women in a much more active, proactive, creative way ...
EV: Yes, you know, the painting of Napoleon riding on that horse across the Alps, that's totally made up. He rode side-saddle, because he had hemorrhoids. He looks like a tall Kevin Costner up on that horse. So, I thought, if he could get himself painted like that, I can paint women doing impossibly idealized things also, like stopping speeding bullets and protecting their children from tigers with a garden hose. The Renaissance gave me permission to do that.
e: And with this kind of exaggeration or showing mothers doing impossible things, you want to point to the kind of intensity of what it means to be a mother or to care for someone.
EV: Yes. An allegory usually has a message. I’d like women to draw strength from the images. I also needed it for me, because I left New York thinking I’ve failed. In New York City everyone comes there to rocket into recognition of one kind or another. I married a carpenter, moved to Cape Cod and had children, but female artists don't usually have children so I felt my life as an artist was over. When I found myself at home, mopping the floor and being pregnant, I understood what my mother had done and what all mothers do. Which I hadn’t realized until I had kids of my own. So, in glorifying these mundane simple lives with little to no recognition I found my art beat. I thought I’d lost myself but turns out I found myself.
e: I read on your website that you want to herald the unheralded and bring majesty to the mundane. Can you say what you mean by that?
EV: Ordinary people aren’t given Academy Awards or Nobel prizes for doing the laundry and raising children and all those bazillion other relentless everyday chores. When I found myself being a full time housewife and mother, I could relate and decided to give them some glory and importance. Marie Antoinette and Napoleon could pay people to make them look fabulous, but ordinary people can’t do that. The minimum wage essential workers weren’t about to spend their money commissioning someone to paint them looking fabulous. But why not honor them and make them look wonderful for the thankless underpaid work they do in the middle of a pandemic?
e: When you paint these workers, you paint them in the old master style, at their place and with things that are important to them or what belongs to their ‘area of influence or of work’. You give them a certain importance and meaning through that.
EV: The first time I painted the portrait of an essential worker was at McDonald's. My initial intention was to photograph an employee there, take her head off and put Ivanka Trump’s head on; to show privilege next to no privilege at all. I thought a picture of Ivanka Trump in a McDonald’s uniform was a good statement. So I went in and asked this pretty petite woman if I could take her picture, she was so sweet about it, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I'm not going to cut her head off and put Ivanka’s on!” I'm going to paint this worker instead. She had no idea if I could even paint well, but she posed so trustingly and cheerfully . Here she had this shitty job at McDonald's and still was so dignified and gentle and open. Because of this experience, I became interested in other essential workers and went looking for beauty in local convenience stores and fast food establishments. I found it again and again. These minimum wage workers had no reason to be genuinely agreeable. I went to Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Home Depot and other places. More often than not, when asked if I may take their photo, they said yes. When I finished, I would show them the painting.
e: It’s moving how you were trying to do that, to show the beauty in everyday things.
EV: And in the face of the pandemic, these essential workers are risking their lives. People come in without masks and give them a hard time. They're basically invisible, no one looks at them. When I get to my studio with a photograph and start painting them, studying their bone structure, the color of their skin and the dignity in their eyes, I think, this is as good as it gets. As I was treating these underpaid, ordinary people with dignified portraits as if they were royalty, they became royalty to me.
e: Do you see in the way you are painting over time a kind of development?
EV: I think I'm improving. I’ve always thought I was in the handicapped Olympics. That what I’m reaching for is so far beyond my capabilities that it’s a little futile. I'm not disciplined enough or smart enough to get to the level of the masters. If I were a car, I would have very erratic steering and no brakes at all. Now that I'm seventy one I feel I'm actually getting somewhere, even though I've got arthritis in my hands and it takes more time for me to make the painting.
e: In the text on your website you write that you think you are more an illustrator than a painter? What do you mean by that?
EV: I tell stories, like my dad. And I love Beatrix Potter as an illustrator. For me she is right next to Titian, because she could realistically draw a mouse in a suit holding a fishing rod. She was able to create that out of thin air. I also love that she lived quietly in the lake region in England, gave up illustrating after a while and raised sheep. I feel the same way about the illustrator for Alice in Wonderland, John Tenniel. I admire their ability to create alternate realities just like Michelangelo did with God in that shell. The Sistine Chapel is one big illustration.
e: You painted a lot of environmental and societal themes. Do you use this more illustrative approach to communicate a certain message, thought or emotion through a painting?
EV: Yes, I would rather have my work on a billboard by the side of the highway than in a museum. I did a painting against military assault rifles, showing a mother and her baby that I’ve been marching in gun control rallies since 2001. Maybe it would make a difference to have a billboard of that.
I’m an activist, if that's the word for people who care about the future and are trying to do something about it. I have no other way to express myself than to paint about the plundering of the planet.
e: We already talked about the angels ... Do you also have a certain spiritual root in what you are doing?
EV: I was raised agnostic. I had to learn how to spell agnostic when I was in first grade. But I know something’s up. I experience many odd things that are more than coincidence. So something is definitely up I’m sure, but no human being is going to tell me what it is.
A friend said I’d been representing angels for so long that they owe me.
e: How was it for you, following your own way with such a famous father?
EV: I think it's made it a little more difficult, because he cast such an enormous shadow. I will always be viewed with him in the picture. Though I’m crazy proud to be his daughter.
