Gillespie: I think it fits in pretty well. It was not long before we left, I had sort of stopped painting these big, huge—I had a big museum show that I was really excited about. And that just took everything out of me, because it was—at that point—my biggest show, and it was, an entire big room in a museum. And it just really kind of destroyed me, you know getting that work done. I mean in a good way, not a bad way. So then it was sort of like taking a break. I did a whole series then of smaller drawings, the 19 by 24, and it was just anybody, just random people, and they all had different facial hair. So, men and women, you know, young and old, everybody had different things. And again, it was a commentary on, well, that could have been politically charged, you know, dealing with terrorism and preconceptions of people and what, like–what a really huge beard would imply and things like that. And then again also with sexuality and just a lot of contemporary issues. Anyway, I’m getting off track. The point is that I did start making these smaller drawings and images and then hanging them in grids, which I really liked. And so to me it’s sort of–my wife’s in school getting her MFA in poetry. And so I used to always think of paintings as big large novels. And then all of these little drawings that I’ve been making, I think of them more as a bunch of poems equaling a chapbook or maybe a bunch of short stories equaling to something. Again it all goes with the reduction of things. So, I’ve been pretty satisfied with them so far. I do want to get back into painting though. I do miss it. It’s been a couple of years now.
Rumpus: You commented that it took a lot out of you. I recently read an old quote by abstract artist Franz Kline saying that, every time he does a painting, people don’t realize it’s like jumping out a 12-story building.
Gillespie: Yeah, totally.
Rumpus: Do you relate to that?
Gillespie: Yeah, I just completely relate to that. I mean when you’re in the studio and, you know, you have a canvas that’s like eight feet wide by10 feet tall or something, and it’s white and just staring at you, what are you supposed to do on that thing? Step-by-step you figure out what you’re doing and how to do it and what you want. And it’s great, otherwise, I wouldn’t do it or, other people would. But yeah, it gets you, like sometimes especially when there’s deadlines and pressure.
Rumpus: I want to touch on the use of black and white versus color. What’s you’re take on black and white versus color and how you use it in drawings and paintings?
Gillespie: I’ve always really liked black and white. Because growing up I always liked cartoons and comic strips. So I always did things in black and white. I didn’t really experiment much with color until college, which I’ve totally love, working with lots of color.
Rumpus: Was there something that drove you to do that, to experiment with color at that point?
Gillespie: I think, at that point, just my professors’ making me do it for class. But no, I know that in the videos especially the old goofy videos were really colorful, and some of them—there would just be a lot of color and obnoxious color sometimes. And then these new ones were just black and white. I don’t know if that’s a conscious decision or unconscious decision, but less information hopefully makes you get more out of it. I hope there’s less to complicate the image or the idea of the story. And same again with the drawings and paintings that I have been making aside from the videos. But now I’ve gone color crazy, I can’t wait to get back into it.
Rumpus: Why is that?
Gillespie: I don’t know, I just miss it, you know. I mean rainbows are good looking things, you know. After a while, you just wanna see some red on there and some blue.
Rumpus: As a kid, you drew political cartoons for your local newspaper.
Gillespie: I did for the Ralston Recorder in Ralston, Nebraska.
Rumpus: How do you look back on that now?
Gillespie: You know I looked at them recently, in the last 5 or 6 years. And it’s funny I was so young.
Rumpus: Like how young?
Gillespie: I started at 11.
Rumpus: Wow.
Gillespie: Yeah and I quit at the end of high school. So, really politically, what did I know? You know what I mean? So, one cartoon literally would be a very conservative comment. This is during the first Bush and then Clinton years, when I did it. And so, one cartoon one week would be super conservative, and then the very next week it would just be like totally liberal, you know. I mean I was so young that I hadn’t really formed opinions yet. I was just making fun of things. But there are some inklings of the kind of person that I would turn out to be at the end of all that.
Rumpus: What was the source of your political commentary?
