as a female person. Being at home is really comfortable. It's where I can feel, in a sen^e, safe, where I can do what I want to do. But also, I think the interior of a room has a lot to do with the interior of a person . . with feeling and emotion or something happening in my life. CSQ: These drawings have a very contemporary quality to them, a kind of spikiness, and a kind of repressed or threatening quality just to the way you draw things sometimes. CCS: I think the world, right now, is a very unsafe place, and I think that is reflected in the artwork. I know that I'm affected by it. When I see something that I can react to emotionally, then it's going to show back through when I'm drawing. CSQ: There was a time, not too long ago, when someone dealing with recognizable subject matter would have beenjust a total outcast, absolutely. CCS: That's true, about ten years ago. That’s been changing, and I’m not sure why, except I know that people are real concerned about dealing with more personal ways of expressing themselves through art. There are not the real movements like there used to be, like Cubists. I don't see there is a movement happening, except the women's movement has had a lot of influence on the art world. It’s kind of opened up imagery . . . made it ok to do a lot of different things. And maybe that's the movement, I don't know. When I was in undergraduate school I was led to believe there were certain subjects you didn't use, certain colors you didn't use, and those were directly related to whether they were masculine or feminine. If they were feminine, you didn't use them because they were trite. And unimportant. I never used a pink, I never used butterflies, I never used flowers . . . oh boy, there was a whole list of things I wouldn't deal with in imagery. And then there came a point, right before I graduated, when I realized that I was just denying all this stuff that was inside of me that was important. I remember this being almost an explosion inside of me, and I thought, what am I doing ignoring all this stuff? So I started stuffing my paintings so they would be more sensual, more feminine, and I started Above: Sofa Sized Painting. Below: Holy Cat “IF YOU’VE LIMITED YOURSELF TO PARTICULAR SUBJECT MATTER AND PARTICULAR IDEAS YOU’RE DEFEATING THE PURPOSE OF ART using pastel colors, a lot. And when I paint, I still use pastels a lot . . . pink, everything was pink, for a long time. That whole era was one of real awakening for me, as far as realizing that art could be just about anything, and that if you’ve limited yourself to particular subject matter and particular ideas, then you're defeating the purpose of art, which is to extend. Art should be expanding, there's no limits to art, supposedly. We've limits to a lot of things but not to art. Now I just use whatever is there, and if it happens to be feminine, I don’t even think about i t . . . it's ok. Or if it happens to be a masculine usage of something, then that's ok. There’s no limit anymore. ■ Jim Blashfield was last seen “on location” of Pillars of Portland, talking with his dear friend Ethyl Lombard. Clinton St. Quarterly 27
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