Wayne Thiebaud Interview (page: 2 / 6) Painter and Teacher	Print Interview

You grew up in Southern California, but you also spent some time on a ranch in Utah. Your uncle was a maker of roads and so forth. Do you think these were formative influences on your art, where you grew up and the things you observed?

Wayne Thiebaud: I'm sure that's true in some way. I was lucky to have a lot of good uncles. My grandmother gave birth to 11 children and they all married, so a great range of people, great aunts, great uncles, all this kind of interacting family, quite active.

A close family too?

Wayne Thiebaud: Yes, they always were sort of close together, a lot of them. Essentially, it's a Mormon-based family. So that sort of clannish one is much like any religious company that was sort of terrorized by prejudice and so on. So it made it even a closer-knit family, I think.

Were there artists in the family?

Wayne Thiebaud: No, not that I know of. Mostly farmers, businessmen, traveling salesmen, fishermen, a huge, very nice range of differences.

What about your parents? What kind of work did they do?

Wayne Thiebaud: My father was a mechanic-inventor, and mother, a homemaker. I was a spoiled child. And they couldn't have been a greater psychological base to give me the kind of ego I have.

In what sense?

Wayne Thiebaud: Just that I felt I could do anything I wanted. And that made me a very poor student, because they didn't check on grades. Even though my grandfather came from a kind of quasi-intellectual tradition, he was a school teacher and then the superintendent of schools, and later became a kind of practicing inventive farmer. So it was a long range of influences and interests.

Where was your uncle's ranch? Was that in Utah?

Wayne Thiebaud: Right, in South Utah, between St. George and Cedar City, sort of red earth country, very beautiful. Probably had a lot of influence on interest in landscapes, very beautiful country in so many different ways.

You kind of ricocheted back from Southern California to Utah and then back again, I gather.

Wayne Thiebaud: Yes. Mostly Southern California, about three or four years spent on a ranch in Southern Utah.

You liked sports as a kid too, didn't you?

Wayne Thiebaud: Always.

Did you play organized sports?

Wayne Thiebaud: I did in high school, and junior leagues, and it's always been pretty central to what I do.

What sports did you play back then?

Wayne Thiebaud: Basketball early on. I came to tennis very late, but I played almost all sports: baseball, softball, track and field.

How late did you come to tennis?

Wayne Thiebaud: I must have been 40 years old before I ever played tennis. That's why I have such a rotten game.

You're still playing, of course.

Wayne Thiebaud: Still playing, but it's what you call a public courts game, just with no lessons in the beginning, which can ruin your game.

It's interesting that you're still committed to exercise and sports. Do you think there's a relationship between the body and art?

Wayne Thiebaud: Very much so, central. It's what Gloria Steinem identifies as the most revolutionary human emotion, that is, empathy. And since the body is the measure of empathy, it's crucially central to the kind of critical concern about the inner workings of a painting: its thrust, its spatial illusionism, the coherence with which we judge balance, symmetry, tension, grace. Those are all based on a body, its feel, extremities, those kinds of things.

Scale, as well?

Wayne Thiebaud: Scale, absolutely, yeah.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. If you're not participating with your body when you're looking at a painting, whether it's a Cezanne -- which has to do with a kind of equivocation, ambiguity, a sense of alternation -- or in the case of someone like Velazquez, where the physical attributes of his painting, the knowledge that he's showing you, and the feeling which he's expressing, that's all about the body, whether it's sitting well, a state of tension, whether that heel really feels like it's gripping the ground or expressing that contact. All of those we measure really by -- in my judgment -- the body and its issues.

So you want to feel as connected to your body as possible, as an artist?

Wayne Thiebaud: Yes. That's why I have difficulty in convincing students to stand when they paint, rather than sit, for instance. There's a real difference in the character of gesticulation and location, things like that.

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