DREAMING WITH JONATHAN LYNDON CHASE

Offering a rare peek into their creative process, the distinguished painter shows us around their lively studio in North Philadelphia. CHASE shares inspirations from deep within their psyche; a spectacular mix of dreamscapes, drawings, friends, lovers, emotional states and more.

“When people talk about my work, I think they're very drawn to the celebratory kind of tenderness and love,” Chase reflects. “But, I do have a lot of work that talks about anxiety, night terrors, bad dreams; those kinds of emotions that we are less comfortable talking about.” Read our interview with Jonathan Lyndon Chase below.

BUDS DIGEST: Hey Jonathan!

JONATHAN LYNDON CHASE: Hi! How y'all doing today?

BD: Great. Thank you for your time today. Your studio looks so interesting. It’s a big space. Can you tell us about working there? How long have you had that space?

JLC: I came into that space in 2018. The building is called the MaKen Studio. It's this kind of warehouse building that's in the north part of Philadelphia, which is where I live too. And then, believe it or not, Alex da Corte is in the Maken Studio south building. They do lots of different kinds of community outreach. There's bakers, photographers, artists, musicians; a really colorful group of people. I came into the spot because I had just graduated and was working out of a bedroom-situation. A lot of my studios were just out of my home. I was selected to do residency for the Rubell [Museum] and I initially went and sought out the space just to kind of work on these large scale paintings. I fell in love with the space. It has really great windows and lots of light. The community's really nice. So I thought, I've done a project here, I'm just gonna kind of stick with the space. About a year or so after, my work really started to grow, both in size and quantity, so we decided to rent the studio next door. It's on the first floor. It's pretty much the same layout except one studio is where I actually make stuff; it’s real messy and chaotic. And then the other is more for storage, but it's slowly morphing into more of a mess because I have  these 13 foot paintings in there. 

BD: Wow, fantastic. What about your process of making these paintings?

JLC: Drawing is super duper important for me. I believe that even if you identify as an artist or not, it's everyone's first visual language in a way. So, for me, a lot of it starts from drawing. I have drawn ever since I was little. A lot of times it'll come from rapidly having ideas and having just to collect them and jot them down. They don't even have to be really solidified, but if they turn into something worth keeping as a drawing, then that's great. I used to work from live models, but that was sort of overly complicated and too old fashioned for me. So, I work a lot from photographs and then also collage. I'll do Photoshop or physically rip and tear. I'm also definitely interested in collage. 

BD: What about your influences for these drawings?

JLC: Often from poems or dreams. I'm constantly keeping this archive of material that takes the form of a binder. About once a week I'll have to kind of go through this process of shifting and organizing based on a theme or a color or a material. So they're kind of these living documents where, as I get interested in – let's say now I'm working on a show about kitchens – I’ll start kind of pulling those kinds of things together. Then I'll start organizing them in a way that'll be a work or a show or something, if that makes sense.

BD: Absolutely. How many pieces would you say that you're working on at any given time?

JLC: Probably, like, twenty?

BD: Wow.

JLC: Twenty meaning I'm working on a video or I'm working on a poem. Five paintings, five drawings, that kind of thing. That kind of makes the most sense for me because I can just hop around. If I'm not feeling the energy for that that day or if I'm kind of stuck, I can just go back and forth.

BD: Very cool. Kind of struck by you saying that your inspiration is often coming from dreams. Can you talk about that a little bit more? 

JLC: Yeah. I've always been into science-fiction and horror, those kinds of things. I have a writing practice. I have one, very modest book that I did with Capricious; a love story-horror, nonlinear kind of book. I got into this habit [of dream journalling] when I started doing therapy because I used to have a really, really intense night terror; this really bad dream. It was a way for me to kind of  deal with it in a therapeutic way. Then I started taking the material and thinking of painters like Francis Bacon or Goya or “scary painters,” then kind of realizing that, you know, this could be good subject matter.

BD: Interesting. These subjects that we find in your paintings, are they scary to you? I read a quote where you said something about how they can be friends or families or your own reflection. Can you talk about that mix in relation to your inspiration for them?

JLC: Definitely friends, family, past lovers, current lovers, psychological states, emotional  states. I like to talk openly about the fact that I live with bipolar disorder. I think that has an effect on my dreams in a way. Who was it, maybe Freud or somebody had this idea of “the shadow self?” When you're thinking of self-care, these darker aspects to ourselves that I think, you know, we're in the pursuit of trying to find out who we are or if we're on a path to healing, then I think it's definitely necessary to look at yourself all around. When people write or talk about my work, I think they're very drawn to the celebratory kind of tenderness and love. But, I do have a lot of work that talks a lot about anxiety, night terrors, bad dreams…those kinds of emotions that probably we are less comfortable talking about. So, a lot of the figures you'll notice have transparencies or multiple faces. Sometimes they're the same person and then sometimes they’re not so much the same person, maybe they’re something more hallucinatory. 

BD: That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. Can you tell us about your new body of work, Now I’m home, lips that know my name, that is currently up at Sadie Coles in London?

JLC: This work is more of an open attempt to show my work to a new audience and a new group of people. A lot of my shows have been something about maybe cowboys or the Navy or about music, something very specific. But this one's more open to talking about the installation, in this space. We made this house that I had them paint this kind of reddish orange color. Then I drew all of these bricks and floral kinds of things on the outside. Then an interior that's kind of  the safe space, the bedroom, a more domestic energy.

BD: Sounds beautiful.

JLC: It's a mix of inside, outside and how the interior and exteriors affect the body. So there's elements of safety and confidence. Then there's also elements of me thinking about certain times of day. So the color palette was really kind of concentrated on lots of yellows, oranges, there's blues and purples. I was able to try out a lot of new stuff with domestic kinds of items. I was able to fabricate these benches that, for me…one of the parts of the show was the power in rest and relaxation, how that is a radical act. I wanted to have a chance to explore furniture making, my love for interior design, but also thinking of this moment where I'm inviting someone to actually rest. The body, as a site, is constantly bombarded by the stuff we impose on ourselves, stuff from the media. I really wanted to take the time to do these three benches. I also wanted to do these really cool custom frames because I really liked the drawings that I made for them. The editing process for it was really hard because there were so many, but I think it made it easier when it came to the design for the frames. They give you this other kind of moment of object versus space versus a person.