An Interview

ERNEST SILVA
Thomas Whayne

Presented with the permission of:
The Publication
April 2001 San Diego's Arts Magazine Vol V - Issue IX

OK, cards on the table. In our house, we have five Silva works: a large boat and hat sculpture, a painting, a decorated vase, a small cigar box and pipe sculpture, and a large circus backdrop left over from a Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego-Street Scene project. The question, of course, is, can I do an unslanted piece about Ernest (hereinafter "Ernie") Silva? Certainly.

The facts: Silva is a practicing artist. He is also a Professor of Visual Arts at UCSD. He is the creator of Cora's Rain House at the Children's Museum, and he was one of the originators of InSite. His academic accomplishments include a BFA from the University of Rhode Island (he was born in RI) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University. His work can be found in many collections, including that of MCA, San Diego. One of his paintings, Deer on a Raft/Rough Water, Long Journey is currently on exhibit in the "Made in California" show at LACMA.

Tom Whayne. What's going on with Ernie Silva these days?

Ernie Silva. In early January, I had a show that opened in New York at Art Resources Transfer, which is a not-for-profit gallery in Chelsea. That was two concurrent one-person shows, Italo Scanga and myself. It was part of what the Art Resources Director calls their "conversation exhibitions." Part of their programming is to put two artists together whose works-and as people-have a relationship. So Italo and I had a chance to show together.

T. W. What direction is your work taking these days?

E. S. I'm still going back and forth, something that always happens to me as I paint, as I work in sculpture or on an installation. I switch from one medium to another because there are slightly different challenges. I'll be working on a painting and it's as if there's a pause in the story. And then the story somehow continues in another medium.

T.W. You used the word "story." Your work has a narrative quality to it. What is that narrative?

E.S. Well, perhaps the simplest description would be-I'm a representational artist. Not in the sense that my work looks photographic in the way the eye sees, but primarily that I work with images of people and images of the natural world-whether it's landscape or the ocean. I tend to see myself as a visual poet and I don't really work with linear narratives. But I work with places and people in such a way that what I hope is that it triggers, on the viewer's part, contemplation. And when they start to relate-when they start to look at the images I assemble and internalize them-they know there's some sort of story taking place. I don't really see myself as telling singular, objective stories, but as establishing associations between images that are multiple. That's probably the reason that I call it poetry, as I tend to work with readable images that are distilled. And when you relate one image to another, there are multiple possibilities, multiple relationships; so it's not really concrete storytelling.

T. W. What about the flow of deep images that comprise a raft, a deer, a lighthouse, a scarecrow-can you tie these images together in a deeper way than just a simple narrative?

E. S. Two things happen: all the images are easy to read, that is, you see the image of a deer on a raft, an image I came up with in the early 90s. When you see a painting from that series, you just read the image, deer-on-a-raft. Then the image unfolds with contemplation-here's a vulnerable animal who at this particular moment is stationary-it's on a raft, so it's really not in control of its own destiny. And it's floating on a river or an ocean, so there's a sense of vulnerability, being carried along by natural forces. An image like that, hopefully, hits deep chords-vulnerability, a sense of crisis, a sense that life is always about movement, about surprises that take you to places that you don't anticipate.

I tend to describe some of my works as malevolent toys, in the sense that they're easy to pick up and handle and recognize-malevolent not so much in the sense of being bad or dangerous, but toy-like things that take you to surprising conclusions the way life can surprise you. So there's always the sense of the familiar, the strange and the unanticipated. Most of my images are like that.

In the last few years I've been working with a lot of images of lighthouses and boats. Lots of the paintings I've been doing have the image of a man holding a lantern. The lighthouse gives us a sense of safe haven, but here's also a sense of being lost, adrift at sea. The man with the lantern is either signaling to a boat or looking for a safe haven. So there is a sense of searching, of not being quite sure, of the fact that somewhere between night and day the ocean moves in ways we can't always explain. The boat is not only a boat, but a reference to journeys. We are constantly being led by our curiosity and forces beyond our control. We like to think that we have a specific destination, that we're on course, but things are not always as simple or as predictable as we would like them to be. So I think a lot of my work is about this: even in the most familiar circumstances, the world surprises us. And, actually, there are forces that kind of work inside that take us on journeys-we think they're going to take us to a particular place, and we end up someplace else. The way I read it, life is full of journeys, crises, and dilemmas, so that we're constantly looking and searching.

T. W. Let me ask you this: As a practicing artist here addressing other artists--as an artist--are you locked into images, styles, and colors that you have established over the years? Do you wish that you could get away from them and do something totally different?

E. S. I've been doing this for 30 years or so. There appear to be rights and wrongs, and myths about what creativity is, and I can't seem to figure out what the rules are. The longer I work the more I realize that there are no rules. I don't think that an artist is required to work in a linear fashion to keep progressing. I don't think an artist is obligated to do what they did the day before, nor does he need to repudiate what he did in the past. When I look at my own history, some of it is conscious choice, and some of it is a surprise to me.

T. W. Should an artist be on the lookout for those things that personalize his work, so that the public can say, "Oh, that's an Ernie Silva; that's a Manny Farber"?

E. S. One of the things you see when you go to galleries or you look at an artist-they take on an identity through their gallery show, or in the way they are written about, or in the way they are presented in museum collections. I think, in many cases, there's a real sense of consistency and linear progression, and whether that's imposed by the gallery, the institution or the person that's writing the history, I have a tendency to think that the only obligation artists have is to their own passions and instincts.

T. W. The label "expressionist" has been applied to you. In what context does that work? And sometimes "neo-expressionist."

E.S. Well, I think "expressionist" is really an interesting term. When I think about it historically I think of the German expressionists and Edward Munch. And "neo-expressionist" gives you the sense of something being re-examined. I look at my own work and realize that I like art that is direct and has an emotional charge to it. I don't think you can be an artist and not be a symbolist. When I think about terms for artists and terms for paintings, I think about how the mind works, that we are constantly floating around between conscious intention and intuition, and things that are beyond our control. The mind is always reading the world and always telling stories about it. Some of the stories can be objectively verified and some cannot. We realize that they're fantasies, or archetypes, or daydreams. So, I tend to see consciousness as a really complex enterprise. I tend to see the labels that are given to artists as a kind of oversimplification. I don't think that you can find a work of art that doesn't have some kind of expressionism. I don't think you can find a work of art that doesn't have some kind of symbolism. I don't think you can find a work of art that doesn't have some kind of spiritual quality. So, I see consciousness and creativity as being a bit messier than the terms we use to describe them.

T. W. Do you consider yourself as much teacher as artist?

E. S. I see myself as both. I've been teaching for 24 years, and I can still go into a classroom and see something being made that is as true, as energetic and as moving as anything else being made that day in the world. I see creativity as a volcanic force--whether you're going into the Met or into the classroom, there's always the possibility that there is going to be something true and startling. That's what I love about teaching.
T. W. How about the way you actually work?

E. S. I tend to think about it as more just collecting as anything else. I make sketches; I collect objects, which I deposit in my studio; sometimes I run across photographs; sometimes I collect personal experiences. I might go into my studio with the memory of what the sky looked like on a particular day-the sky was dramatic-and I may have seen a photograph of a deer, and I've made a Xeroxed copy, and it's been hanging around the studio for three months. And I may have put together some colors the last time I finished a painting, and I'm cleaning my brushes, and I'll start playing with small sketches about the size of my hand. And I feel as though I'm kind of adrift, and I don't know what's going to happen, and all of a sudden. . . . So I go into my studio the next day and on a white canvas, I might start off with a really, really light green just to give it a kind of identity, and it feels like a place that's comfortable, and I'll start drawing into that thin wash of green with a nail. . . .