Claire HarnEnz

How did you get into making art?

My mom is an artist, so when I was growing up we always went to botanical gardens and parks to draw. And our favorite activity was visiting the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin, where I am from. It is a small museum with an amazing collection.

But my mom has a day job, so I figured I needed one too, and doing something like becoming a lawyer seemed more straightforward than becoming a painter. So I took all these public policy and political science classes in college. But I couldn’t do anything else but make art. I ended up getting both a Studio Art degree and I have been working in the arts and painting since. Looking back, it seems inevitable that I would become an artist and I find it funny to think I thought I could have survived trying to be anything else.

What are you currently working on?

I have been painting almost exclusively in red for the last year. I am starting to open up a little. I have been experimenting to sort out what can work with the red and using more pinks and purples than I ever have before.

After painting with just one color for so long, I am trying to remember how to paint with a bigger palette. It is fun to be in the experimental phase again after working with the same color for so long.

At the same time, I am scaling up some red paintings and going bigger. This presents its own set of challenges. All in all, it is a very exciting time in the studio!

What inspired you to get started on this body of work?

I worked as a wrangler in Yellowstone National Park for a while after college. We took care of nearly 100 horses and took people on horseback rides through the middle of Yellowstone, past bison, bears, and elk. I had grown up riding horses but spending all day with them as my primary coworkers changed how I saw them. It was an amazing experience. I moved from there directly to New York City to work as an artist assistant for a well-known sculptor.

All this happened five-plus years ago, but it transformed how I saw the world. There was this before and after, Yellowstone versus New York, nature versus nurture, and rural versus urban effect. I have been painting about it since I started painting, I just started to become more direct with it in the most recent body of work. Horses can be this complex metaphor for what it is like to labor in America today.

Plus, painters have been painting horses forever – since cave paintings. I think about that almost every time I start a new painting. Just how many people have painted horses! They have so many historical references while also just being horses. They have no idea what they have carried on their backs, literally and metaphorically, and that fascinates me.

Do you work on distinct projects or do you take a broader approach to your practice?

I work somewhat serially. I love patterns and repetition– I find something very soothing in it. I was a printmaker before I started painting. But in painting, I can keep some things the same but also deviate completely. The aesthetics of the paintings have changed tremendously but I can change the thread of thought across everyone over the last two years. I am constantly trying to find the right tweak to push the idea forward. I am almost sorting out some kind of science experiment, where I am like, “if I change this color but not that figure what happens.” Each painting teaches me something new and I go from there. Working like this keeps me looking forward and excited for the next painting.

What’s a typical day like in your studio?

I am a pretty obsessive painter and once I am in my studio. I hate to get pulled out of it. So I try to get all my “life” things out of the way in the morning so my afternoon and evening can be clear to paint. I try to get to the studio by 2 or 3 and then stay until 9 or 10 pm. My natural inclination is to paint until late at night, like until 2 am or later. I find it easier to focus when I know that the rest of the world is asleep. But I am trying to have a more balanced schedule. Staying up all night painting and then being asleep while most of the city heads to work in the morning makes me feel a little too unmoored.

Who are your favorite artists?

Beth Cavener has been one of my favorites for years. She has a sculpture at the Chazen in Wisconsin that completely transformed how I look at art. Walton Ford with his monumental works. Lisa Yuskavage and Loie Hollowell for how they both use paint and color. I feel like I am always looking at Magritte, Barnett Newman, and Josef Albers. I saw some Vivian Grevan paintings in the spring and I have been thinking about them since. And I’ve been on a Rothko kick lately.

Where do you go to discover new artists?

Instagram mostly. You can see so much work that I couldn’t see otherwise. And there can be a nice community on there of artists actually. And then I go to shows in New York. Nothing replaces seeing work in person. And then friends’ recommendations, which usually come through Instagram. Everyone loves to send me horse paintings.