Gordon Massman (b. 1949) is a self-taught painter and poet based in Rockport, MA.
Massman paints with oils in fear of worthlessness, meaningless, futility and death. He works on impractically large canvases to capture equally large emotions, honing paint’s ability to communicate broader, vaguer ideas than language alone. In his subject matter, nothing is taboo. Using thickly layered paint and abstracted imagery, his works tell stories of survival, dominance, procreation, power, security, ego, and vanity.
Massman’s subjects, while usually psychologically distressed, are offset by a subtle sense of humor, either on the canvas itself or in witty titles. Parodying his own angst and that of the human race with poetic sincerity, Massman’s paintings are shameless confessions of the human psyche, unfolded in graphic, chaotic detail. “I paint like a Kodiak bear attacking fresh carrion,” he says. “I yell at the painting. I often talk to it, in a lewd and loud fashion. I curse at it. Occasionally, I throw a brush at it.”
He approaches the canvas as a raconteur, striving to haul from the depths into the light of day the urges, fantasies, and delusions that most of us repress—or control—to keep us acceptable to civilized society. From crazy joy to amok destruction, Massman seeks to expose it all.
Massman studied literature and creative writing at the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He taught writing and literature at The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA, and is the published author of five poetry volumes, having composed thousands of poems over a span of forty-five years. Massman has exhibited in the United States, and his work is in the collection of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
You were a poet for 45 years before you picked up a brush, and you describe that shift almost as if poetry burned itself out. Was there a specific moment where you knew the poem couldn’t hold what you needed to say anymore, or was it a slower migration?
I finally realised that I had exhausted the multitudinous combination of words in my limited vocabulary, that I was writing the same poem repeatedly, and that I had reached my peak potential as a poet. I never thought of myself as a painter—I cannot draw figures and have no schooling in the visual arts—but as words abandoned me something equally as wonderful flowed into me, that being the potential expression of pure emotion through the painted image. After years of experimentation and steady practice, I have finally found the raw beginnings of my authentic voice. Because my poetry had always been unusually visual and uncommonly visceral, my transition to art was relatively seamless. But it has taken me years to fully grasp the unfiltered power of the painted picture.
You’ve said that when you paint, the world ceases to exist. But with that harbour right outside your door, I wonder about the edges of the process. Does the view from your Gloucester wharf studio function as a decompression chamber, somewhere to land when you wrap up the process of painting?
Lobstermen launch from three sides of my sea-jutting studio, mostly bearded tough-skinned men in Gruden’s oilskins, Carhartt pants, knee-high muck boots, black woolen caps and thick rubber gloves. The sparkling harbour and open sea splendidly stretch before us in sparkling diamonds. Yet these “Gloucestermen”, as they are called, riding their diesel machines churn to kill. Nature is but an illusion of serenity, for behind the illusion, in the deepest seas or thickest forests animals eat each other alive in blood-soaked kill zones. Vacationing campers deep in the woods hear them shrieking while being eaten, a terrifying anthem of survival and death. This surrounds me while I paint. I lock myself in blaring headphones and rarely notice my surrounding “beauty”. There is no serene landing point for me. After work, when finally arriving home to my wife and dog, I decompress with a marijuana joint.
You work on canvases up to 12 feet — impractically large, as you put it. There’s something confrontational about that scale. Is the size about the viewer, or is it more about what your body needs to do to make it?
My pants size is 38; my shoe size is 12.5; my T-shirt size is X-large; My arm span size is 6’1”; my cranium size is 22.5 inches; my canvas size is monumental. Nature made me this way. Large visceral emotion requires large insatiable surfaces. I do not paint meticulously with pinpoint brushes and a magnifying glass under intense light. I paint in large spontaneous slashes the chaotic contradictory firestorm of emotion: rage, passion, grandiosity, insecurity, rebellion under nothing but ambient window-light. I cannot paint in total darkness, but I can paint in chiaroscuro. I load my applicators–sticks, brushes, hand-flesh, or sliced and spread-open 200 ml tubes–with the heart’s scariest crimson secrets. I paint torment and torment’s opposite, peace, and that requires oversized platforms, galleries be damned.
When you stand back from a finished painting, are you ever shocked by what came out of you?
Invariably. When I whirl at the center of my studio, I do not know who painted these Stonehenge pieces. I eliminate myself as the suspect for I alone, without spiritual intercession, am without talent.
The title Landscape & Power is interesting given that your work tends to be so interior. When you heard that framing, did it change how you thought about the piece being shown?
Unless that title refers to the inner landscape, it does not describe my work. The curator created that title, not I. Were I to title a solo exhibit of my work it would be Unraveled.
I love your mirror paintings. What is it like to paint a mirror?
In a mirror the paintbrush meets itself inside of my own face. So, while painting a mirror I transform my face in a reverse self-portrait. I owned an old mirror and painted it. I liked it so I painted another, and the project dominoed into a series of painted mirrors which keep each other company in my studio. But these interesting flights of fancy do not truly represent the cosmos of my intention as an artist. Solitary, they twinkle in the distance, but my large pieces are my planets and constellations.
I have to ask: is the canvas where you’ll stay, or is there some other form quietly tugging at your sleeve?
I wish that I could paint air, but canvas fills my destiny, old school, no AI, no computer graphics, no taped-on bananas, no gimmicks or illusions, no youth-driven desperation. I am a dinosaur drinking a mirage.
What is artistically exciting you right now? Is there an artist, a piece of music, anything you’ve encountered that made you want to go straight back to the studio?
Our planet blossoms with art. Young people keep knocking it out of the ballpark, middle-aged people discover their brilliance, the old in their children’s vacated bedrooms reinvent themselves. Galleries cannot keep up with it, critics cannot comprehend it, the world cannot keep apace. Art is a riotous garden. My inspiration springs not from external stimulations but rather from my own internal psychological grinding.
However, art books often weightily spread their plenty upon my lap, art openings regularly captivate me, Instagram posts continuously blow my mind. I revel in passionate music, from Beethoven to Jimmy Page to Miles Davis. But it’s the grinding inside that sends me straight to the studio.
Postscript
I do not paint to decorate homes or to match colour combinations. Nor when I paint do I consider practical matters such as gallery representation or potential sales. Nor do I paint for tradition or establishment acclaim. I paint for my own private hard-won catharsis however I choose to paint it. Ugly is okay. Raw is okay. Undisciplined is okay. Ridicule is okay. Primitive is okay. It’s all okay. I am loyal only to myself and I am uncontrollable.
