Justin Williams on Art, Childbirth and other things.
images courtesy of Justin Williams.
Words by Billy De Luca.
Justin Williams and I get coffee one morning.
He brings a friend, Leroy, and we chat for a while. I just met him at his exhibition opening at COMA gallery in Sydney, and now I’m spitting out my coffee laughing about near-amputations and drunk-proof design.
A breezy, relaxed composure is needed. Williams has been bouncing around Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay, Paris, New Mexico and the rest of it. He had a ton of shows last year, so he’s pretty knackered. Oh, he and his partner Jade just had a child, Lavender. A couple of minutes pass and we are slouching on cafe chairs, grinning like schoolboys and joking about the ridiculousness of exhibitions and interviews (the consensus is that they usually suck). The conversation begins with the usual thing. Since Lavender was born at home, they called Leroy, who had experience in these matters…well, at least roadside highway births, that is.
Wait, so what happened?
So basically, Lavender was born at home, but we weren’t ready for it. We rang Leroy as he’s delivered a baby on the side of the road before, so he knew more about these things than we did.
Does he do that often?
LEROY: No man, just the once. My partner’s water broke at home so we started driving to the hospital on the Great Ocean Road, but 000 told us to just pull up and wait on the side of the road for an ambulance. It was heavy traffic, the contractions started, and the lady on 000 tells me to get my hands out and then tells me to push on the vagina. I’m like, which part of the vagina? The clitoris? She goes, “about there yeah,” but I’m like, “but where’s that?”
[Cackling from all three of us].
JW: Anyway, the paramedics got there and it was all fine. But I’m like, oh fuck that, I’ll never let that happen when I have kids — thinking I’ve got my shit together. But then Jade is having contractions one night, and I ring the lady at the birth centre. Within 20 minutes, it goes turbo as fuck. The contractions get closer together, and the lady says she is still an hour away.
Oh fuck.
Yeah man, this is New Mexico. It’s fucked. They say that it’s unlikely an ambulance will get there in time. You can order drugs faster than you can get an ambulance here! So Jade goes full into labour, and we are Facetiming the birth centre from home.
Oh fuck!
And I’m an artist. I’m as far away from a functional person in society as you can imagine is possible. You don’t want me to make you a coffee, let alone deliver a baby.
So you were really winging it?
Dude, the lady says, “Ok Justin, you’re going to have to deliver the baby now,” and I’m laughing because it’s just so weird. In my head I’m like, what the fuck is this, this is fucked up, and I’m concerned for Jade’s life and she’s screaming her head off and the scene is really not set for a birth: the dog is walking around, and there’s dishes and stuff in the sink.
Because you’re whacked out and thinking the Ambulance will rock up and judge you for not cleaning the kitchen?
Totally, I’m embarrassed and the whole thing is gnarly and everything is happening and the Ambulance is still not there. And suddenly the baby [Lavender] just flew out into my arms. I catch her and I’m sliding around from the water and she was so small and my brain wasn’t catching up with what was happening.
So the kid just bungee jumped out and you caught it like you were playing footy in the rain?
Exactly. And Lavender looked almost alien and then started screaming, so I knew she was ok. When the Ambulance arrived, I went into shock. I held it together until she came out, and then I got the shakes and started loosing my shit.
You lost it after?
Yeah. Once they were taking care of her, they told me to go into the kitchen and make some toast. So I went into the kitchen —
— to do the dishes?
Hahaha, no, I was making toast after toast, on a complete loop making tons of it. It was so abstract. You have the weirdest intrusive thoughts as well, llike the dishes and shit. And then I’m back in bed and Lavender is sleeping next to me, where only before she flew out of Jade in the middle of the night. It was real DIY, that’s for sure.
But you made it out without even fainting. For such a serious and hectic energy.
It’s a lot. A serious live lightshow. But if you close your eyes, it's sound that brings you back to reality. At the time though, I was really pissed off at myself for not being at a hospital, like Ahh Justin from the past was an idiot.
Billy from the past breaks a wrist in Sweden instead of doing it in Australia ,where healthcare is free.
Hahah, exactly, I had the same issue in America. I strip back my paintings with a sander to get a gritty texture, and I was on the ladder sanding when I stumbled and dropped the sander onto my hand. It cut through the bone and I realised I really fucked up. I got dropped off at Emergency and I’ve wrapped my hand with a rag I had been painting with. It’s got thinners and dog hair and shit.
I mean, turpentine is good for healing problems, right? I use it for most things.
And you’re insides are probably embalmed. It’s great as a salad dressing. Anyway, I’m at the hospital, and they ask me, “gunshot wound, knife wound, domestic violence?” And they give me a stack of forms to fill out, but I’m dyslexic, so I can hardly figure out my name and address at the best of times. Jade did it for me and they sewed it back together to stop the bleeding, but it cost $8k for the operation, so…
So that’s a lot.
And I’m there like, do I need a thumb? Everything is dangling and the tendons are cut right through, so it’s like sewing together fettuccine pasta. But your thumb separates you from the monkeys, so you kind of need it.
We don't need all the fingers until the second that one of them goes. How many injuries do you reckon you’ve had from painting?
Not many…I mean… sometimes I mix up my odourless solvents and glasses of water —
— well especially if you’re drinking that or using a sanding device on a big-ass canvas.
Look, it’s not exactly a petite paintbrush and classical music sort of gig. And painting is a bit of a headfuck. I used to paint houses with Leroy and even with my current works, creating the narrative is confusing because you’re looking at fields of colour that come out of nowhere, coat over coat.
Did that teach you a lot?
For sure. There are elements that you wouldn’t expect that come out of that sort of practical work, for example, by working over drop sheets in a house, you learn how Jackson Pollock used gravity in his paintings. I didn’t get into art school, but I learnt from artists in Brooklyn, doing odd jobs. By working for someone, doing an apprenticeship or some trade-based skill, you learn how important it is to get down and dirty before even getting to the art.
Like understanding of how to prime a canvas. I mean, that is how people got into art, old-school. Before they learnt to do art by spending years writing essays and submitting practical work.
Learning from someone is the best way I learnt how to do things. And you learn this by layering and playing with the different chemicals in paints, for example, you can’t put enamel onto acrylic or you’re going to fuck it up.
And when is the painting is on its way?
It’s finished when I’ve gone through something with the work, as opposed to thinking it was super easy. A good process offers up little mistakes, gifts and things that just happen, and then there's that feeling when you take off the blue tape and you're like, done.
Is each painting a project with a finite beginning and end? Are they stories in themselves, with memories that mean something to you beyond the concept?
Well, that’s the thing, so many people expect to find answers in their work, to have and force concepts. But if you think of your life’s work as a book, or if you look at a biography of Picasso or anybody, you realise that the concept is in the story of their life, not just in some specific painting. It’s not like every big artist picked a theme and obsessed over it until they died. I like to paint things that are happening in my life, the different stories that make a series more like a retrospective. A made-up concept doesn’t say as much, for me, at least.
The subject matter in the painting can only go as far as the subject matter is portrayed. Also, at the end of the day, it’s another job, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
When it comes down to it, making those aesthetic decisions can push you pretty hard. I sometimes make sketches with what I’m thinking of doing, but if I try to beat those into a big painting, and it looks shit, then then you have to let it go.
And that’s where we have to find value in the process. Feeling something from an artwork, or finding value in a design by thinking, can I use this, even when I’m drunk? I’m also not going to buy a chair if it’s going to make my life miserable when children are running around. To fixate on little things like that can give you a better perspective on the bigger projects, putting all the nuts and bolts in place.
Man, that’s a nice way to be. Sometimes it's better to get right into it and the little things that matter to you. I feel like I’ve lost that a little bit. I’m stressing about being a dad so much that I feel like I can’t switch between responsibilities that easily anymore. Now it’s just all in my head, even the funny things that spring up in my mind, which I thought would die off as I got older.
But that’s good, isn’t it? I feel like it's good not to be constrained by your age. Because if you look at Picasso and all the big guys, the best work that they did was when what they made didn't necessarily have to look like the age that they were. It’s better to do that than look like everyone else. Cause then people get so jaded.
That’s why I went to America. They don’t care as much that you didn’t go to University. There aren’t restrictions like the University cliques of the Australian system. In the States, people do a lot of things and create like crazy. That’s what I like and want to do. Fuck doing the same shit over and over again. The normal kinds of things are boring, but the real shit, like what Fecal Face was doing back in San Fran and the times when Ed Templeton and Barry McGee and all the Beautiful Losers were around. Those guys showed how you could reach people and get into real conversations with a ‘fuck you’ DIY style that was based on the punk vibe but also just a chill way of approaching those that just want to talk to others without a script.
To speak without a care in the world. Ahh, what a time.
