Mapping the Artist: Stephen Linsteadt

Stephen Linsteadt and Kathabela Wilson.

An interview with artist and poet Stephen Linsteadt. Stephen’s sensitive and unusual openness invites and affirms the life and creativity of other artists and writers, as he brilliantly encourages us to participate in his artistic journey.

By Kathabela Wilson

A telescope on the artist

You are so deeply and essentially artistic, can your look back and zoom in on ​​the begin​n​in​​g of yourself as an artist?

A thunderstorm in the Mojave Desert caused my first-grade classmates and myself to be called indoors early from lunch recess. Our teacher was still off campus so we piled into the kindergarten room. The teacher was sharing artwork done by her students. Because I wasn’t paying attention, she asked me, in front of what felt like the entire school, if I wished I could make art half as good as her kindergarteners. My father was an artist and somewhere in my young mind I felt like mine and my family’s honor had just been called into question. I remember painting underwater ocean scenes with colorful fish a week later with the gusto of Van Gogh. I was determined to prove myself as an artist. From that moment on, I identified myself as an artist. Painting became a lifelong passion.

A microscope on the artist

How did that passion grow into the quest that it is in your life, and what are you searching for in your art?

The process of painting takes me to a place of conversation with the unknown. It is that place where one brushstroke suggests another and suddenly an image appears on the canvas that is quite unexpected. I think I paint mostly for the surprise of it. It has taken me a long time to stop judging whether or not my work measures up to those damn kindergarteners.

The images that arise in my paintings are mostly auto-biographical or auto-bioemotional. They are like snapshots of my inner state. I enjoy painting the female figure. I think the result on the canvas is in some way a record of my relationship to the Archetypal Feminine, which is to say an introspection of my relationship to myself. The idea of painting as a process of self discovery relates to alchemy and personal growth. In this way, painting can be a pursuit of knowing myself at my most authentic level. It is asking the question of what is inside of me that must find its way to the surface. It can actually be quite frightening at times.

A compass on the poet

You are also a poet, as well as an artist, how did poetry become necessary in your life?

I started writing poems in high school, mostly influenced by Kahlil Gibran. These were mostly meant to impress my girlfriends. My wife, Maria Elena B. Mahler, is a poet and writer from Chile. Through her I discovered the Chilean poets Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. Their poetry opened up a whole new world of expression that was similar to painting. The written word is like a brushstroke. All the metaphors on my pallet found nuances in word that completed sentences left abandoned in my paintings. I am no longer certain if my poems spring from my paintings or if my paintings are inspired by the poetry.
​​Now, I’m very excited about my forthcoming collection of poems titled “The Beauty of Curved Space” (Glass Lyre Press) due to be released in 2016.

Pulse of the poet

Poets on Site had a show of your work in our home several years ago, our “Living Room Gallery”, where you brought “The Woman in a Bottle” painting, blue, pristine and surrounded by white canvas. You wanted our poets to add poems and art on the canvas. I was shocked. It was so beautiful in itself, and the result was beautiful and convincing. What does this collaborative creation mean to you?

When Pasadena’s Poets on Site participated in my work artistically and also wrote poems on my work, the experience was extremely gratifying to me because the poets gave voice to images that mostly arose from my subconscious. They provided something tangible from the intangible and consequently enriched the paintings. Maria Elena and I then started a poetry group in Palm Springs called “Global Alchemy Forum”. It was a group of poets, who met once a week to share their poems and receive feedback from the other poets. At the end of the poetry reading, the poets would collaborate on creating a painting that I started and left unfinished for that purpose. The result was always unexpected as the paintings took on a life of their own. Collaboration​ inspires new life and creativity that is surprising and “alchemical”. A kind of essential transformation.

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Find out more of Stephen Linsteadt on his website.
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