A View From the Easel
“My batik process is done in stages: from drawing, to waxing, to color staining, to boiling, and finally to oil painting.”
Welcome to the 345th installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, Adam de Boer fashions lush scenes on canvas using Indonesian batik-dyed fabric, which he waxes and boils himself.
Want to take part? Check out our submission guidelines and share a bit about your studio with us through this form! All mediums and workspaces are welcome, including your home studio.
Adam de Boer, Los Angeles, California
How long have you been working in this space?
Five years.
Describe an average day in your studio.
I usually arrive by 8:30am and spend the first 30 to 45 minutes catching up on emails and social media correspondence. For the next 10 hours, I work on my batik paintings (but with a short teatime break in the mid-afternoon). Over the past few years, most studio work has been for exhibitions, and to prepare for those, I usually work in groups of four or five paintings at a time.
My batik process is done in stages: from drawing, to waxing, to color staining, to boiling, and finally to oil painting, with lots of stretching and unstretching of linen along the way. (Each piece is stretched and unstretched four times throughout its making.) So, I tend to move a manageable batch of pieces along the full production cycle to increase the chances of visual and thematic consistency in a show.
How does the space affect your work?
I’d say the space primarily affects my work by its location. Since moving in, I’ve found myself making paintings about the neighborhood. Some paintings have simply been about the view just outside the front door.
Viewers of my work often compliment the accuracy of color despite them technically being textiles, comparing the saturation to their own experiences of sunlight in Los Angeles. I think that quality has everything to do with the fact that I paint exclusively in natural light. The works are about direct observation of the city, often very deadpan, so it’s such a benefit that I can make them under the same conditions that inspire them.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
Like many people in Los Angeles, I drive myself to work, and there are no businesses (other than a bottleshop down the block) or cafes at which to bump into neighbors or meet new people while walking on the street. However, there are a few contemporary artists in the immediate vicinity that help to make it feel more communal. My friends Antonia Pinter and Chase Biado, who collaborate under the name A History of Frogs, have a home studio up the hill. The painters Spencer Lewis and Caitlin Lonegan live a couple of doors down, and Tala Madani has a building up the road too.
But my main community is with my wife, Leah Ring, who owns the furniture and interior design firm, Another Human. We share the studio space and her employees, vendors, and clients always come by to keep the place more social than it would be otherwise.
What do you love about your studio?
The studio is a storefront in a fairly quiet neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles, so I appreciate the ample street parking right out front and not having to navigate hallways or stairs (especially on artwork collection days). The excellent daylight from two large north-facing windows is also such a blessing.
What do you wish were different?
I wish there were proper traffic signals rather than stop signs along the road to discourage the awful driving habits endemic to this part of town.
Practically speaking, I wish I had access to protected outdoor space and an exterior water spigot at this studio. When it comes time to remove the wax from my batiks, I actually have to unstretch my panels, roll up the linens, and do the boiling in my driveway at my home in Altadena. After the boiling and rinsing process, I hang up each painting behind my garage like clean laundry drying on a clothesline. Sometimes an entire solo exhibition is flapping in the wind behind my house.
What is your favorite local museum?
The Huntington Library and Art Museum (which is very close to the studio) and the new Geffen Galleries at LACMA.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
Drawing with melted beeswax.
