Delphine Hennelly

GG: Images and motifs often repeat themselves in numerous paintings, changing color and small details in each iteration. What compels you to paint in seriality? Do the various iterations happen in succession, or do you paint them simultaneously? What is the trajectory for how one painting might inform another?

DH: Painting in seriality has been a good way for me to generate ideas. I sort of equate finishing a painting to solving a mathematical (geometric) problem so working in series lends the experimentation aspect of painting a format within which I can organize my ideas. I tend to work on one painting at a time but there can be some overlap after a painting succeeds another. I might go back and work on previous images as the ideas flesh out over time. I have often thought of each painting as a stepping stone to the next and often realize that an image could never have come about without the prior image informing it. That is the exciting part for me in making paintings when the ideas sort of self generate and offer their own options, not so much in the sense of working with a formula but rather having a structure or framework to build upon. In repetition I find this structure intuitively and in this sense my work evolves serially in an organic manner. I don’t always intend to start out with the notion of a series but it almost always inevitably turns out that way. 

GG: What might your studio look like at a given moment while working?

DH: I tend to keep my studio pretty spare and empty. I like to have a lot of room around the paintings so I can see them without interference. While working it can get pretty messy with cups of paint strewn across the floor and an overwhelmed palette table but I periodically clean up between paintings so at each new start I have a fresh space. 

GG: In a previous interview of yours in Art Maze Mag, you mentioned that you have a hard time thinking of yourself as a narrative painter, despite working figuratively. Can you expand on this?

DH: Yes, I have always struggled with my identity as a figurative painter. Most painting that I am drawn to is abstract and pretty deeply involved with some kind of formalism or other, however you want to call it. It requires some effort on my part to place my thinking within a story line or narrative. I am just not drawn to, or built to naturally think within that orientation. I know this is pretty odd when using figurative structures as a means to make pictures. The figure innately carries with it the idea of a story attached to it, either through histories or fantasy wishful thinking style projections onto what the figure stands for or represents. Taking just these two examples of what figurative painting connotes for many, I have definitely struggled with how to wield the figurative form and to understand to what purpose I wish to stretch the boundaries of the forms possibilities. But ultimately I think it is the essence of this dichotomy that creates the motivation or interest in making imagery to begin with. Perhaps ‘struggle’ is not the right word, maybe, rather, I should use the word: ‘conundrum’ -to go back to the idea of painting problems that require solving. I think I enjoy the conundrum of using imagery that is loaded to begin with, challenging preconceived notions in order to perhaps chisel out something new. 

GG: I know you are inspired by theater and particularly your family’s theater company. Are there any particular costumes or sets that have stuck with you to today? What about theater continues to draw you back for inspiration?

DH: I have openly spoken of my childhood growing up witness to, in the wings of my parents theater productions and how that has been very informative to much of my work. Funnily enough, however, I do not directly think of theater much now as an adult or in my current work beyond this initial seed of theatricality that was planted in my early childhood. If anything I think the theater gave me license to think of costume and personae anachronistically which fell in line with my desire to get away with not being beholden to any given narrative in a figurative image. My exposure to the theater also normalized the concept of ‘play’ to a degree I have no trouble engaging with this aspect in working out my figurative constructs.