Last week, I had the honor to interview world-renowned artist, Jonathan Green in his home studio for
Native Magazine. The 900-word article will print in February, but for now, here is a portion of the interview text.
Q: How do you see the relationship between your art and today’s contemporary culture?
Jonathan Green: What we learn in life truly comes from the arts. We are the visionaries, the carriers of our culture. Our perspective represents a continual history, a visual interpretation of our culture. We have the power to encapsulate history as it is happening. When you remove the arts from a culture, it ceases to be. You know how they say that in a war, the first casualty is always art.
I think that we live in a world that is creating a certain mindlessness of self in our youth. But I am not afraid for the power of the image. Considering all that we know from cave paintings, it’s clear that culture transcends generations and it is not best preserved in writing or stories or music, it is best preserved in the image.
Q: Tell me about your art background, I understand that you are one of the few Gullah artisans to ever receive a BFA.
Jonathan Green: Yes, I had the honor to study at the Art Institute of Chicago in my late twenties. I come from an oral culture where imagery is the most powerful and profound force, yet these images did not yet have a place in the art world. For that reason, I took my role at the Art Institute very seriously. I studied very close to the Institute’s museum, one of the finest art collections in the world—As much as I loved walking through there, it pained me to see in the entire museum only two images of black faces: one by Jacob Lawrence and the other by Alex Katz, two artists who later became very influential to my work.
Q: Can you tell me more about your childhood and the oral culture that you grew up in?
Jonathan Green: My childhood in Gardens Corner, down in Sheldon Township, South Carolina, was wonderful, beautiful, normal, and supportive. It’s interesting because I don’t think that I was ever aware of money until about the age of 12 when I started passing the offering plate at Tabernacle Baptist Church. It was a bartering culture, where people traded goods and services and seldom used money.
I was raised by my grandmother. I learned that the role of the grandmother is absolutely crucial in the passing of culture. It’s not the mother who tells the stores, it’s the grandmother. She raised me to adhere to a well-disciplined schedule. I woke up early in the morning and did my school work before school. It was kind of like living in a monastery. She felt that I was different from the other children. Perhaps I was. Maybe it was my sexuality or my artistic abilities…
But she raised me to be prepared to deal with issues in life. At a young age, I understood life and death; by the time the Civil Rights Movement came along, I was already prepared to understand what was happening.
Q: How does your history and childhood experience impact your work today?
Jonathan Green: My work portrays scenes from my childhood: weddings, certain family members, relationships between my relatives. Many pieces display a deep connection to plantation life. I’ve traced my roots back to the Twickenham Plantation in Beaufort, the Bull Point Plantation, and one called the Tomatle… My work also speaks to the Euro-American heritage because they have a long history of mixing with the African slaves. My images are about a people with a 300-year landscape. The atmosphere remains consistent: there are people, the presence of water, a flat landscape. They are visual memories that portray a level of honesty that could only come from the imagination of a child.
Q: I’ve read that you are a painter of an authentic Southern experience. Would you say that the innocence of your paintings represents a truly authentic experience or a more stylized one?
Jonathan Green: I do paint an authentic Southern experience, but it is also a stylized experience. I think that I have the artistic right to eliminate some of my ancestor’s hardship. You will never see a mobile home in my work; you will never see poverty or oppression. I am not interested in painting angst or negativity. As a child, I first learned about the goodness of people. I can’t spend hours and hours painting out of anger. I try to just paint a simple message: We were here, we are here, and we hope to stay here.
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