MHM: Your process is unique! What led you to working with liquid charcoal?

GW: I used to work primarily with graphite pencils, but I quickly realized it required a lot of time to complete at the level of detail I was interested in. When I enrolled in my MFA program I wanted to explore options for creating large-scale works that could still achieve the same level of detail but at a much faster rate. My graphite drawings could take up to two months to complete and the largest size I could work with in that timeframe was roughly 22 inches by 30 inches. My largest liquid charcoal work took two months and was 6 feet by 24 feet! A professor in undergrad introduced me to liquid charcoal, but I had only experimented with it on paper at the time. The process is much different than when working with graphite pencils, but I really appreciated the fluid quality that the liquid charcoal brings to my work. It feels much more like a collaboration between me and the medium as I work. I am able to emphasize the fluidity through working on canvas/panel as it absorbs at a slower rate than working on paper.

MHM: What was the toughest question in your thesis defense, and how did you answer it?

GW: That’s a great question! My committee asked a lot of questions surrounding the experience of the work. I would have to say that the hardest question was probably about the ideal engagement with the work in relation to nostalgia and what that means for me. I talked about the scale of the work and the ambiguity built into the imagery and how that all plays into the experience. There is a level of specific nostalgia that drives my work and finding a way to use the spaces in which I display this work helps to capture that, but also got me thinking more about components of contextualizing pieces within these spaces to ground the work. I’m excited to use these questions to continue making work post-graduation!

MHM: Is each painting you create inspired by a specific experience with the natural world, or does a single experience inspire a whole series of works? How do you decide what parts of your experience to depict?

GW: My work is inspired by a handful of specific places that played a role in my life growing up in an urban environment that is surrounded by a national park. The imagery within my work comes from those places and it is what I think of when I reflect on those memories. There are aspects of trying to reconnect to my own memories that play into this work while leaving some ambiguity as an entry point for viewers so this imagery plays a huge role in that quality. I’m still exploring ways to bring my experience more to the attention of the viewer but I am also cautious of how much of that takes away from viewer’s ability to connect to their own places of memory. There is one memory that is consistently in my head when I think about my work; the maple tree in the front yard at my childhood home that my brother and our friends used to climb almost every single day. In my memory, this tree and my experience of it is reflected in the imagery of looking out from within the tree. I don’t see the tree in full, just the leaves up close to my face. This is where the inspiration for the imagery within my work stems from.

MHM: Can you speak more about your painting process? Are your paintings based on still life, photos, or from memory?

GW: Yes! The imagery in my work is based from photos that I have taken from the places in my childhood memories of the natural environment. As an act of reconnection, I visit these places and interact with them as a way to incorporate them back into my life in some way in the context of our current digital age. I have my camera with me and take photos when I am urged to do so, and that is an important part of my process. I find that plein air painting takes away front the experience of being in the place, it is too time consuming. I prefer to bring the experience back to my studio through images and create a new experience taking the image to the canvas.

MHM: How do you think about the differences or intersection between drawing and painting?

GW: I consider my work to be a hybrid of both painting and drawing. I use a paintbrush and the liquid charcoal, in its liquid form, appears like watercolor but dries as if it were powdered charcoal. I consider the work to lean more towards drawing because of the way I manipulate the material on the surface, pushing it back and forth and placing it down and lifting it off just as I would with graphite. I am excited by the ability of the liquid charcoal to communicate in a way that is not entirely familiar, but has some sense of connectivity to materials that bring a sense of familiarity. I think this allows viewers to engage with the work at a deeper level; making sense of the unfamiliar manipulation of the recognizable.

MHM: You create both very small and very large pieces. How does scale affect how your work is experienced?

GW: This is something I have been exploring and an idea that I specifically focused on in my thesis work. I opposed my 24-foot long piece with 18 fragments that were each five square inches. The imagery came directly from the larger piece as I wanted to create an experience where viewers could build connections between the two walls in reference to the idea of fragments of memory as well as the way in which we consume imagery in a digital age… some of the imagery in the small work is easily recognizable within the large piece but not all of them are as easy to spot and that is okay. I really want viewers to think about the act of visiting places, being in the moment, and taking the time to reconnect to physical spaces as opposed to relying on fragments.

MHM: You mentioned having a couple spooky experiences in your studio. Could you tell us about one?

GW: Absolutely! The strangest experience I have had in my studio thus far was when I was taking a picture of the sunset through the window in my studio. I do this all the time as Southern Ohio has some of the most beautiful sunsets and the windows in my studio have a great view of the sunset. This particular time I was taking a picture of the sky since it looked like it was about to storm and the clouds moving in looked cool. I didn’t notice anything until I was looking back at the picture after I had zoomed in to see the clouds better and I noticed a figure standing in one of the windows. The building that is across the courtyard from my studio is one of the several buildings on the property that remains unused and is mostly boarded up so to see a figure in the window was surprising. I looked back at all of the other pictures I have taken and didn’t notice anything in the windows and I haven’t seen anything similar since!

MHM: What’s influencing you right now? (ie books, music, TV, etc.)

GW: I read Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing a while ago and she just published a new book called Saving Time which I haven’t had much time to start reading yet ironically but I am excited to get into it this summer. I’ve been really inspired to keep researching, reading, and experimenting so I expect to spend a lot of time in the near future checking out some new books and diving further into my practice.

MHM: Who are some of your favorite artists?

GW: I love Vija Celmins, Georgia O’Keeffe, Byron Kim, Hamish Fulton, and Wayne Thiebaud. They’re artworks are all very different, and while Wayne Thiebaud worked with landscapes amongst other subjects, I really appreciate his use of color which relates in no way to my work! There are so many artists on Instagram that I follow and appreciate that make work very different than mine but I gather inspiration from a lot of random sources.

MHM: Say you went for a walk today… Of all the colors you see, which is your favorite? Have you ever experimented with color in your work?

GW: A dusty green or blue. Although, the purple of New England Aster wildflowers always brings a smile to my face. Back in high school I almost exclusive worked with colored pencil with an occasional oil painting here and there. The work I made outside of the realm of graphite or charcoal was so vibrant and saturated and I wasn’t even trying to make it that colorful that’s just what came out on the canvas/paper. Throughout college I focused more so on drawing and pretty quickly ditched working with color. I was much more interested with the bones of a composition and how viewers can engage with the core components of the work without the distraction of my vibrant sense of color. I have been thinking about the role of color within my work and I’m interested in experimenting with it again in some capacity.

MHM: What is the best advice you’ve received as an artist?

GW: I’ve received a lot of good advice especially throughout grad school but the one piece of advice that has stuck with me is that you don’t have to have all the answers. Your practice as an artist is ever-evolving in search of answers to questions you have that probably aren’t able to be fully answered. Engaging in that search and exploration of concept is challenging and you might not understand what you are doing or decisions you are making in the moment or ever, but most of the time the reason is clear at the end and it guides you onto the next question.

MHM: Congrats on finishing your thesis! Do you have any plans after graduating?

GW: Thank you so much! I am headed back to Akron, OH which is where I am from for the time being. I have been working at Don Drumm Studios & Gallery and am so excited for my first day back post-graduation. I love every second of my time at work and so I can’t wait to be back and surrounded by incredible local artists. I am also searching for K-12 teaching positions, but I am taking things slow at the moment to figure out exactly where I want and need to be.

MHM: What would the perfect studio day be like for you?

GW: I love waking up early and getting to the studio around 8 am. I usually pick up a coffee or make a cup as soon as I get to the studio and spend some time waking up, planning the day, and analyzing the progress I made the day before. The middle of the day would just be working, maybe turning on a tv show to switch things up from music, and then I go home for dinner and come back around 7pm. Ideally a nice sunset would distract me from working for a nice break before or after dinner. I am a night owl but I feel more productive if I start working bright and early in the morning. I tend to be most motivated when I come back to the studio after dinner so this is the time I turn some music up or put on a movie and get to work. At the end of the day I call it quits around 10 pm and head home!

Grace Worley is a painter from Akron, Ohio. She graduated from Wittenberg University in 2020 with a BA in art education and earned her MFA in painting + drawing at Ohio University in 2023.

Worley’s work has been exhibited throughout Ohio and across the United States. Since 2021, her work has been featured at the Swope Art Museum, Riffe Gallery, Medici Museum, Manifest Gallery, and the Springfield Museum of Art. Worley was awarded the People’s Choice Award in 2020 by The Contemporary Dayton Gallery and was a nominee for the Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in 2022. She has been featured in several interviews including Hyperallergic, Mineral House Media, and Canvas Rebel, as well as published in numerous publications such as Arts to Hearts Studio Visit Book (Vol. 1), Suboart Magazine (August 2023), and the Nitram Charcoal Inc. blog.

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Interview with Grace Worley