Paul Balmer, painter
The inspiration for his new abstract paintings, the happy, pivotal accident with a disc sander, and the cityscapes that took his career to new heights
Playfulness and joy come though Paul Balmer’s paintings. He’s well-known for his quirky perspective-bending cityscapes that celebrate New York City, San Francisco, and Boston. He’s translated his style to textured, sparsely colored, yet lively landscapes and still lifes. His paintings of tables and picnic blankets dappled with pears and berries and other fruit delight in their simplicity.
Most recently, he’s ventured further into abstract painting, making large and spectacular pieces that combine his unusual use of power tools with his sense of playfulness and free-spirited painting, inspired in part by his children. His latest abstracts will debut this spring at the Caldwell Snyder Gallery in San Francisco.
Paul grew up in South Africa, left there at age 17 to study fine art in Australia, and worked as a commercial illustrator at advertising agencies in Sydney and then later, Boston. While teaching figure drawing in Switzerland, he traveled around Europe and painted the neoclassical buildings that launched his gallery career. Things got very interesting when he first applied a disc sander to canvas and then again when he moved to New York City, which inspired him to paint cityscapes.
You started your painting career making neoclassical paintings. Then when you moved to New York you went in a new direction. Can you talk about that?
When I first started doing commercial illustration, realism was the goal. I used mostly an airbrush and the illustrations were all very accurate. It wasn’t until many years later when I got a job in Switzerland teaching figure drawing that, on my days off, I traveled around Europe, and painted landscapes and architecture. I created these facades of buildings that were realistic but exaggerated. When I moved to America, I exhibited them at the Arden Gallery in Boston. I stayed with that theme for quite a few years and developed a style of painting that I still use today.
When I moved to New York I tried to paint in the same realistic way, but it didn’t translate. There was so much going on—skyscrapers and bridges, water, and sailboats. To get all this in one painting I had to change my style completely. I started by having many perspective points so at times a building would appear flat and other times, very three dimensional. I also sketched with a Dremel tool, which gave me this black line so I could suggest elements without painting in details like bridges and sailboats.
When you paint those cityscapes, are you basing them on reference photos or making them up based on your memory?
Now I’m mostly making them up. Sometimes I will look at pictures of the Chrysler building or I’ll see aerial shots of the bridges and that gives me different ideas. But now the goal is to not make them realistic at all, but to give an impression of a place. I do a lot of drawing on paper beforehand and then try to capture that same spontaneity and expression on the canvas by drawing with the Dremel tool. This line work is etched into the canvas and looks a little like an etching.
You were making these beautiful cityscapes, quirky as you describe them, then at one point you started creating picnic still lifes. What drew you to that theme?
Again, it’s my environment. The cityscapes came from moving to New York. Then I moved out of New York to Connecticut and the still lifes represent something about the home and home life. I’ve always admired the Impressionists and how they play with perspective, which is what I had been doing with the cityscapes. There isn’t one- or two-point perspective; everything has its own perspective. I thought it would be quite a challenge to take a still life and represent it in that way.
I read that you don’t set up a scene for your still lifes. Why is that?
If I work from a still life that was set up, the painting wouldn’t be as dramatic. I would look too closely at how the light is hitting the apple and try to make it more real. I’d be battling the tendency to go in a more realistic direction. By drawing it as I remember it, it ends up being more abstracted and more of a feeling of a picnic scene and table setting than the actual setting itself. I think there’s more of an emotional connection when a painting is abstracted or at least the painting holds one’s attention for longer when it is not all laid out in a realistic way.
Tell me about your landscape paintings.
Landscapes have been a theme of mine since I started painting. Painting them feels very free and the process is more subconscious. I’m not looking at landscapes, I’m thinking about landscapes I’ve seen. I paint them from memory and doing so is a more fluid process than painting the still lifes or cityscapes. I put a lot of paint on the canvas and I sometimes put a glove on and dip my hand in paint and smear it around and put layers and layers on, then I’ll sand the surface with a disc sander to reveal layers underneath.
How did your upbringing in South Africa influence your painting?
I love the local art there. Masks and anything tribal. I think South Africa has influenced the textures and colors I use. I’m also drawn to Aboriginal art, after living in Australia for eight years. I very much love those earthy reds. My landscapes have a lot of those Australian outback earth tones.
Tell me about how your children are influencing your art.
The way my kids are drawing is influencing my abstract paintings. They are 6 and 8 and come to my studio all the time. I’ve got lots of art supplies around and I encourage them to paint because they are so spontaneous. Everything they create is so loose and free. I am trying to use the same approach they use, which is “creating as they go.” I try not to be too attached to an idea, but rather start somewhere and paint what comes up or what feels right at the time. The work takes different turns and always comes out in unexpected ways.
Can you describe your approach to color?
Before I paint a picture, I’ll put a bunch of primary colors from the tubes onto a huge glass palate and then I’ll start mixing them pretty randomly. I’ll take a color that’s too strong and mix it with a grey. When I get a nice color, I put it aside and start making up piles of all these colors that I’m enjoying. When I’ve got a grouping that looks good together, those will be all the colors I’ll need for the painting.
That explains why your palette looks unique.
I think it looks a little different because other people are thinking, “I need to mix up this color and put it there,” whereas I mix all my colors beforehand. If it isn’t working on the palette, I’ll see that straight away and discard it (or move it to a small piece of glass and throw it in the freezer to use another time).
What originally made you pick up a disc sander and go at one of your paintings?
I had a painting that looked terrible. It was a neoclassical painting that was thick with paint and it didn’t work, so I took the sander to get rid of the oil paint. I sanded it down and it revealed all these underlying layers. It also left scuff marks that I kinda liked; it seemed to make the painting interesting again. Any straight boring lines started looking interesting because they were partly sanded away. So many marks I wasn’t expecting. So many accidents.
When I sand the landscapes, I leave the revealed layers showing through and it takes the paintings to another level. If I paint a dark tree and sand that away, parts of color beneath the surface come through. I can control it to some degree and if the surface now looks too rough I can simply paint over the top and repeat the process. [this video shows the process Paul is describing].
Do you have to wait for the paint to be completely dry before sanding it?
If it’s wet, the sanding will move the paint around and the colors will blend. This is good for moving color into shadow areas. When I sand dry oil then the objective is to remove layers to reveal colors below and scuff up the surface to make for textures.
I’ve read that you start some paintings with black housepaint as the underpainting.
All of them start that way. There are a couple reasons why I use black underpainting. The main one is because oil paint can be transparent if it is painted thinly. That means I can get a range of a particular color just by having that black show through. For example, if I paint thick white, it will look white. If I use less white on my brush, it will look grey, so it saves me mixing up that grey.
The other reason is I use a Dremel tool to etch lines into the canvas (then apply the black acrylic over the entire canvas). Those lines stay black even after all the oil paint is applied.
Tell me more about how you use a Dremel tool to carve in the lines.
That’s key. I didn’t use that on the neoclassical paintings but always have on the cityscapes and still lifes, to get definition. I love the look of etchings and I love a meandering line that is not always uniform. The Dremel gives me such a line. One can’t be too precise, as it’s a bulky instrument and it forces you to not be accurate.
I don’t often draw on the canvas beforehand. I might look at a drawing I’ve done, then use the Dremel to draw on the canvas. If I’m drawing, say, a bottle of wine, it’s nice to have many lines making up that bottle (just as in a sketch with pencil on paper), not necessarily one line making up that bottle defining the edge. The many lines give the painting some movement and perhaps a style.
Are there other tools you use besides the Dremel tool and disc sander?
On the abstracts, I use a blade that’s commonly used in sculpting. It looks like a sawblade and is good to scrape the paint around and make parallel lines. I also use a brayer roller on the cityscapes because I can roll the paint over the surface of the canvas and it stays on the surface and doesn’t fill in the line work made by the Dremel tool.
Do you have a preferred type of disc sander?
I use a 5” disc sander that I put on top of a drill, and I use the coarsest sanding paper. You have to be careful with it because it can rip through the canvas. I don’t do it anymore, but I definitely went through the canvas in the beginning. I use three coats of the thickest gesso to protect the canvas, add the black paint, and then I can dig into it with the Dremel tool.
The videos on your website show your process. In one video, it looked like you were adding black sheets of material to a painting. What were you doing?
During the past two years, I’ve been experimenting, trying to come up with a new way to approach the abstract paintings. I found a way to peel sheets of paint from glass. These “skins” of paint I can then collage onto canvas.
Are you using that process of creating the skins because it creates a different surface?
It gives me all this line work and some brushstrokes that would be hard to create straight into the canvas. I glue the skins onto a canvas that’s already been painted on, and I sand the surfaces (of the stuck down layers) to reveal part of the underpainting on the canvas. It’s a combination of what I’ve stuck on and what I previously painted. When you see it up close, it’s difficult to see which is which. The technique leaves a lot to chance and I enjoy all the surprises along the way.
I’m a big fan of your picnic still life paintings. What would be in your ideal picnic basket?
Watermelon for sure, because my daughter and I both love watermelon. Growing up, I loved passionfruit and lychee, so I would include those. I’d also include South African chutney—Mrs. Ball’s chutney, and a sharp cheese on sourdough bread.
Can you think of a moment when you felt like you reached a certain level of success?
Yes. When I started showing the cityscapes, they would sell out before they even got to the gallery. The gallery would print up a catalog, and before people even got the to show they would all be sold. That was a good time. It was around 2000 to about 2007. The gallery would call me up and say, “What are you working on right now?” I would describe it and then they would say “Ok, can you bring it in as soon as it’s finished because someone wants it [Wow!].” Things mellowed out around 2008 with the economic crisis.
What is your studio like?
It’s an industrial space with high ceilings in downtown New Canaan. There’s an outdoor space downstairs with terracotta colored walls that I can sand against. I put an extension cord out the window and sand in the corner of the building, outside.
Even in the cold winter, are you working outside sanding paintings?
Yes.
Were you always drawing as a child?
Yes. My mom’s cookbooks are filled with drawings of mine [laughs].
What’s your preferred canvas size?
The bigger the better! A common size is 5’ x 5’. It’s nice to do bigger. A larger painting seems more dramatic and feels as though you can step into the scene. All the brush work and texture is much more visible, too.
What’s the largest painting you’ve done?
90” x 90.” I have painted a cityscape and an abstracted moonscape that size (like the red eclipse painting below)
If you could take a week of classes with any painter living or dead, who would you choose?
The painter I admire the most is Basquiat. He might be the most childlike in his approach. I look at his work the most. It’s raw and spontaneous.
Who are some other painters or creative people you admire?
Cecily Brown. When I was younger, I admired John Singer Sargent. I very much liked the abstract expressionists. I do like modern architecture even though I painted a lot of neoclassical buildings. The architect, Richard Meier.
What do you listen to when you paint?
I listen to a lot of movie scores. They can be uplifting and emotional. I also like lounge house music and some tropical house music.
Why are you wearing headphones in your painting videos?
I play music pretty loud [laughs]. The people in the building wouldn’t like to listen to it all day.
If you could spend a year tracing the footsteps of Cezanne in France or Gauguin in the South Pacific, which would you choose?
I’d choose Cezanne. In fact, I went to the mountain that he painted, Mont Sainte-Victoire, and I painted that mountain. I like his approach to his still lifes too.
What is the best advice and the worst advice you received as an artist?
My father said, “When are you going to get a real job?” That was the best and worst advice. If I had taken it, I would be doing a “real” job and probably not enjoying it as much as painting. It was good advice because it definitely motivated me to make it all work. I can thank my father for my career! [He says this with genuine sincerity.]
BMW hires artists to create art cars. What would a Paul Balmer art car look like?
I would paint it with these abstracted moons on it, [like my painting] The Eclipse. It would look interesting on a car.
If one of your paintings could be in a scene of a tv show or movie, what would you choose?
A romantic comedy movie set in New York, like When Harry Met Sally [yes!]. Or a Ryan Reynolds movie. I’d choose a cityscape painting to be in the background of a scene.
Is there a particular cityscape you would want it to be?
One of my favorite buildings in the Chrysler building, so it would have to be painting with that in it. There’s a dark one on my website called Manhattan Night.
The Chrysler building is in many of your paintings.
I really like this building. It’s a great shape and makes for a nice focal point to any cityscape. Many years ago, I got to go up to the very top of the Chrysler building, inside where all those little triangles are. You can actually open up those little triangles and look out. A guy who bought one of my paintings had an office up there at the very top. He had a 360-degree view of the city.
Have there been situations when you’ve seen your paintings in someone’s house or other settings after they are purchased?
Yes. I was walking in Boston’s Back Bay at night and through a window I could see one of my paintings in someone’s living room. Then, I had 10 paintings on the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship and saw them there.
Do you have a painting of yours that you would never want to sell?
Yes, I have one that’s neoclassical, called Petit Palais and a second that’s a cityscape, City Dusk. Each one represents that painting phase well.
If people ask you what your abstracts are about, do you even want to talk about that?
Just a little. I can tell them about the technique, but not much else. It takes so many days to make a painting and so many things are going through your mind. Often the end result comes out of nowhere and is unexpected. Other times I know exactly what I’m doing with every stroke. Often I’m remembering the place I am painting. So much is involved while I’m painting, so what part do I talk about?
Some painters say they are in flow, others are in an emotional struggle, and some think of it as a series of decisions. What’s it like for you?
The trick is to get into that state where you just subconsciously go for it and everything works out. After all these years, I found a way of getting to that state. I look around for inspiration, and I’ve got drawings I like, made by other people, on the wall. I look at them and think about how they may have approached it, and then get to a place where I’m really excited about painting and the painting will go well.
There are all kinds of phases. Sometimes I’m not in the mood and I still have to move the projects forward so I’ll do a part of a painting that’s just production, like preparing it, stretching canvases, gessoing. Other times, I’ll have so much energy around wanting to paint that I go from one painting to another. I see solutions to all the paintings with problems all at once and can make them all work.
Lightening round
Favorite breakfast. There’s a certain breakfast we have on special Sundays: bacon and eggs, fried tomato, and fried banana, on sourdough toast. The fried banana and tomato are key.
Favorite pizza toppings. Pineapple and prosciutto.
If tomorrow was your birthday and I was going to bake you a cake, what kind of cake should it be? Good question because two days ago was my birthday! I had my favorite—an ice cream cake that was half pistachio and half mint ice cream.
You are hosting a dinner party and you get to invite six people living or dead. Who are you inviting and what are you serving? Trevor Noah, Basquiat, Steve Jobs, Rachel Maddow, and Scott Galloway—a professor at NYU who does a podcast. I would serve arroz de camerao, a shrimp and rice dish we enjoyed during a recent family trip to Portugal
Most captivating museum visit. The Getty Museum because of the exterior. For the interior, the European sculpture wing of the Met. The room with John-Baptiste Carpeaux sculpture, Ugolino and his Sons, is my favorite.
The Palate & Palette menu for Paul Balmer
Here’s what I would serve if Paul Balmer and his family came for a picnic, which they are invited to do:
Watermelon and feta salad
Baguette sandwiches with prosciutto, cheese, arugula, and butter
Blueberry pie
Where to find Paul Balmer (and you should!)
paulbalmer.com
Instagram: @paulbalmerart Pinterest: PaulBalmer
Caldwell Snyder Gallery
341 Sutter Street San Francisco, CA
1328 Main Street St. Helena, CA
1266 Coast Village Road, Santa Barbara, CA
Etienne Gallery
De Lind 38 5061 HX Oisterwijk, Netherlands
Whitehall Gallery
150, Banpo-daero, Seocho-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea (Whitewave Artcenter)
What an inspiring interview. I love the honest and experimental approach of Paul's work and the willingness to share with the viewers, and as you know I love his work. Thank you Paul, thank you Amy for another great interview.
Love this work. Another great interview that delves into inspiration, technique, influence, and personality. Thank you for the post!