Interview with Stella Cade (S.C) by Madeleine Till (M.T)
Stella Cade in her studio in front of her painting, “The Great”. Courtesy of the artist.
Stella Cade uses portraiture to explore themes of identity, sexuality, and inter-personal relationships. In the past, Cade’s gestural paintings made an appearance in the Artist Project. Presently, Cade is a member and co-founder of Toronto based Nest Collective, and is preparing to undertake a residency with Artscape Youngplace in 2015.
Stella Cade, “The One You Love”, 2014, oil on canvas, 60″ x 40″. Courtesy of the artist.
M.T: Can you give me a brief description of your practice, what you’re invested in conceptually, and what sort of work you’re interested in producing?
S.C: My work revolves around very broad themes of power and vulnerability. I work in oil paint, and have generally worked on a larger scale. 6′ by 4’ is my favourite. I’ve worked a lot with self-portraiture and that is rooted out of my background in feminist theory and women’s studies. I became fixated on using personal experience as a source. I think that it wouldn’t be fair to try and represent the experiences of others however sensitive I feel towards them – so I address everything through self-portrait. I’m at a crossroads, now. I want to discuss larger themes by accessing others and giving them space to share their stories with me through my paintings. I think that will broaden the horizons of my work. That is the new direction where I’m venturing into now.
Stella Cade, “Cigarettes and Douche Bags”, 2011, oil on canvas, 90″ x 60″. Courtesy of the artist.
M.T: Do you know all the people that you paint before-hand?
S.C: Yes, I know them.
M.T: You have any relationship with them?
S.C: Yes, and I think that’s important. I have done a couple of shoots with people that I didn’t know very well. People whose work I’ve found to be inspiring or people I knew in some other way, but I haven’t ever felt that those really translated into an image that I wanted. I think that by knowing the subjects of my paintings it helps to create a level of intimacy in the piece.
M.T: Do you think that meeting up with these people and having a relationship with them is as important as painting them?
S.C: I do, I think so. When I paint someone I try to work with them throughout the whole process. We go through some photos together and I make sure there is nothing that I would be using that would make them feel uncomfortable. I think it’s important that the subject of the portraits has a voice in them. That being said, it can be a hindrance because people don’t want to look “ugly”. The beauty of working intimately with my subjects is that I get to sit down and study the face of a person I care about. In real life you don’t sit down and figure out what an eye socket on a person you love looks like, do you? For me, it’s a really intimate experience.
Stella Cade, “Suzette (oh! that fire)”, 2012, oil on canvas, 72″ x 48″. Courtesy of the artist.
M.T: Are you always taking [reference] photos or do you paint from life as well?
SC: I like working from photographs, playing with the composition of it, playing with the lighting. It isn’t always easy to direct the subject of your painting to keep the same posture for hours and days. It is a lot easier to achieve a sense of movement or muscular tension in a photograph because you only need somebody to be sitting there for maybe five minutes.
M.T: Most of your paintings are not photorealistic at all. Can you talk about how they are painted and the handling of the paint?
S.C: I’ve had a lot of training. I spent some time at Concordia studying fine arts, and then I studied at the Art Students League in New York, and then I completed my Bachelors of Fine Arts at OCAD University. So, there is a skill set that I’ve learned and honed, and then rejected. I love colour and I think of it like sculpting. Instead of necessarily looking at shading or colour value in a cheek, I would think of it like a plane.
M.T: You mean like using model clay?
S.C: Exactly like clay! I do that with the paint. If I can make a cheek in two strokes, that makes me happy. That’s what feels exciting to me. I am really interested in how little I can actually render things, and still make them “pop”. With portraiture especially, you have to have a reason to paint, because you could take a photograph, and it’s going to be faster and better than you could ever paint it. I really want the medium to be present in the portraits that I do, and I really want people to know that it is paint, and feel the movement of that brush and feel my hand in that portrait.
Stella Cade, “Sneezy”, 2011, oil on canvas, 90″ x 60″. Courtesy of the artist.
M.T: Maybe we can talk a little bit more about self-portraiture, and why you moved away from that?
S.C: I started with self-portraiture when I was in my first year of university, in 2006 at Concordia. Part of it is accessibility, you’re always there, and you can do anything for your art. It started with the need for some deep self-analysis, and then that grew into a comfort level with self-portraiture because I didn’t need to make it pretty. I could take an ugly face and make that beautiful in a different way, and really push my boundaries because I wasn’t going to get mad at myself. There was a freedom in that which I really enjoyed exploring. I think it is a strange space that we live in. We have so much control over how we are perceived and in the instant gratification of seeing that through technology.
M.T: Like social networking with all the control over your self-image.
S.C: Right, because you can know your best angle and your best lighting and all of that stuff, and I think that that really hinders self-acceptance and creates really messed up body images. That was one of the roots of my self-portraiture, and I haven’t retired from it yet, it’s just that when you do something for almost ten years you need to shake it up a little and explore new challenges.
Stella Cade, “This is the History of Embarassment”, 2012, oil on canvas, 72″ x 48″. Courtesy of the artist.
M.T: When you’re painting other people, are you still working with those same themes then or is it something different?
S.C: Yes, I am. Most recently I have been working on some portraits of my partner. They are exciting for me, because I think that I’ve actually captured him. He’s a really quiet and private person in a lot of ways, but I feel like I see sides of him that other people don’t necessarily see. It was the first time I felt that I was being as honest with a portrait of someone else as with my own self-portraits. Maintaining the vulnerability in the piece. Those specific insecurities are important because that’s how I look at art, at myself, and at the world.
Stella Cade, “Ovation”, 2014, oil on canvas, 6′ x 4′. Courtesy of the artist.
M.T: What are you working on now?
S.C: NEST, our collective, is going to be a resident exhibitor at Artscape in 2015, so I’m aiming to have a solo show in their galleries, probably in the fall. I’ve also got one of the portraits of my partner in a show at OCADU for the Festival of the Body (January 15 – February12, 2015). Currently, I am working on a site specific solo exhibition that will include elements of sculpture and performance in conjunction with painting. I’m excited to take some time to experiment and play.