.

Aaron Nagel:  I started paint­ing a few years after high school. I grew up draw­ing, but I can’t remem­ber exactly what first led me to paint­ing. I did really like the idea of cre­at­ing big, dra­matic pieces, so I sup­pose paint was just more fit­ting for that. I learned mostly by trail and error… a lot of trial and error. Every once in a while I got some tips from peo­ple who knew what they were doing and/​or had been to art school, but for the most part it’s just been years and years of hack­ing away at it.

I always assumed I would make art, but I never thought it could be a career (which is still up for debate). iron­i­cally, I had planned to be a musi­cian, which is the other impos­si­ble way to make a living.

Curbs and Stoops: How did you get started show­ing your art? Did you start paint­ing with the inten­tion of some­day exhibit­ing? Give me a lit­tle back­ground story about how you went from a self-​taught artist to a rock star solo show at Shoot­ing Gallery (their anniver­sary no less). Have you had any par­tic­u­lar sup­port­ers in the art world that helped you make that transition?

Aaron Nagel: My first legit solo show was in 2008, so I’ve really only been show­ing a short time. It was hard for me to get to a point where I felt like my art was ready to put out there, but I met some guys through a mutual friend who were inter­ested in show­ing my work in their shop, so that kind of forced me into get­ting a show together. I’d always had the inten­tion of exhibit­ing but could have eas­ily just have put it off for­ever, since it always felt (and still feels) like my best piece is the next one. Once I had shown, and been through the process of paint­ing for a spe­cific show, my out­look towards show­ing work totally changed, and now I see it as a neces­sity. I had met the Shoot­ing Gallery guys a few times just because I had been to so many shows there, and once I did my 2008 exhibit, they approached me about doing a solo show. The owner, Justin Gia­rla, has been super cru­cial in my tran­si­tion to exhibit­ing, and is really supportive.

Curbs and Stoops: Your work has a dis­tinctly Neo-​Classical feel to it. Were you inter­ested in art his­tory when you started learn­ing to paint? What is it about this par­tic­u­lar style and era that attracts you?

Aaron Nagel: I’m def­i­nitely inter­ested in art his­tory, but I know very lit­tle about it, and there’s some huge holes in what lit­tle knowl­edge I have. I’m attracted to the Neo-​Classical and Baroque eras for a bunch of rea­sons; namely that the pieces are huge and epic which I love, and it’s an era(s) where the abil­ity of the artists is rarely at ques­tion. It’s like the artis­tic equiv­a­lent of a good metal band. I’ve always been attracted to art (and music too for that mat­ter) that is seem­ingly unat­tain­able in it’s execution…it’s end­lessly motivating.

Curbs and Stoops:  Your work con­tains a lot of reli­gious sym­bol­ism, which is then draped over worldly, aggres­sive, and con­fi­dently sex­ual female fig­ures. What does this jux­ta­po­si­tion sym­bol­ize? Do you have your own set of mean­ings for the clas­sic icono­graphic themes that you use such as arrows, halos and stigmata?

Aaron Nagel:  Well, first and fore­most, it rep­re­sents my love for the female fig­ure and reli­gious imagery. Aes­thet­ics are most impor­tant to me — the mean­ing is a dis­tant sec­ond. (I know that’s kind of fine art blas­phemy but it’s the truth). That said, I attribute a lot of power to women in gen­eral, and per­son­ally find beau­ti­ful women to take on an almost godly quality…or as godly as you can get to an athe­ist. So plac­ing them in sit­u­a­tions that con­vey an icono­graphic mean­ing makes com­plete sense to me. I don’t know that I have my own set of mean­ings for clas­sic icono­graphic themes indi­vid­u­ally, but I do have my own mean­ing for our rela­tion­ship (or lack of) to a god. From there, all those clas­sic icono­graphic themes take on dif­fer­ent mean­ings all by themselves.

Curbs and Stoops: Tell our read­ers a lit­tle about your process. From your very lovely and com­pre­hen­sive blog I’ve learned that your exe­cu­tion is fairly non-​traditional for a typ­i­cal fig­u­ra­tive painter.

Aaron Nagel: Well, first off, I haven’t had any for­mal instruc­tion, so I’m not exactly sure what the tra­di­tional process is actu­ally like for a fig­u­ra­tive painter. I’ve cer­tainly devel­oped my own sys­tem, but I still stum­ble upon some­thing every now and then and have an “Oh right, this took me years to fig­ure out and is prob­a­bly some­thing you learn on the sec­ond day of art school” moment. From the few books and arti­cles I’ve read, the biggest dif­fer­ence in my process to that of a tra­di­tional fig­ure painter is the order in which I approach a paint­ing. I paint things in a very reg­i­mented, orderly way; face, body, back­ground, hair, etc., in that order — instead of approach­ing the paint­ing as a whole and work­ing on all the ele­ments at the same time. Once all the ele­ments are in place, I’ll go back and re-​work every­thing and get it look­ing right. my method has been work­ing ok for me so far, but I can def­i­nitely see that work­ing on the fig­ure and the space sur­round­ing the fig­ure at the same time is prob­a­bly bet­ter for a num­ber of rea­sons. I’ll get there one of these days… habits are hard to break.

Curbs and Stoops:  I know that you uti­lize mod­els in your work to cre­ate the char­ac­ters in your com­po­si­tions. Do you have your mod­els sit for you or do you paint from pho­tographs? Is there an intended link between this prac­tice and the com­mon use of live mod­els by Neo-​Classical painters, or is it just the best way to get real­is­tic fig­ures? The mod­els that you do use are excep­tion­ally beau­ti­ful, with equi­sitly expres­sive faces. When you’re look­ing for a woman to paint what kind of qual­i­ties are you look­ing for?

Aaron Nagel: I paint from pho­tographs of mod­els. I don’t know any­body that would want to sit for the amount of time it takes me to paint these things, and I’d hate to ask some­body to endure that. I’ve always been a whole lot bet­ter at paint­ing some­thing from ref­er­ence than just pulling some­thing from my head, and for me, real­ism goes out the win­dow when I’m mak­ing things up. That’s why I paint from mod­els; because at that moment I’m try­ing to cap­ture the fig­ure, the mood, the lighting…as real­is­ti­cally as possible.

There are many qual­i­ties I look for in a model. First, I have to think they’re beau­ti­ful, which is not as shal­low as it sounds. The power that beau­ti­ful women have to me is impor­tant to the paint­ings. they also need to be both del­i­cate and pow­er­ful, grace­ful and dan­ger­ous. I’m not look­ing for sexy, or glam­ourous, but some­body who can look gor­geous and venge­ful at the same time.

Curbs and Stoops:  You are mak­ing a cou­ple of pieces for the upcom­ing “Next Gen­er­a­tion” show open­ing in Lon­don next month, curated by Think­space. Tell us a lit­tle about your per­spec­tive on the Next Gen­er­a­tion. What would you say your par­tic­u­lar gen­er­a­tion of artists has to offer? Of these artists who do you find most engag­ing? Who’s really bring­ing some­thing new to the table?

Aaron Nagel:  I’ve only recently even heard ref­er­ence to this new gen­er­a­tion, and the term “new con­tem­po­rary” that’s been float­ing around. It’s excit­ing! I know very few artists per­son­ally, so I’m not sure I feel like a very active part of this com­mu­nity (in the gen­eral sense of the word), but to be con­sid­ered a part of this group based solely on my work is an honor. One of the aspects I really like about this new gen­er­a­tion, is that I feel like there’s maybe some move­ment away from car­toony pop art that’s been so preva­lent the last 10 years. That type of art has always felt really cor­po­rate to me, and seems not so much about the art, but about find­ing an image or char­ac­ter that peo­ple attach to and then repro­duc­ing and repur­pos­ing it to death. many artists of this new gen­er­a­tion seem a bit more con­cerned with exe­cu­tion and less con­cerned with being clever, which I think is more hon­est, and speaks to my tastes per­son­ally. I am prob­a­bly only famil­iar with about %25 of the “Next Gen­er­a­tion” art show artists, but of those, i’m espe­cially excited about Pakayla Biehn, Lin­nea Strid, Audrey Kawasaki, Brett Amory and Nathan DeYoung.

Curbs and Stoops:  And since your work has such beau­ti­ful his­tori­cis­ing ele­ments in it, what artists from the past do you draw inspi­ra­tion from?

Aaron Nagel:  I’m going to sound like an ass­hole list­ing these guys but here’s my short­list: Bouguereau, Ingrés, Rem­brandt, Mucha, and Caravaggio.

Curbs and Stoops: Finally, tell us a lit­tle about what you have going on in terms of future projects, and if you would, leave our read­ers with a lit­tle sage advice from a self-​made man.…

Aaron Nagel: Right now I’m just try­ing to keep paint­ing as much as pos­si­ble. I have a bunch of group shows in the next few months, and I’m already plan­ning for some big­ger shows next year and hope­fully that momen­tum stays with me for a while. There will def­i­nitely be another solo with the Shoot­ing Gallery in SF, and a solo or two-​person show in LA.
Sage advice? I don’t know. I work all the time, it’s quite lit­er­ally all I do. It kind of sucks for every­thing about life that isn’t paint­ing, but for the paint­ing part of life, it works pretty good.