A Dialogue Between Beth Davila Waldman & Nate Zoba

Reflections on their studio practices, Oct 2022

BDW: I love this phrase “entropy through erasure”.

NZ: Thanks. This body of work is so noisy and glitched out compared to the last two and that is specifically because of erasure. I actually started this body of work from trying to reclaim a panel. In trying to remove what I had painted in order to start over, I realized I wanted to work with the remnants, the erasure, instead of a "clean" panel. What brought you to how you enact erasure in your process?

BDW: I like how you used the word glitched out. To me, it brings a connection to screens and technology and takes the interpretation of the work in a pixelated direction. Interesting with the use of paint and such a physical application of it. I am curious what that stirs in you. When I select my photographs, it is a difficult process because there is a sort of honoring of the photograph that I go thru, and a struggle to start the process of erasure with the gel photo transfer process. However, I suppose it's the work of releasing something that is deemed as static to a place of uncertainty. I have been working this way with my photographs since 2010. For some reason, the nature of leaving the image as such did not feel like enough of a dialogue with the ideas I felt taking the image brought up for me.

BDW: It seems we both start our entry through erasure or subtraction in ways that we can’t control.

NZ: I have some ideas about how things will go but have to cede control. I find some freedom in this that allows me to re-engage with work with a different or lessened attachment. In some ways, it becomes a collaboration. I believe this also forces me to improvise. How does your ceding control affect the work and/ or the process? What is your experience of that act?

BDW: I relate to this relationship greatly. I am always so relieved and excited when the transfer pull is complete, as control has been ceded. That is the tough part. Then, I feel that great freedom of possibilities using paint to approach the work on tarp or canvas which develops the work into a space that is much more complex, between the image and the paint and the material on which I transfer the work onto. I with my photo transfer process- you with your tools of extraction

NZ: Can you elaborate a little on control during photo transfer? I was also wondering about "unbridled intaglio" and if you could explain that to me.

BDW: There is little control during the photo transfer in that, when I use the roller, it creates air-bubbles in areas of its choice, and when I do the pull, I discover them and can only shift the direction of the transfer to maybe try to save part of the image from tearing away. I can try to pop the bubbles with a pin, but often I give up to the wonderful surprises and forms that result. Unbridled, meaning untamable, uncontrollable. The intaglio process is about etching through a surface, in order to allow the ink to hold on a plate. In a similar way, the tears through the image surface of photography from the transfer film. The resulting forms I accentuate with paint, recognizing them vs trying to blend or hide them. In a way, the process of pushing through a surface to reveal a line or form that will then participate in the art form is comparable to the process of intaglio. I have also used the process of intaglio in the studio as well with aquatint and line etching, but not in the works I am presenting in the show.

BDW: It seems whether it’s my photography or your base later, that we start with something intentionally framed or carefully painted.

NZ: For me, this if very much the case for me. There is a lot of intense composition that I then disrupt. I imagine your composition of the initial photograph is very intense and precise. Are you thinking about erasure at the point of composition? When does that come into your process? Are you erasing similar things across the body of work or is each specific to the individual work?

BDW: I have not used the word erasure in my work, but it definitely fits the bill. I have thought of descriptions such as the presence of absence. I think that the resulting erasure allows elements from each image to be accessible, and others not. It comes into my process during the pull. I do not aim for any consistency, I think in a series the variations serve as an additional narrative for me. Thus, I have to figure out the completion through my choices of color, opacity, the relationship between the forms and fragments of that image, all with paint.

BDW: What is this balance or order and disruption (chaos)?

NZ: For me, trying to find a balance between the two creates a tension which gives the work energy. How controlling or specific are you in your paint application? I think your paint application as a chromatic erasure where the space signifies a negative space, but is still expressive, though at a different 2 register than the photographic elements. How do you make your decisions about what colors you want to use? Paintings 9 & 10 have a lot more paint coverage than the preceding work. For me, this creates an intensifying emotion and gives an arc to the whole body of work. Does the composition of the photo predicate how much you want to remove?

BDW: Thank you for your thoughts on this. In a series, I do want a conversation between the colors I use, but it does not have to be the same each time. As I paint them, and with this series, I painted the first five, then I painted the next few, then the final four, the emotional aspect from the paint and choices feel almost like chapters of the series. Definitely No 9 & 10 were painting in April 2020, when things with the pandemic were intensifying. I was definitely processing that through these works.

BDW: And then we are also dealing with the layers we have created within these planes…

NZ: In some of the pieces from your body of work (6 & 8 especially), I feel like the layers recede from perception and the plane is unified. Like the blue - is that sky or is that paint? There is this back-and-forth in the mind's eye about what is photo and what is paint - a kind of play between the work being a window or an object. Which is in part what I consider to be one of erasure's more powerful features: the ability to create a third thing.

BDW: The third thing. I do sense that the completion of our work through our process is very much that through the control and unbridled results we are able to create the context of a third entity that cannot be defined easily. It is sort of the space between, the flux of depth, the movement of the eye, the questioning of which part came first or which is leading, the order or chaos? Hopefully, this is the entry point that allows viewers to linger...

Find out more about artist Beth Davila Waldman: www.bethwaldman.com