Tajh Rust in his studio, © Tara Geyer
With our In Conversation series interviews we always like to start at the very beginning. Can you remember what sparked the start of your artistic journey? Have you always felt a creative drive and known you wanted to be an artist, or was there a defining moment that led you to pursue this path?
My artistic journey began in earnest when I was in high school. I had always drawn pictures, but I transferred into my first real art class when I was 15, and my teacher saw some promise and helped steer me in the right direction. I began taking figure drawing classes outside of school, and started learning more about art history the following year. I didn’t know until then that someone could have a career in visual art. I thought my only options to utilize that talent involved architecture or cartoons.
You investigate concepts of representation in your works, portraying subjects in both indoor and outdoor settings. Could you talk a bit about what exactly these concepts of representation are or can be, and what they mean to you and your practice? How did you start working with them?
I think representation is a very broad and complex term that applies to so many things. I think all visual culture informs each other, so when we see images, we are trying to contextualize them in relation to ourselves and other things we’ve seen or been exposed to. So when I work with the figure, I think about the figure in art history, as well as the figure in contemporary media, like the news or entertainment. Additionally, context is so important. Where we encounter something or someone is inextricable from what or whom we encounter. I think of space as an extension of the body, and space within a painting opens up so many possibilities to what you can articulate.
Tajh Rust, In the Garden III, 2024, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 76.2 × 55.9 cm, 30 × 22 inch
From what I know, you develop your portraits in close collaboration with the subjects. How can we imagine this collaborative work? Could you give us a glimpse into what such a process would typically look like?
For the collaborative portraits I wanted to explore how people, specifically of the Black diaspora, occupy space. Instead of assigning a setting, I wanted to think about the environments as a part of the portrait; so the prompt was to identify a place that had a personal significance. Yielding that control to the subject brought me to places I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of or even had access to. The personal space of the home, or a favorite location to eat or see art. All these things were specific to the people I was painting, so in a sense, I share authorship of the work with them.
As shown in your works, items, objects, contexts or surroundings that carry representational value for a person can be so incredibly individual and personal, but I am sure, at the same time they can be universal and shared – be this consciously or subconsciously. What have you learned about these items and aspects that constitute representation during the years of working with them?
It’s interesting to see how some of the elements that make it into the paintings generate questions or conversations. Some items carry obvious connotations given how we use them or encounter them in daily life. For instance, we use steel chains to secure things in place. In my painting Duneska, the woman wears this chain as a piece of jewelry. In Something To Hold On To, the woman is holding a Cabbage Patch doll, sitting on a couch covered in plastic. These were ubiquitous things during a certain time in Black American households. So the way someone dresses, or how they curate or design the space in which they live can conjure up so many memories or stories for people who see themselves or someone they know, in these works.
I can imagine that an approach like yours, which is coined by collaboration and openness towards finding motifs together can lead to unexpected surprises, too?
Absolutely. Many of the people I’ve painted are artists themselves. So the works of others became an ongoing motif for a while. You can see in the portraits of Osaretin, Duneska, and The Spann the paintings and drawings of each subject.
Tajh Rust, In the Garden IV, 2024, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 101.6 × 81.3 cm, 40 × 32 inch
Your ongoing series Subjects however, shows portrayed persons without additional representational items or backgrounds. They are shown from the side, the back, or in a reversed three-quarter portrait, which creates a very interesting tension between what can and what can’t be seen, of how much a person reveals of themselves and how much stays hidden. Their gazes never reach out of the image space and into the real space, but rather even deeper into the painted image space and away from us as viewers. This creates a sense of intimacy, familiarity and closeness, while at the same time it evokes notions of voyeurism. How do you see this balance in these works? Is this tension something you deliberately seek to create?
Yes, I like that idea of tension. With these works, I’m thinking about the the threshold of visibility. What is the edge between a likeness and anonymity? Or the edge between visibility and invisibility? Also, I view these works as another iteration of my environmental portraits. Instead of painting the subjects in a recognizable space, the spaces they inhabit are made up of their specific skin tone. So again, I’m thinking about space as an extension of the body, as a part of the portrait, but with the Subjects series, it is more of a conceptual space. I start with the color that is specific to the individual, and I make the rest of the portrait after. In regard to voyeurism, I can see how some of the portraits evoke it, but if you look closely at many of the subjects, you see their bodies are turned toward the viewer, while their heads are turned away. This makes me think more about withholding. The subjects retain some agency that way; we are not sneaking up on them; they are turning away from us.
Lastly, your environmental portrait paintings draw on film and literary references, would you be willing to share some examples here? And is there a movie, director, book, or author who has made an especially lasting impact on your practice?
Yes, there are so many influences, but I think the filmmaker I think about the most would be Charles Burnett. His films feel like paintings, from how he composes the scenes, to the sensibility of the worlds he creates. He’s one of my biggest influences. And a book I return to often is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. It’s an epic collection of vignettes that trace a family’s lineage across two continents and several hundred years, but some of the most subtle ideas in it have stuck with me the longest, and is a primary reason that I utilize water as a motif in several of my works.
Okay, now really lastly: If you could paint any artist’s portrait – dead or alive – which artist would you like to portray?
It’s so difficult to choose one, but I think it would be David Hammons. It would be a challenge to represent his elusive nature, yet that’s what I find most interesting.
Interview conducted by Maren Möhlenkamp