Delphine Hennelly
For our newest feature, New York-based artist Delphine Hennelly agreed to answer a couple of questions from our NY-Correspondent and Co-Editor-in-Chief, Caroline Bernadette Blockus, about her works, style, and processes giving us unique glimpses into her oeuvre.
CB: I really adore your work, it’s vibrant, vivid, and intriguing. Your figurative works remind me of old nursery rhyme/fairytale illustrations – but on acid. Is there a story behind the scenes/the figures you choose and what role does colour play for you? (Bonus question: Do you currently have a favourite colour that you are experimenting/working with?)
DH: Thank you! I do look at a lot of illustrations for children’s books and nursery rhymes. I like the formatting of some of those Rhymes and fairy tales in how a narrative can be expressed in short few sentences meanwhile a whole complex story unfolds. I am interested in bringing forth complications but through a formal simplicity. I kind of think of my own imagery in this manner, or at least am most pleased when I can encapsulate a multi-faceted scenario with a simple gesture. I am also interested in how children’s stories propose archetypes to encode and map out dynamics of socio-political behavior and I like to co-opt this narrative method as a way to kind of crunch my content with my form. There is also an underlying element of ‘innocence’ I strive for if you can think of a painting having an attitude, this is something I wish to have in the work as a kind of veneer that allows you in, or pretends to be oblivious, so to speak. There is a lot of darkness and horror in children’s stories and fairy tales particularly, yet these stories can also present quite naively. It’s this dichotomy that I enjoy. Color definitely plays a role within this and in a way almost leads the way as color can be seductive as well as repulsive and I enjoy toeing the line between these impulses. I like to organize a color palette that can be at once appealing and beautiful but may shift ever so slightly towards uncertainty perhaps on longer viewing. I often feel like my paintings capture a moment of the day when light is shifting, either towards darkness or the break of dawn. I enjoy this liminal space when a transition is happening. How to capture that through color is the challenge! And I suppose that is ultimately how I think of color, it is in flux, shimmery, virescent.
“I like to organize a color palette that can be at once appealing and beautiful but may shift ever so slightly towards uncertainty perhaps on longer viewing”
Lately, I have been thinking somewhat about colorlessness. Since the pandemic, I have had this difficulty with color. Color can be so decisive, for example, we think; either hot or cool. Decisiveness is one of the many abilities; the act of being able to decide, that has become threatened for us as a society during the pandemic. It has been very difficult to make clear decisions when so much infrastructure has been taken away, I mean, I’m just talking about how we live our lives daily when we don’t know when it will be safe to move around freely, and will we ever experience social proximity as we knew it again? I think this enforced limbo has influenced my response to color in a way where I’m letting it get out of control but also ok with canceling out any reasoning for it. I’m not trying to make anything harmonious or even try to propose something ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ and certainly not decorative. I have been finding brown very appealing for this reason, and a constant favorite of mine is gray mixed from Cobalt blue, Cadmium orange, and Zinc white. I have also been thinking a lot of Green; Peppermint and DayGlo and a more acidic green like Candy Apple.
CB: In a previous interview you said that you are more interested in the design aspects of your work, that you are “interested in composition over storytelling“. However, dare I say that design also tells stories: what is yours? And delving deeper into the realms of content and design (and playing with both concepts): What came/comes first in your artistic process? The idea or the visual? Would you give us a glimpse into your creative process?
DH: I very much agree with your statement that design also tells stories. I think this is really what I meant when I said I preferred composition over storytelling. My drive in making an image is led by the formal arrangement and problem solving that ultimately comes together to tell a story. In many paintings I know very little about the story I want to tell in the initial stages, but I allow for the narrative to reveal itself to me as I follow my intuition. What I do know when I begin a painting, is that I want the figures to have a relationship with each other and I want them to have a relationship with the space they are in. So, I formally build the painting based on these relationships. In this sense, I do tend to paint figures that may seem archetypal but also that they resemble figures that are close to me and my life. For instance, I am currently working on some paintings of Mother and child. These paintings can easily be read as being of myself and my son. However, I am not trying to depict an autobiography of our lives but rather I allow myself to use us as templates, like characters that I am familiar with. In a way, it is as though I can give myself license to depict this relationship without being a voyeur, as I am in that relationship too and I can have empathy. I am not interested in the objectification of my subject, and I am not interested in making a painting about Motherhood either. Rather, I am interested in the relationship that happens between people that are related to or affected by each other in some way. This particular duo that I am painting right now just happens to be mother and son.
“I am not interested in the objectification of my subject.”
As Cupid Midst the Roses Played. Oil on Linen. 72 x 60 Inches. 2021
CB: What is your relationship with your works once they are done: Do you immediately move on or are you interested in seeing them becoming and evolving through the eyes of critics/audiences?
DH: I am so involved with the process of making a painting work, it’s the most exciting reason and point for me to even paint, the problem-solving aspect. Once a painting is finished, I do tend to move on, and usually because of dissatisfaction! -Like; “ok, that didn’t work out, let’s try again.” -that it is quite rare for me to become overly attached to any one image. Although with distance and time I do love the paintings eventually and I can understand more impartially why they look or feel the way they do. I do enjoy seeing the paintings out in the world in people’s homes and in galleries in both spaces for different reasons and I love this aspect of painting. The way a painting permutates as well as permeates its surroundings and architecture it finds itself in. I am also always very fulfilled by an audience whether the reception is good or bad in a way. So much of my desire to make paintings is wrapped up in my desire to communicate with others and be in dialogue and to be a part of something that is larger than myself and my locale, to reach further into the world, so to speak so I do follow the painting’s trajectory out of the studio to a degree.
CB: What are you working on at the moment? Any upcoming shows to keep an eye out for?
DH: I have been doing a lot of drawing, lately, in the preparation phase of getting ready to make a body of paintings for a show this May. I will be doing a residency at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy during the month and I’ll be making the paintings in situ. The summer is also looking like I’ll be spending the majority of my time in the studio as I will be making work for a show in the Fall at Carvalho Park in New York. I am also working on some paintings for a group show that will be at Everyday Mooonday gallery in Seoul, Korea, late summer.
CB: Thank you so much for this interview. It’s been an absolute pleasure, and we cannot wait to see more from you!
Delphine Hennelly in her studio, June 2021. Photo by by Jean-Michael Seminaro.
