Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544028
"I think that art transgresses time — you come to it when you do at any part of your life, and it speaks to you or it doesn't." 49 I started surfing when I was a teenager and driving through Mexico and seeing all the different permutations of vegetation and landscapes, driving through Zacatecas, Guadalajara, San Luis Potosi to Mazatlán, then down the coast towards Punta Mita, near Puerto Vallarta. After that, going back and going south of there, to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Oaxaca. Seeing Mexico City — different kinds of architecture, different kinds of materials that people used, where there was just a door, and then there'd be a courtyard inside, and there'd be columns and loges and things that were much more European, in a way. So, when I went to Europe, it was much more familiar. It seemed more like Mexico in some way. Maybe I saw Mexico everywhere I went, even when I went to India. But I think the proximity to that world had a big effect on my idea about surface and materials. I'd look at doors … I remember a door at a place called Jack's Nest in Galveston that had tin on it, and holes were cut out of it. There were cement walls that maybe Greek sailors painted when they were in the port of Galveston. A lot of those things you register, and what comes out is an accumulation of things. Basically, I'm like a scavenger, and I just leave everything on the porch. And when I need something, I go back to that porch and get it. I made a lot of paintings in Mexico. I made the War Paintings in Mexico. In a photo, I'm standing in the middle of these palm trees, and there's a tarp covering a tractor trailer that's 17 by 23 feet. I painted one painting there, and then I went to a gas station and bought two more truck covers from two other drivers and made three paintings. One was called War, one was called Apathy, and one was called Consumption. If you look in the exhibition part of my website home page, you can see all three, which were in the show at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark. My wife, Louise Kugelberg, designed the installation, which featured 41 works. I also showed them at the Tamayo Museum in Mexico City years ago. On surfing and your art. JS: Water obviously has a big effect on my work. Paint is liquid, and there's a kind of gesture where you throw your whole body into something. That probably is part of how I react to these things that are a lot larger than me. I think that comes from being in the water and being in these open spaces — and thinking that the arena might be much bigger than your room. I like to paint outside. I can see better, and being — Julian Schnabel Portrait of Italy Through Its Trees V, 2025, at Pace Gallery Portrait of Italy Through Its Trees Painting on Map XX, 2026, at Pace Gallery Julian Schnabel in his studio in Montauk, 2025 VITO SCHNABEL © JULIAN SCHNABEL STUDIO. PHOTO BY TOM POWEL IMAGING © JULIAN SCHNABEL STUDIO. PHOTO BY TOM POWEL IMAGING