In the madness that is 2020, and with painting deadlines for their new show fast approaching, painters Soey Milk and Kent Williams ditched it all and went camping. “There’s just nothing better than being in nature without another person within 40 miles of you,” Milk says. “We were out so far we could hear the coyotes and it was lovely.”
The painters, who have been together for nearly nine years, would disappear for a handful of days at a time, sometimes a week. They mostly roughed it, though there were some luxuries, including Korean barbecue, soju and a tent that sits on a raised platform above Williams’ truck, well out of reach from the nibble of the scorpions and critters. By the time they were back in their Pasadena, California, home, they would need a couple days to just decompress before reentering the real world.
Soey Milk, Blue Hibiscus, oil on linen, 28 x 22"
And let’s be abundantly clear, it’s a wild world these days. More wild than that wilderness in which they would retreat. COVID was still ripping through California, especially in Los Angeles County; businesses were closed or operating in a strange limbo of half-capacities; and protests were still a frequent occurrence in Downtown Los Angeles, where the two shared a 6,000-square-foot art space—they had to time their studio sessions carefully so they wouldn’t get stuck in the maelstrom.
Did these troubling circumstances seep into their work? “I think it’s complicated. Certainly more complicated than saying my own anger makes my work angry,” Milk says. “Most of my work takes a long time and I tend to sit alone and listen to music. It almost becomes a meditation. The world is on fire, and my mind is on fire, but I have to sit in front of a piece for it to get its meaning—meaning isn’t always there from the beginning. Sometimes it comes from the work itself.”
Soey Milk, Kundalini Shakti, oil and polyethylene chips on panel, 16 x 20"
For Williams, he had a more reflexive and fatalist reaction: “The world is Ouroboros, the serpent consuming itself. That symbol can be a positive thing—life, death, rebirth—but it can also be a negative that speaks to the unusual year we’re all having,” he says. “Negative because throughout human history, again and again, we just don’t change. No matter how advanced the technology is, no matter how smart we think we are, it all stays the same. We’re consuming ourselves over and over again. It’s an act of extreme self-loathing.”
Williams and Milk—her given name is So Hee, a phonetic equivalent—were originally supposed to unveil new work in March. But, you know…things happened. After a short delay, the joint show is back on for September 25 at EVOKE Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The two have presented their work in group shows before, but never just the two of them, which will make the show a historic moment for their avid collectors, but also them personally.
Kent Williams, Ouroboros, oil and mixed media on paper, 24 x 18"
The show’s title, Imugi, comes from Korean folklore, a theme that Milk has spent recent months pondering. The Imugi, like the Ouroboros, is a serpent—more snake than monster—that has strong connections to water, including rain and thunderclouds. It lives for 500 years, and then retreats underwater, where it trains to become a dragon for 1,000 years. “After that time, it emerges from the water and prepares to ascend into the heavens to become a dragon,” she says. “But if a human sees it ascending and calls it a snake it turns to dust. But if someone sees it and calls it a dragon it continues its ascent to become a dragon. These are the stories our ancestors would pass down, almost like Bible stories. With the Imugi, I think of it as a story about self-betterment, but also about the subjective nature of people. I think the lesson is that other opinions shouldn’t matter.”
Milk, who was born in Korea and moved to the United States when she was around 10 years old, admits she felt the need to please people when she was younger and she was very sensitive of what others thought of her. It took time—the internet and its blunt honesty certainly sped things up—but she slowly let her own thoughts and actions define who she was and would become. Her work, in many ways, is a direct response to these since-calloused sensitivities. Her female figures, posed amid luscious walls of abstract color, are often wrapped with ropes, tassels, leather straps or ribbons—they are delicate adornments on nude, vulnerable skin. “The ropes are analogies for life. When a person is born they are born naked. But then as we experience life, we experience pain and love, we experience everything. And the things we cover our skin with can protect, but they can also be reminders of a traumatizing event,” Milk says. “I paint women because I’m a woman and I know that form well. I want to bring these colors, and these bright and shiny textures—whether it’s ropes, shawls, robes or whatever—and use them as an element that we recognize on the body.”
Kent Williams, Porcelain with Orange, oil on linen, 20 x 16"
For Williams, his new work will include some large oils, as well as a handful of new mixed media figures on paper. Generally using a combination of gouache, charcoal and Conté crayon, Williams will start one of the mixed media pieces with a basic drawing and then let abstracted little flourishes fill in a simplified background that puffs rhythmically around the figures. “The arbitrary nature of the paint, the varied calligraphy, part of that has to do with my love of mark making. Some of it comes from the initial gesture, the lines I make before committing to the figure,” he says. “I never put it in for the sake of mark making. It should always support the figure in a way that brings balance to the composition. Some of it is intuition.”
His paintings are often moody tableaus, with the figure anchored into the paper by the abstract qualities of his marks that blossom and swirl around the edges of his subjects. The stillness in their eyes suggests deeper thought, quiet contemplation and, dare it be said, fragile intimacy. Some of his paintings also have an erotic edge to them—more love than lust—that ranges from nude couples embracing to mild kink with ropes and leather.
“I gravitate to models that have an unconventional beauty because that’s ultimately how I see the figure. It’s the mixture of all my influences that inform every drawing and painting. It all has to come together naturally; it can’t be a contrived thing,” he says. “I wouldn’t call it ‘style.’ It’s a thing that comes out of honest looking and trying to capture that thing as best I can. There is honest intent there. Sometimes they can be exaggerated or distorted or expressed in a way that puts a more conventional language over it.”
Soey Milk, Fortune Caster, oil on panel, 14 x 11"
Much can also be said about his most famous model—a young painter by the name of Soey Milk, maybe you’ve heard of her—but that story is less interesting than their respective easels and the work coming from each. I even hesitate to use the word “muse” when describing Milk’s frequent appearance in Williams’ work. As writer Ryan Ebelt describes in an essay in Kent Williams: Via Lactea, a book devoted to his Milk works, “muse” comes with some unwieldy baggage.
“From a contemporary vantage point, it is nearly impossible to imagine one calling either Diego River or Frida Kahlo the other’s ‘muse’ despite the tangible product of what they inspired in one another. One must imagine some mutual exchange of ideas between Eric Fischl and April Gornick, though his canvases are often as peopled as hers are devoid of a populace,” Ebelt writes in the 2016 book. “Even when one artist is the instructor and the other the students, such as Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel, any lessening of either party steals from the rough-hewn puissance in their sculpted works of each other. As both art and gender have become more intellectualized and politicized over the past century in particular, utilization of the quaint moniker ‘muse’ upon Milk, as both woman and artist, would appear to esteem Williams while denigrating her as his subject despite the quaintly romantic implication of the expression. It simply calls for a better way of expressing this connection even while Soey Milk’s sylphish and spritely spark in this period of Williams’ works makes ‘muse’ a bothersome appellation to avoid.”
Soey Milk in her California studio.
Kent Williams at his easel. The two artists share a studio space in Downtown Los Angeles.
I ask if Williams holds anything back from his work. Anything too personal to put on paper or canvas—things just for him and Milk. “There is a reserved side to myself, but when I’m working my confidence is there, right in the studio and in the paint. There will always be private sketchbooks we don’t share, but everything substantial is out there because this is everything I’m about. I live, breathe and eat this stuff. I don’t know where I would be without having this work in my life,” he says. “I can’t speak for Soey, but these are the reasons we probably gravitate toward each other: We have confidence and a belief in our work. I’m not trying to be grandiose about it, but its importance in our lives is simple and complete.”
Milk confirms his assessment, but also goes a step further by adding that all art, whether between partners of nine years or between artists and models who have just recently met, is an emotional journey. “It’s all very personal and amazing. All of it. As an artist I see it from one side, but then as a model I see it from that other side as well,” she says. “In many ways I think the timeline of our relationship shows the beauty of our work coming out in so many ways. And in response to that I just want to keep conveying how much love I have to give within my work. We get to be in these creating moments, participating in each other’s ideas, and then later getting to see them finished. There’s nothing better than that.” —
Imugi: Soey Milk + Kent Williams
When: September 25-October 24, 2020
Where: EVOKE Contemporary, 550 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Information: (505) 995-9902,
www.evokecontemporary.com
Powered by Froala Editor
