Distorted with Ally Rae Peeples
Remember the Myspace top friends lists? I don’t, because I was a child who wasn’t allowed to have social media like that at the time- but I get the concept. If I had one for my 8 top artists, Ally Rae Peeples would be on it. That was true the second I viewed her catalogue through my screen, before I got to experience it in person- now her spot on the list is likely to remain a fixture for years to come.
We visited Ally at her LA studio recently, a few days after my conversation with her. While viewing her work in person, you can feel her distorted subjects leaning into the 3D plane, interacting with you. The best part is (maybe not literally “the best part,” but I think its pretty sick), her work is entirely the viewers' interpretation. The subjects come from stock photos, the situations are sampled from her day-to-day life, and any conclusions made by the viewer are projections of their own inner workings.
Ally’s work is a must-see if you’re in LA. I recommend keeping an eye out for a chance to do so. If you have vertigo or any similar ailments, take a dramamine beforehand.
KAILIN: Were you already creating in this style? Or did it start when you moved to LA 3 1/2 years ago?
ALLY: I never painted before I moved to LA. I was strictly a charcoal and graphite artist. I feel like half of my style just came out of only drawing things I’m interested in. I’ve always really liked drawing people, but clothing, hair, objects, backgrounds just couldn’t hold my attention in the same way. So I started kind of distorting things to where I could get around going into detail with anything that wasn't human. It would drive teachers crazy because they'd be like, you can’t just draw a person with no background and no environment. I was trying to figure out how I could make the thing I was interested in also the environment. I started distorting people then.
When I first moved here, I was an artist assistant for someone, and I'd never painted. I got to his studio, and he was like, okay. You have thirty minutes to draw a monkey. This is your tryout to be my assistant. I drew the monkey, and then he said: “You're ready for the canvas.” That was the first time I painted. It ended up being for a Jeffrey Deitch show. It made me realize that if I can paint for someone else, then I can do it for myself. I was always kind of afraid of painting, though, for some reason. But that experience gave me the confidence to try it and now it's my favorite thing ever.
KAILIN: What artists do you find inspiring?
ALLY: I love Peter Saul, his work is caricature-ish. I also just loved caricatures growing up. I thought they were hilarious, and I was always confused why they didn't really have a place in the fine art world. I love Cecily Brown. Anna Park is also a favorite at the moment. She works mostly in charcoal, which is cool to me because that is where I got my start and it’s rare to see anyone climb to the top of the art world with charcoal.
KAILIN: Do you see yourself maintaining charcoal long term as you dive deeper into painting?
ALLY: I think it will always be my baseline, and I definitely enjoy working with color more now. Whenever I feel like I'm struggling with a painting, I'll go back to charcoal, and I feel like it gives me ideas for how to apply the paint because it is such a different medium. I'll always love drawing, but I think painting is more satisfying and rewarding in a lot of ways because there will always be a level of lacking control. Drawing is a lot more comfortable to me and therefore less exciting.
KAILIN: Is your work representative of your personality?
ALLY: I think there is a level of irony in my work that definitely is representative of my personality. My work also tends to feature lots of crowds. I've always enjoyed sitting in silence in crowds and observing the different dynamics. I've always been interested in psychology, and I feel like being in a crowd allows you to see a lot of different things at play. At the same time as someone who can be pretty shy, crowds are quite overwhelming to me. I think that overwhelm reads in my work. I've been trying to challenge myself to not have to have everything be really chaotic though. I want to do more pieces where there's just one subject in frame.
I think in the beginning of my painting, I felt like everything needed to be really crazy so people would pay attention. Now I feel like it's too crazy. I am trying to find the right balance.
KAILIN: Viewing your paintings is a colorful experience. From your perspective, how did color expand things for you?
ALLY: I feel like it's funny because now that I paint, people will be interested in the drawings. But because all my work was black and white before, I just don't think it captivated people as much. I think when you're working with color it grabs people's attention naturally. It puts you in the environment, especially when I'm doing really large scale works. You're standing in front of it and it's colorful. You feel like you're there. But if you're standing in front of a black and white drawing, then it feels like you're looking at a drawing.
KAILIN: Each painting feels like it has an individual theme... where do your themes come from?
ALLY: Usually, it just starts with a random thought, and I try not to overthink things or have to know why I wanna paint that beforehand. While I’m painting I’ll start to understand the links between the things I’m interested in… I feel like if something's crossing my mind and, sticking around for long enough, then it's worth exploring.
KAILIN: How do you see a painting before it hits the canvas?
ALLY: It's so weird. I don't see images in my head really at all, which is surprising to most people. I think in words so if I can describe something well enough, I can kinda visualize it, but I’m not one of those people that has a fully fleshed out idea in my head first. I'll get an idea- it's a random thing. Like, I wanna paint this. Then a lot of the composition and stuff comes from me sourcing imagery and messing around with it, layering it. The work sort of decides for itself what it wants to be as I'm making it. But I always know subject wise what I wanna do.
KAILIN: That’s so unexpected based on your work- what do you experience in your dreams if you don’t see images?
ALLY: My dreams are actually really vivid, which is strange. I can't tell if I am seeing images or if I can just describe them so well that it feels like I saw it. I saw something recently about how some people can't picture images in their head, but they can project an image, which I feel like I can do. If I look at a blank wall and think cat, I can kinda see a cat looking at the wall. But when I close my eyes and think of a cat, I can describe the cat, but I can't really see the cat, if that makes sense.
Yeah. I didn't even think about it until recently, and other people were telling me that they, see full images in their minds eye and just paint straight from their head, and I realized that I don’t do that. So wild.
KAILIN: What are the reactions you’ve observed, especially that of the first time viewers?
ALLY: All my characters are pretty distorted so people see all sorts of different people in them. A lot of the time people think there are celebrities or political figures in the images that are just simply not there which would drastically change the narrative of the work. There was one painting my roommate swore she saw Macaulay Culkin in. Usually the people are inspired by random stock photos or photographs from my childhood but I always welcome hearing whatever associations people make with my work.
Other than the people-identifying it really varies person to person. I've had some people think it's really obnoxious and insufferable, and then other people love it. It's not necessarily cool to make something that is for everyone- some of the best things to me are an acquired taste. I welcome the criticism. Whenever I receive criticism I just see it as a good opportunity to learn more about the person criticizing it.
KAILIN: It’s almost like your work acts as a Rorschach test- identify what you see in the ink blot. The call outs of political figures in particular feels like such an indicator of the depth of the relationships that have formed between peoples identities and their political views. It’s so close to the surface of their psyche.
ALLY: Recently I've been airbrushing all the presidents onto a toilet paper roll. It’s been really funny because some people get so mad about it and I haven’t even shared any of my personal opinions. I didn’t realize it would receive such a reaction but politics are so polarizing now. It’s been interesting to see the emotional response and political debates in my comments over something that has a non biased approach. Political ideology definitely seems to be closely tied with identity these days.
KAILIN: I love the toilet paper roll- it's such a fun concept. How has your airbrushing experimentation experience been?
ALLY: My boyfriend and I went to the fair, and we got an airbrush tee made with our names on it. It was super silly. I mentioned it might be fun to do airbrush tees just on the side and then my boyfriend got me one for our anniversary… I think a huge part of that was so that he could get airbrush tees whenever he wanted. So it kinda started as just a joke for us. I don’t think I’m a very good airbrusher- some people are just so clean with it. Mine turn out wonky and funny but I think that can contribute to my style. Right now I’m just having fun with it in addition to the paintings but I think airbrushing will allow me to branch out to painting on more surfaces in the future. The toilet paper roll was just the start of that. Maybe I could take a page out of Kenny Scharfs book and spray a car one day!
KAILIN: Your characters are reminiscent of some political cartoon styles that I have always loved, the toilet paper in particular feels like it's pulling me in that direction. Do you feel like you had different reactions to your work during your European residency?
ALLY: For sure. I think I was really inspired by all the historic art I was seeing in Europe which influenced the work I made out there. I also was feeling inspired about what was going on during that time in the U.S. Trying to keep up with the media coverage of certain things from a distance was fascinating- the way rumors were being spread and things were being distorted.
I was trying to think of a way to reference historic artworks and speak on how we’ve lost the meaning of a lot of important art and history because of how much imagery we consume constantly. Even for myself, I don't always know art history as much as I feel like I should. I was hesitant to reference other artist’s work but I know it's also been done by a million artists before and even was a tactic used by old masters which further speaks on knowledge lost. I cropped in pieces from different paintings from Reuben’s, Caravaggio, etc. so that it changed the narrative and to me it represented never really getting the full picture anymore. We just have such short attention spans that a lot of history and importance is lost even in real time as I was seeing with the election. Everything seems to get distilled down to a more digestible form.
KAILIN: Have you brought back any concepts or techniques from your travel and residency that you’ll continue? Any shift in perspective?
ALLY: That was just a small series of work, and I don't want people to think that from here on out I'm only gonna reference pieces of paintings that already exist. I do have one more piece in that vein that I want to finish. At the same time, I’m doing things like airbrushing toilet paper rolls, which is the opposite of serious.
I don't think I'll incorporate the airbrush too much into my oil paintings. It's a really smooth and fast medium, but I feel like there's been an explosion of airbrush paintings and they're not always my favorite. I much prefer when you can see the artist's hand in something. I also really don't like painting small and I haven’t quite figured out how to cover a ton of surface with my small airbrush yet.
KAILIN: The scale feels like an integral part of your work, especially when experiencing it in person.
ALLY: I do different size drawings, but to me painting is more like a dance if the canvas is bigger than me because it requires my whole body and I prefer that process more. Whenever I'm painting with just my wrist or my hand, I am really unhappy with the way it turns out.
My back is pretty messed up from painting large though. Whenever I see a video of me painting I’m hunched over in such a weird way with my butt tucked under. It’s heinous. But it also explains why my back always hurts.
KAILIN:: Do you paint every day, or is it based on what you’re feeling?
ALLY: I try to paint every day. I forget what artist said this, but I heard someone say once that you should approach your work like a friend that you can bring anything to- any feeling or experience. I try to adhere to that idea. I make effort to make something everyday even if that just means conceptualizing a new painting and not actually doing any physical work. But also there's times where I just, like, know nothing is going well, and I should just put it on ice for a second.
KAILIN: What’s next for you and your art? Is there anything that you’re looking forward to?
ALLY: I’m not sure what’s next for me. I’m trying to balance prioritizing making new work I’m really proud of and getting it out to the right people. I want to have another solo show soon and would love to do more residencies. In the meantime I have some group shows lined up.
