Artist Liam Everett, one of SFMOMA’s 2017 SECA Art Award winners, explains his use of furniture and loose materials to simultaneously obstruct and direct his approach to painting. He describes how these props force him to remain present—as if performing in a theatrical set—yet also distance him from the final product.
Liam Everett (American, b. 1973) lives and works in Sebastopol, California. Everett has established the studio as a site of both investigation and rehearsal. His practice is mediated by a set of open-ended, continually shifting questions as to the influence of gesture, material, obstruction, and the environment upon his work. Rather than offering definitive answers, however, Everett’s paintings further elaborate these questions and act as record of the material encounters that occur within them.
