BARNABY WHITFIELD'S WORK IS POWERFULLY BEAUTIFUL AND SEXUALLY CHARGED. IT DEALS WITH SHAME AND OBSESSION, AND IS SPRINKLED WITH VISUAL HISTORICAL CONTEXT. YET ASIDE FROM
BEING A BRILLIANT ARTIST, WHITFIELD HAS LIVED MANY LIVES FROM PROFESSIONAL OPERA SINGER TO MODEL. THE ARTIST SPENT AN AFTERNOON WITH DIRTY SHARING STORIES IN HIS STUDIO ABOUT WHAT
IT WAS LIKE GROWING UP THE MAYOR'S SON, WALKING FOR COMME DE GARÇONS AND HOW THE MARIEL BOATLIFT IMPACTED HIS WORK.

TEXT Paul Bruno / PHOTOGRAPHY David Kimelman / STYLING Shandi Alexander

DIRTY: I READ THAT YOU GREW UP IN FLORIDA?

BARNABY WHITFIELD: Yes. I grew up in Miami, but My father's family is from a town named Wewahitchka in North Florida right on the Dead Lakes. A town built from Tupelo Honey. I had sort of two versions of Florida life.

 

D: DID YOU PREFER ONE TO THE OTHER?

BW: The sort of Southern gothic romance bent of mine came from North Florida… the topography. But, I owe my love of the surreal in every day life to Miami. I feel fortunate to have grown up there. It was a great experience.

 

D: I LOVE MIAMI. THE ART SCENE DOWN THERE IS KIND OF AMAZING.

BW: I was a teenager just as artists were taking over Miami Beach, right as the fashion thing began. It was a heady time. Such a small scene and so supportive. And the small club scene was a blast. Fire & Ice, The Kitchen, Avenue A et al.

 

D: WHAT'S YOUR ETHNIC BACKGROUND?

BW: A mixed bag. German, Swedish, American Indian, Greek and Irish.

 

D: THAT'S A COOL MIX. CAN I ASK YOU WHAT YOUR PARENTS DID, OR DO, FOR A LIVING?

BW: My Father was the Mayor of the town I grew up in. He was also an administrator at the middle school I attended. Mother was an educator. She taught business classes at the high school I attended. The city is a suburb of Miami on the north side of Miami International Airport, only a square mile large. Built up in the 50's to house Eastern airline workers. Our house was this big white columned sort of Antebellum ranch thing built before there was even an airport, for rich Northerners that had horse ranches. We had this huge circular drive and yard filled with amazing plants. Eight mango trees, four white grapefruit, four pink grapefruit, a mini orange grove. And two MASSIVE Indian Prayer trees that actually fit dining tables in comfortably on the girth of their trunks! We even had a ghost of the former owner, Norma.

 

D: THAT SOUNDS INCREDIBLE! I CAN SEE THE SORT OF OLD WORLD, HISTORICAL INSPIRATION IN YOUR WORK. WHAT WAS IT LIKE BEING THE MAYOR'S SON?

BW: It was all consuming frankly. Or it consumed my Father, and we all got wrapped up in that cyclone. So much of my childhood was shaped by that experience. One of my earliest memories was going to the local grocery store and seeing the outside walls pasted with my families church directory portrait with a big "NO" stamp over it, during a particularly nasty election battle. My mother literally lifted my tiny chest up and shoulders out, instructed me we were to walk in with our head held high and pretend we hadn't a care in the world. It seems laughable now, how bitter such VERY small town politics can be. But it definitely gave birth to a deep rooted paranoia I am probably just now shaking. (Laughs) I guess I became aware of keeping up appearances VERY early in life. My brother was a stunner. Quarter back, soccer star, prom king and went on to become a big model and soap opera actor. My family was this sort of advertisement I felt the need to live up to. My dad was ALWAYS in a suit, and always in a Cadillac.

I became a professional singer at 9 years old. I was so miserable with home life I actually got my own audition for the Miami Boys Choir in third grade. I worked my way into the touring choir to travel and work my way out of there. I was hired for the children's parts at the Miami Opera. Backstage was my playground. Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, they all came through there. 

 

 

D: I'M TO UNDERSTAND THAT HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE IN YOUR FAMILY TO HAVE A MODELING CAREER?

BW: Yes. At the end of my teens I went from husky to waif in a summer. I was a punk rock kid with nothing but cheekbones and lips (Laughs). I was offered to move to Europe to do the shows, and I immediately dropped out of university and went overseas and gave up on the art career that Miami created for me while still studying. I did one job: I walked Junya Watanabe's first Comme des Garçons show and that was it. I lived in the model apartments, and just hung out and painted and smoked cigarettes in lieu of eating. Fashion is a huge passion of mine. I feel like it's the mise-en-scène for art to happen in our day to day life. But, I think I stupidly picked up and left school and art because it felt like a huge fuck you to my brother. He was so all American beautiful. My face was something else entirely — all these huge shapes pushing and pulling in different directions that someone finally found attractive. I thought I needed to hear that, but fashion is not a world to find yourself in. You live and learn.

 

D: UNREAL!  WAS YOUR FAMILY SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR SINGING OR MODELING?

BW: The singing was a weapon in the epic unhinging of my parent's marriage. My Mom took me to everything: the singing lessons, the music theory classes. My Father wanted me to be a soccer star — the soccer team was sort of the town's thing — and I fucking sucked at it. I would cower every time the ball came near me, even tho I was generally the biggest kid on the field. I didn't realize what exactly it meant to be on stage with these artists until I was in my early 20's living in Italy. I was relaying these stories to my friend's parents, and her father started crying. Not a night went by he didn't finish his evening with a cocktail and his favorite Luciano moments on cassette. I was actually ashamed by that part of my childhood, and here was this grown and very straight strong masculine father figure weeping at the fact I had shared this space with such greatness and didn't have the ability to comprehend. It was the first time I sort of realized I needed to re-approach my childhood and see it through a new lens. It was because of the singing that I first fell in love with the pastel medium actually.

 

D: HOW'S THAT?

BW: One of my extra money gigs was being hired out to sing Ave Maria during prayer at the Woman's Club in a Country Club in a very wealthy Miami Suburb. They had their own private wing in this space away from the men. I would do the song, then be spirited away into the kitchen for the remainder of the lunch until I was driven back home. One time I wandered the halls and came upon a room where there was a woman, impeccably dressed, huge coif, jewels, the whole thing, in a white apron, doing a pastel study of Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of his wife. It was EXACT, and there was not a SPECK of dust on her or anywhere else I could see. I was already painting by this point myself, I actually passed the time backstage during most performances drawing. I was aware of chalk already, but I was amazed by her ability. And the fact we were in this sort of secret place. It was a Stendhal Syndrome moment.  

 

D: SO BY YOUR EARLY 20s YOU HAD ALREADY LIVED MORE THAN SOME PEOPLE DO IN A WHOLE LIFETIME! HOW DID THAT SHAPE YOU AT SUCH AN EARLY POINT?

BW: Yes, but someone forgot to make my Vh-1 'Where Are They Now?' special! I feel like I've lived so many lifetimes. But most of them were of the underwater holding your breath sort. Half the battle for me is getting rid of the shame of that. That's why my work is just sort of the same narrative arch spinning and spinning, being refined and rewritten. I think I am working towards some sort of completion through that.

 

D: SO YOUR WORK IS LIKE THERAPY IN A WAY?

BW: Absolutely. I did a huge piece titled 'Fresh Horses' at the end of an 11 year relationship, while still living in the house we owned together. It was a baptism through shame. I'm getting pissed on by a parade of men while wearing my Pretty In Pink prom dress fastened out of favorite art historical appropriations. Molly Ringwald is my warrior figure, painting myself as her. I dyed my hair red for so long and fastidiously in my late teens and early twenties that my family became convinced it was my natural color. In life, I had become my Mother. I created a home and relationship that echoed the one I grew up in, which is why in my work now, this mother figure I've always painted is literally morphing into myself. I'm finally turning this female figure, the hero and the whore, into myself. It was always the recognition of self, or finding myself through these women in life. That was the point I guess.

 

 

D: ON THE SUBJECT OF THE WHORE LETS TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE THEMES SURROUNDING THAT BODY OF WORK. SEEMINGLY, THERE IS AN OBSESSION WITH YOUTH AND SEXUALITY, MIXED WITH HISTORICAL CONTEXT.  WHAT ELSE?

BW: I had an extremely sexualized childhood. I was aware of the intimate details of my parents relationship early on (loads of overshare). I was also sexually active at a very young age. And I was utterly determined not to be gay, even though I was sleeping with boys and girls equally. It created this huge mix of shame and obsession.

Right after I moved back to the states in my early 20's, I was the victim of a violent crime. A closeted man, a mutual 'friend'. It absolutely removed sexual activity from my agenda for years. Here was a man wanting to destroy me because of his desire. It was literally like a physical manifestation of what I was feeling towards myself, and it shook me to the core. It nearly tipped the balance so far on the side of shame to no return. That is where the grotesque and sexual created a relationship in my work. Or that is where it's born from. Like being caught up in the most amazing wet dream only to wake and see who is actually above you. Some grotesque character consuming you. But I think I am trying to paint that in reverse, to turn the horrific reality into the beautiful dream.

 

D: DID YOU STUDY DRAWING IN SCHOOL?  YOUR TECHNIQUE IS, WELL, FLAWLESS.

BW: THANK YOU! Yes I did. I attempted finishing in college three times (Laughs). So yes. but also being a kid during the Mariel Boatlift in Miami, I had the opportunity to study under an amazing group of Cuban surrealist painters that would give classes out of their little Miami Beach apartments for 25 dollars.

 

D: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON AT THE MOMENT?

BW: The father figure is finally rearing it's head. Literally. A giant painting of Klaus Kinski. I'm also doing a series of sort of dream lovers. Tim Goossens from PS1 is in one painting. It's all about desire, mixed in with my male identity.

 

D: WHAT INSPIRES YOU CREATIVELY?

BW: Music is first and foremost. I mean, I think I am a frustrated writer at heart, but music, well, it's like this added life force to that writing. I've been very fortunate to work with one of my favorite artists Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls. It's fucking cinematic her work. I sort of felt like their first album was exactly what I was trying to do in chalk.

I love visual artists like Raul De Nieves because art sprays out of his every pore in the most exciting and visceral ways. And then of course my fashion obsession. I just saw Yuima Nakazato's Spring 2011 show and nearly lost it. I would absolutely be willing to live in that for the end of my days.

 

D: DO YOU SING ANYMORE?

BW: Nah, although I threaten to start a band every year or three.

 

D: IS YOUR NEXT SHOW ALREADY IN THE WORKS?

BW: Yes, I am doing a body of work for a solo show in May.

BARNABYWHITFIELD.COM

 

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