A brush with...

The Art Newspaper
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Visual Arts
  • Monthly

A brush with..., sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, is a podcast by The Art Newspaper that features in-depth conversations with leading international artists. Host Ben Luke asks the questions you've always wanted to: who are the artists, historical and contemporary, they most admire? Which are the museums they return to? What are the books, music and other media that most inspire them? What do they get up to in the studio every day? And what is art for, anyway? The podcast offers a fascinating insight into the inspirations, the preoccupations and the working lives of some of the most prominent artists today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 1 day ago

    A brush with... Caragh Thuring

    Caragh Thuring talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Thuring, who was born in Brussels in 1972 and has lived in the UK since 1973 makes paintings that present fragments of images, patterns and abstraction in compositions that often upend the conventions of her medium, while reaffirming its unique descriptive and poetic powers. With motifs that appear and often reappear in morphing forms and combinations, alluding to specific moments in her life, to film or art history, her paintings are in flux, both in their structure and spatial arrangements and in their meaning. They are propositions that cannot easily be resolved or reduced to simple or convenient narrative yet are far from unfocused or bloodless; rather, they arrest us and pull us deep into their mysteries, rewarding us as we spend more time with them, and return to them. She reflects on her interest in forms of slippage across various art forms, the role of drawing in her work, and her admiration of different forms of making, especially when there is a twist in how they are realised. She discusses her early engagement with the paintings of Otto Dix, the delicacy in the handling of Vija Celmins, the awkwardness in the works of Pieter de Hooch and the wildness of René Daniëls. She reflects on her journeys into volcanoes, metaphorically and literally, and on listening to Bach in her studio. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Caragh Thuring, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, until 19 September Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 6min

  2. 9 Jun

    A brush with... Lisa Yuskavage

    In this first episode of the new series, Lisa Yuskavage talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Yuskavage, was born in Philadelphia in 1962 and lives today in New York, makes paintings that involve a cast of stylised and often eroticised, mostly female characters set within invented interiors and landscapes. Deeply engaged with the history of art and representation, Lisa’s pictures explore centuries-old traditions and genres and play with them, along a sliding scale from homage to subversion, sometimes within the space of one canvas. Her figures can derive from everyday observation, draw from soft-porn magazines or a wealth of other pop-cultural sources, or quote from historic paintings. But set within enigmatic spaces, accompanied by a range of props and objects, and allied to Lisa’s intoxicating colour sense, they are encapsulated in a singular realm of imagination and unleashed into the peculiar communion between this artist and us—one which can be delightful and disquieting, often at once. She reflects on the “emotional formalism” at the heart of her work, her early visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and trip to Italy and their transformative effect on her work. She discusses the seismic effect of seeing a Giovanni Bellini painting in Venice, the ongoing influence of Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés and her admiration for, among others, Agnes Martin, Philip Guston and Laura Owens. She talks about the poet Wallace Stevens’s impact on her work and her interest in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Lisa Yuskavage, David Zwirner, New York, until 26 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 7min

  3. 28 Apr

    A brush with... Andrew Cranston

    Andrew Cranston talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Cranston, who was born in 1969 in Hawick, Scotland, draws on experiences—moments seen, felt or remembered—which are filtered, embellished, complicated, and sometimes almost obliterated through the process of being painted. As well as reflecting on personal events, from childhood memories and the recollections of family members, to more recent rituals and exploits, Cranston’s pictures are rich in cultural resonance. Images and ideas from the history of art and cinema, from poems and television series, are central to his work, whether as a core motif or a subtle reference in the title. As a result, his practice is deeply concerned with time and history—not just in recalling past events and experiences and transforming them in the present, but in his materials and methods. He often uses the covers of old hardback books, bleached by light over the years, as a surface, for instance, and the paintings hold time in their very physicality—in the immediacy of a painted gesture, in the steady build-up of layers and marks, and in the hints of their journeys to completion. Cranston’s paintings reflect his medium’s capacity for thrillingly diverse effects, modes and moods; they are full of poetry and longing, as well as absurdity and joy. He reflects on the fragility of his images, how with reiteration they gain meaning and weight. He talks about the silence in his works and what he calls his “fight with visibility”. He discusses a wealth of painterly influences, from Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Paul Klee, Pierre Bonnard and Winifred Nicholson, writers including Hugh MacDiarmid and Elizabeth Bishop, and cinematic and televisual references including the films of Nicholas Roeg and the teleplays of Dennis Potter. Plus, he gives insights into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Andrew Cranston: I’m going in a field, Modern Art, Bennet Street, London, until 30 May Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 13min

  4. 14 Apr

    A brush with... Hurvin Anderson

    Hurvin Anderson talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Anderson was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1965, the youngest of eight siblings, the rest of whom were born in Jamaica. His paintings are a poetic response to place, teeming with personal and cultural resonance. He transforms photographs from his own archive as well as found images into atmospheric worlds of paint, in which details of motifs, including figures, objects, interiors and landscapes pull in and out of focus, suggesting the texture of memory. Much of his work evokes scenes and spaces in Britain, where he was born, but also imagery of Jamaica, from where his parents emigrated to the UK, and the Caribbean more widely. He has stated that his paintings often relate to a feeling of—quote—“being in one place while thinking of another”. They are a profoundly subjective response to diasporic lived experience and a sustained and lyrical engagement with paint as simultaneously a tool of representation and of veiling or disturbance. He discusses for the first time his latest paintings for the survey of his work at Tate Britain, he reflects on how he uses photography in his work and his shift to working with what he calls a “second unit” in recent works. He recalls the early influence of Michael Andrews and Richard Diebenkorn, his enduring fascination with the art of Édouard Manet and Diego Velázquez, and how he responded to the Jamaican artist Carl Abrahams in his painting Passenger Opportunity (2024-25). Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Hurvin Anderson, Tate Britain, until 23 August 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    48 min

  5. 25 Feb

    A brush with... Veronica Ryan

    Veronica Ryan talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Ryan was born in 1956 in Plymouth on the Caribbean island of Montserrat and came to the UK as an infant. She now lives between London and New York. She explores personal, collective and historical memory through a range of sculptural materials and processes. Her installations and individual sculptures combine a wealth of things and techniques, often all at once, from found objects to time-honoured sculptural materials like bronze and marble; and from carving to casting and crocheting. Colour plays a vital role in her work, in the varied hues of textiles or plaster. And she creates forms as diverse as seeds and fruits, mats and nets, pillows and blankets and architectural structures. Through arresting and often multilayered arrangements, she evokes the minutiae of everyday experience (often with a profoundly personal meaning), makes reference to resonant historical events and their legacies, and addresses major human themes and rites of passage. She reflects on the meanings embedded in her materials, her relationship with psychoanalysis and unconscious processes, and her distinctive approach to displaying her work. She discusses the early influence of her mother’s textiles, her visits to the British Museum and her epiphanic encounter with the work of Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. She reflects on the importance of the poetry of Maya Angelou and chamber music and reggae, and she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1 April – 14 June 2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 6min

  6. 18 Feb

    A brush with... Catherine Opie

    Catherine Opie talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Over more than three decades, Opie, who was born in 1961 in Sandusky, Ohio, and lives today in Los Angeles, has created photographic portraits, cityscapes and landscapes that have borne witness to social and political conditions and tensions—particularly in her native United States—while also reflecting a deeply personal response to people and community. Fundamental to her work is an exploration, as a queer woman and as a documentarian photographer, of the nuanced, multifarious nature of identity, most prominently in LGBTQ+ communities, but also far beyond them. She has committed from her earliest mature images to the idea that, as she has phrased it, “Without representation, there is no visibility”—a belief that remains more vital than ever in the US and across the world in the 2020s. And that visibility is manifest not just in the portraiture for which she is best known, but also in the central place that architecture and interiors play in her work. She repeatedly calls our attention to the juxtaposition of the built environment and the construction of bodies and identities. So she documents her surroundings in the fullest sense: she depicts the people she loves, knows and meets; the spaces they occupy; and the broader physical and social environment around them. Ultimately, she hopes, through encountering her art, viewers will gain a better understanding of humanity in all its complexity. She reflects on her early discovery and desire to make pictures, aged nine, and the key figures that helped her choose to become an artist. She talks about the kinship between poetry and art and the fundamental importance, whatever her subject, of human connection. She reflects on artists as diverse as Holbein and Leonardo and Gerhard Richter and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, on the influence of writers including Joan Didion and Octavia Butler, and on her admiration for Chloe Zhao and Chris Marker. Plus, she gives insights into her life in the studio (and darkroom) and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Catherine Opie: To Be Seen, National Portrait Gallery, London, 5 March-31 May 2026; Catherine Opie: The Pause that Dreams Against Erasure, The Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, 19 July 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 14min

  7. 11 Feb

    A brush with... Louis Fratino

    Louis Fratino talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Fratino was born in 1993 in Annapolis, Maryland, US, and lives in New York. His paintings reflect on memory and the intimate details of daily life to transmit a deeply felt response to his immediate circumstances and the world beyond. His vision is channelled through an abiding passion for art history, and particularly Modernist painters in Europe and the US. Louis’s subjects are the people and places around him, beginning with himself and extending to family, friends, partners and lovers, who he pictures in interior spaces from kitchens to bathrooms and bedrooms, as well as in the city and in nature. Crucial to his art is an exploration of queer life, from touching scenes of companionship to images of sex and desire more broadly. Louis’s painting possesses an everyday poetry yet dwells on the big questions of life. It is a singular and deeply personal practice as well as a major contribution to the expression of queer identity and sexuality in a painterly field that has until recent decades been dominated by heteronormative perspectives. If there is a philosophy in his painting, he says, it is “about living very intensely” and being “very open to experiences”. He reflects on the balance between reality and fantasy in his painting, on how memory is the principal subject of his work, and how he enjoys the “feeling of play in painting”. He discusses artists from Henri Matisse, with whom he has a show at the Baltimore Museum of Art between March and September, to Bhupen Khakhar and Winifred Nicholson, the photographer George Platt Lynes, the poet Sandro Penna and the film-maker Dag Johan Haugerud. Plus, he gives insight into life in his studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?  Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again, Baltimore Museum of Art, US, 11 March-6 September.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 6min

  8. 17/12/2025

    A brush with... Olafur Eliasson

    Olafur Eliasson talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Eliasson was born in 1967 in Copenhagen and grew up between Denmark and Iceland, where his parents were from. His installations, sculptures, photographs and paintings, among other projects, reflect a profound concern with human presence in nature and how we perceive and interact with the world around us. His works can be deceptively simple or enormously complex, but often share a rigorous and reductive geometry, which may conversely produce expansive and multifarious perceptual, sensory and embodied effects. Eliasson has stated that “the spectator is the central issue”, a long-established aspect of conceptual and environmental practices, but for him it is important that the viewer not only completes the work, but is also transformed by it. This subjective and individual revelation is, he hopes, allied to a sense of collective experience, what he calls a “we-ness”, that often alerts his audience to wider cultural and social issues including the climate catastrophe. Indeed, environment, in multiple senses, is the fundamental element of his work. He discusses his deep concern about the climate catastrophe and the importance of action. He reflects on his concept of “seeing yourself sensing” and its shifting nature in relation to different works across his career, and how he often includes the word “your” in his titles as a gesture of trust towards his audience. He discusses the wealth of writers and thinkers that inform his work on a daily basis, from Donna Haraway to Alva Noë. He recalls the epiphany of experiencing a work by James Turrell and his fascination with early Renaissance conceptions of space. He reflects on his early fascination with breakdance and his current enjoyment of music by Hilda Gunnarsdóttir and Rosalía. Plus, he gives insight into life in his vast studio in Berlin, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Olafur Eliasson: Presence, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, until 12 July 2026; Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey, Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia, 12 April 2026, Your view matter by Olafur Eliasson, Padimai Art & Tech Studio, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore, 31 March 2026; and Olafur’s first permanent public work in the UK, Your planetary assembly, 2025, is on view at Oxford North, Oxford, UK now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1hr 15min
See All (140)

Trailer

About

A brush with..., sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, is a podcast by The Art Newspaper that features in-depth conversations with leading international artists. Host Ben Luke asks the questions you've always wanted to: who are the artists, historical and contemporary, they most admire? Which are the museums they return to? What are the books, music and other media that most inspire them? What do they get up to in the studio every day? And what is art for, anyway? The podcast offers a fascinating insight into the inspirations, the preoccupations and the working lives of some of the most prominent artists today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    The Art Newspaper
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    140
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    A brush with...

You Might Also Like