Interviews by Brainard Carey

Brainard Carey

Lives of the most Excellent Artists, Architects, Curators, Critics, Theorists Poets and more, like Vasari’s book updated. (Interviews with over 1200 artists and others about practice and lifestyle from Yale University radio WYBCX)

  1. 2 days ago

    Maia Cruz Palileo

    Maia Cruz Palileo Portrait of the artist by Mary Inhea Kang (b. 1979, Chicago) creates paintings, works on paper, installations, and sculptures that honor familial archives and imagined contemporary realities. Beginning from a space of personal inquiry around their family’s migration from the Philippines to America, Palileo quickly uncovered the immense connective points between individual histories and broader global systems, like colonization, displacement, assimilation, and the Philippine–American War. The artist’s research into overlapping historical timelines, paired with the transmutational effects of memory, provides a framework for their color-rich compositions. This overlapping is made physical through the layering of oil paint, which—even in instances where one layer is concealed by another—permanently maintains its material presence on the canvas, creating its own recorded history. While painting has been at the center of the artist’s practice in recent years, Palileo utilizes their background as a sculptor to incorporate hands-on processes, from mixing their own paints, to making cardstock cutouts of drawings, and incorporating collage techniques to create preparatory sketches. By obscuring horizon lines and vanishing points, their paintings emphasize the densely varied landscapes—mountains, forests, bodies of water—present in the Philippines, while simultaneously foregrounding the figures represented in these archival materials and imbuing them with care, dignity, and presence of spirit that is often flattened in a photographic archive. For Palileo, these parallel modes of research open up narrative possibilities and account for some of the somatic information that gets lost to time and distance, filling in the gaps that emerge when people and families migrate outside of their ancestral land. Maia Cruz Palileo Once Again There Was No Time, 2026 oil on linen 80 x 83 inches (203.2 x 210.8 cm) Photo: Dario Lasagni. Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery Maia Cruz Palileo Ulit Ulit (Again and Again), 2026 oil on linen 77 x 98 x 1 1/2 inches (195.6 x 248.9 x 3.8 cm) Photo: Christopher Stach. Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery Maia Cruz Palileo Makiling The Restless Mountain, 2026 oil on linen 82 x 107 x 1 1/2 inches (208.3 x 271.8 x 3.8 cm) Photo: Christopher Stach  Courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery

  2. 18 Aug

    Michael Morgan

    Studio portrait, Cornell University, 2025. Photo: Yun Hsiang Wang Michael Morgan (b. 1992, Syosset, Long Island) is an artist and curator whose work spans painting, sculpture, collage, and assemblage. Raised in a conservative suburb of Long Island, Morgan’s early experiences navigating his sexuality within a community at odds with his identity profoundly shaped his artistic voice. Exploring identity, loss, LGBTQ history, environmental issues, and societal division, his practice often draws attention to overlooked histories and underrepresented voices, including a project honoring Christine Jorgensen, the pioneering transgender figure who grew up in his hometown. Morgan earned his B.A. in Environmental Sciences from Northwestern University in 2014. Following the passing of his father, he shifted his focus from a legal career toward art and art education. He went on to graduate from Columbia University with a second bachelor’s degree in visual arts. While at Columbia, he was also a graphic designer at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, a finalist for the 2020 Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics for his writings on environmental theory and art, and inducted into the academic honor society, Phi Beta Kappa. From 2024 – 2026, Morgan pursued his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Visual Arts at Cornell University. He curated Magnum O-Pspsps at Cornell University, a large-scale exhibition featuring over 40 artists that received coverage in Hyperallergic and Art Spiel. Morgan’s research has also been supported by a grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts. Morgan has exhibited work at Sotheby’s, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Columbia University, Cornell University, Roberson Museum, the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, and Ortega y Gasset Projects. He is the curator of Deus Ex Bark-ina at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art and will be an artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project in fall 2026. Michael Morgan, If a Tree Falls, Oil on canvas, 2024, 30 by 40 inches, Image Courtesy of Artist Kati Gegenheimer, Mars at the Door, Oil on linen, 24 by 36 inches, 2024, Image Courtesy of Artist Michael Ashkin, Dog of War, Acrylic and charcoal on paper, 1990,  Image Courtesy of Artist Emilie Louise Gossiaux, True Love Will Find You in the End, Drawing, 23 by 17.4 inches, 2021, Image Courtesy of Artist

  3. 7 Aug

    Jimena Velarde-Alvarez

    Portrait of Jimena Velarde-Alvarez in her studio, 2026, Portrait by Silver Mikiver Jimena Velarde-Alvarez (b. 2001, Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian artist based in New York. She received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Emerging from attention—to and over time—Velarde-Alvarez’s work develops through a process of accumulation and return. Working primarily across painting, drawing, and sculpture, she approaches image-making as a practice of sustained attention, returning to an image as it gradually emerges and evolves. Through repeated encounters, her work follows the echoes of time as they surface and recede. In her paintings, carefully considered compositions and an atmosphere of restraint allow light, shadow, and architecture to emerge in quiet relation to one another. Spacious interiors, recurring windows, doorways, and thresholds create spaces where atmosphere becomes an active presence within the image. Through translucent figures, shadows, and layered surfaces, Velarde-Alvarez traces the subtle ways time gradually reveals the contours of things. Across painting and writing, layering becomes both material and metaphor. The accumulation of paint and language mirrors the ways memory, attention, and time are sedimented within the self: how the past accumulates and is continually rewritten, and how these layers can only be accessed through stillness, yet never be fully recovered. Parallel to her painting practice, Velarde-Alvarez’s writing opens another point of entry into the work. Through poetry, diary fragments, and text-based pieces, language serves as both companion and counterpart—a space for reflection and self-examination that deepens and expands the questions posed by the paintings rather than explaining them. Deeply rooted in personal experience, Velarde-Alvarez’s practice continues to evolve alongside her, unfolding through and remaining open to the questions that emerge over time. Velarde-Alvarez’s work has been exhibited in the United States and Peru. She is currently presenting her first solo exhibition, La sombra del tiempo, at Margot Samel, New York. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez Autopsia I, 2026 Graphite and dried pedals on board 13 x 15 in | 33 x 38.1 cm (framed) | 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in | 19.1 x 24.1 cm (unframed) Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez El peso de las cosas al caer, 2026 Oil on canvas 92 x 68 in | 233.7 x 172.7 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez Puente, 2026 Oil on canvas 38 x 30 in | 96.5 x 76.2 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman. Jimena Velarde-Alvarez Adentro, 2026 Walnut, found keyhole, graphite, paper, light 10 x 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 in | 25.4 x 16.5 x 16.5 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Margot Samel, New York. Photo by Matthew Sherman.

  4. 29 Jul

    Meena Hasan

    Meena Hasan (born 1987, NYC) received her B.A. from Oberlin College in 2009 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013, where she won the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Painting. In 2010, she was awarded the Terna Prize Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and in 2025 she was an artist-in-residence in the Winter TNT Residency hosted by Transmitter and Tiger Strike Asteroid Galleries in NYC. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Kristen Lorello Gallery, NYC, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, NYC, Center for Book Arts, NYC, The Stedelijk Museum, Den Bosch, The Netherlands, Deitch Projects, NYC, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY, the 2022 New England Triennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Fruitlands Museum and at BRIC Arts and Media in Downtown Brooklyn in Spring of 2023 among others. Recent two-person and solo exhibitions have been shown at The Old Stone House of Brooklyn, NY, Main Window, Dumbo with Deanna Evans Projects, NYC, and Stowaway Gallery, Los Angeles, CA all in 2025. Meena has taught Painting at Rutgers University – Newark, Pratt Institute’s Painting MFA program, the School of Visual Arts at Boston University and Studio in a School, NYC. She is currently the Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor in Painting at RISD, Providence and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Meena Hasan, jaali 1 (after matisse’s seated odalisque with haiti textile, 1926) acrylic, Flashe, Okawara paper, Tyvek, image transfer, copper pipe, climbing rope, carabiners, 85 x 40 inches Meena Hasan, jaali 1 (detail, after matisse’s seated odalisque with haiti textile, 1926) acrylic, Flashe, Okawara paper, Tyvek, image transfer, copper pipe, climbing rope, carabiners, 85 x 40 inches Meena Hasan, Terrible Beauty, at Main Window Dumbo, Was On View: June 5 – August 20, 2025, 1 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY Meena Hasan, Terrible Beauty (Detail), at Main Window Dumbo, Was On View: June 5 – August 20, 2025, 1 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY

  5. 28 Jul

    Lola Stong-Brett

    Lola Stong-Brett (b. 1996, London, United Kingdom; lives and works in Margate) most recently graduated the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (2024) following studies at the Edinburgh College of Art (2016). Her first solo exhibition, For That, I’ll Always Smile, was presented at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate in 2025. While her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions across the United Kingdom and in Mexico City, Sometime Somewhere Someone Is Dancing marks Stong-Brett’s debut in the United States. Working at a scale that envelops the body, Stong-Brett’s mark-making is deeply diaristic. Cartoon-like figures emerge from fields of heightened gestural abstraction, recording fluctuating inner states to form an entwined world of direct expression. Across the paintings, figures intertwine, drift apart, cling to one another, or reach beyond each other’s grasp. With great emotional immediacy, the works evoke the complex, shifting choreography of human connection—the experience of holding on and letting go, like witnessing someone you love move beyond you. Within this symbolic setting, Popeye returns from earlier works alongside Bimbo and a newly introduced female figure. Part childhood nostalgia, part reference to tattoo culture, Popeye first entered Stong-Brett’s paintings as an emblem of raw humanity. The artist recalls initially being drawn to the character’s visual language before discovering the significance of Max Fleischer’s early animations, in which Popeye emerged as one of the first distinctly working-class cartoon characters, depicted within commonplace settings in sharp contrast to the polished fantasy worlds of early Disney. Over time and through repeated use, however, Popeye’s original allegorical charge has loosened and expanded. Evolving into a more fluid emotional architecture, the figure retains its cultural and personal history while remaining open enough to be inhabited by multiple identities and relationships—at times forming a stand-in for the artist herself and the people closest to her. Lola Stong-Brett On Stage Where You Once Danced, 2026 Oil on canvas 2 panels, overall: 74 3/4 × 130 inches Lola Stong-Brett Yellow Christ And Raft, 2026 Signed and dated verso Oil on canvas 76 3/4 × 133 7/8 inches (overall) 76 3/4 × 66 15/16 inches (each) Lola Stong-Brett It’s Like I Can Still Feel Your Arms Around Me, When You’re Standing Behind Me, 2026 Signed and dated verso Oil on canvas 70 7/8 × 59 1/16 inches

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Lives of the most Excellent Artists, Architects, Curators, Critics, Theorists Poets and more, like Vasari’s book updated. (Interviews with over 1200 artists and others about practice and lifestyle from Yale University radio WYBCX)

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