I really hate even showing them to people because first of all I don’t want to even talk about it. JM: Yea, and I think that that’s the problem with my paintings.
JC: But it is supposed to make people think. Not that I should be a weight guesser at the fair or anything. JM: You see, what I was seeing was his personality. JC: And he was able to grow and adapt himself to it? It was the essence of Bill, not the physical disguise of Bill. He said, “It’s one of my prized possessions.” It was only a little portrait about 8”x10” and took me 2 hours to do. It was just like over about a 10-year period that he finally came to me and said, “You know it’s my favorite painting.” This guy is really rich. JM: Yea, Cook – he just hated that fucking painting. But the story my dad told about Bill is true, though. It’s like “Why?” I mean, I’d be the last guy you’d want to hire to do a portrait of yourself. So the idea of painting to please somebody is so foreign to me. And I always figured that they were just music fans who wanted to have, you know, a little something.
I think I’ve sold a few here and there, but not more than a handful. I’ve only ever just given my paintings away. JM: I don’t need to paint for anybody, you know, as long as I look at it and think I like it, then that’s good enough for me, because I have never really intended to sell anything. I mean I’ll either put the painting up till the next day - and you’re right, I don’t paint for anybody. When I stop enjoying it and it starts being a struggle I say, “fuck it” and forget about it. JM: I only have one goal: that I’m enjoying what I’m doing. You know sometimes you cut canvas and sometimes you paint over it. JC: So what do you feel are your paintings trying to bring out through your formal approach? Formal meaning the method that you choose to work with. John Mellencamp: Yea it is a minute and a half longer. I might not be thinking what you’re thinking when you’re making it, but at least I feel like your work draws me in – it’s a moment where I don’t just look at it for 30 seconds and move on but instead, continue to look at each one for 2, 3, 4 minutes at a time, which is longer than 30 seconds, I think. Jill Conner: I said at lunch that what I really like about your work is the tactile use of the medium. When we met, Mellencamp revealed that he was born with spina bifida in 1951 and had luckily survived an arcane surgical procedure that could have left him paralyzed for life from the neck down.
He plans to resume painting full-time this Winter. He disappears for days at a time in his studio, making himself completely unreachable to the outside world. Moreover, painting for John Mellencamp is a ritual of solitude as well as the only part of his creative life that is completely uninhibited. Mellencamp’s paintings capture a very visceral response to these socio-political disparities. Prior to the Great Depression agrarian communities flourished but were later replaced by corporate-run crops, produce and livestock that still erode rural America today, where neighborhoods continue to be divided along racial and class lines. The figurative expressionist gestures, dark colors and text seen throughout his work emerges out of an ongoing concern for the mutation of America and its Midwest Dust Bowl region that ranges West to East from the Rocky Mountains to Ohio, and North to South from Minnesota to Texas.
On May 17th I sat down with John Mellencamp to discuss the current exhibition of his paintings at the Tennessee State Museum titled Nothing Like I Planned: The Art of John Mellencamp. Portrait of John Mellencamp (2012) by Jill Conner
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