Interview with Mel Leipzig

The Artist and His Daughter, 48 x 36 inches, 2016, Acrylic on Canvas (images courtesy of Gallery Henoch and the artist)

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After my recent discovery of a PBS documentary on the New Jersey painter, Mel Leipzig, I was fascinated by his story and wanted to find out more about him. I am very grateful (and lucky) that he agreed to take the time out of his busy painting schedule to have a telephone interview with me.

Mel Leipzig is a renowned New Jersey painter who for over 40 years has painted people in their working spaces from observation. He paints family members as well as many other painters and artists of all types, from graffiti artists to major NYC painters such as Lois Dodd as well as students, janitors or cafeteria workers he’s became friends with over time. Leipzig’s inventive spacial compositions and delightfully quirky details visually project the sitter’s personality onto the canvas and connect us in ways that transcend traditional portraiture.

Leipzig paints people without irony, pretense or propaganda. His straight-forward manner forgoes displays of verisimilitudinous display or technical bravado; instead seeking an honest, enthusiastically painted response to the people and places in front of him. Leipzig talks in this interview about coming to maturity under modernism which often frowned upon painting the observed figure. He also discusses his early lessons in how important it is to follow the path best suited to your sensibilities, despite lack of approval from the art-world intelligentsia. 

Gregory at Gallery Henoch, Acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Dan Bischoff states: If Leipzig feels like something of a discovery, that could be due to the lingering prejudice against portraiture. Modernism threw portrait painting into history’s dustbin for nearly a century, despite portraiture’s central role in secular art ever since the Renaissance.

After all, portraitists are required to more or less produce a likeness, which ties them to realism and not abstraction. And while portraits have always been made in every era, the process of building a career in portraiture has always involved a certain amount of patron flattery and therefore compromise — not what the Modern revolution was about.

Leipzig pursues portraiture without commissions. He paints directly from life wherever his sitter is at home, and pays his subjects $25 an hour, no matter if they are rich or poor. Flattery isn’t necessary (though he is usually kind to his subjects). The only limit, Leipzig says, is he finds it difficult to paint “anyone I don’t like.”

“They used to say ‘It’s been done,'” the painter says of realistic portraiture, “and you would not be able to do it any better. That was supposed to put you off the attempt.” … from Mel Leipzig’s ‘As They Are’ at Aljira — portraits of artists, friends, and 21st century fellows Jul 16, 2015 by Dan Bischoff For The Star-Ledger (full review link here)

Mel Leipzig shows at Henoch Gallery in NYC, please see his extensive bio information at the end of this article.

Larry Groff: Thank You for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with me.

Mel Leipzig: You’re welcome.

LG: I’d like to start with asking, how did you become a painter and what where your early days like as an art student?

ML: When I was in high school, at about 15 years old, I got a scholarship to study art at the Museum of Modern Art on Saturdays. So I went to MOMA the guy who taught it there said that Symbolism was the most important thing in art. He showed us great paintings and he explained things in terms of the symbolism in the paintings.

After I left that class I started doing a lot of realistic portraits, which I was paid for (not a lot of money) Actually, the most famous person I painted was a guy named

Two Reflections, acrylic on canvas, 1987, collection of the New Jersey State Museum

ML: I went to Cooper Union where abstract expressionism was the dominant mode of painting. Morris Kantor and Nicholas Marsicano were my painting teachers and Will Barnet was my printmaking teacher.

They all had certain things that they were hung up about. Like, when I was in Morris Kantor’s class, I decided that I wanted to do portraits of people because I really wanted to paint the figure, and anybody who knew me knew it was obvious. Morris gave … he had a very thick Jewish accent. And he said, “Vat do you mean, you’re gonna try to get a likeness.” I’m thinking ” so what?” He says, “No.” Cooper Union was free in those days. If you failed one class you were thrown out. So I painted still lifes in Morris Kantor’s class, but one thing I learned about from Kantor, I must admit, I learned how to use the color–pure white. That has stuck with me throughout my life. And then I studied 2D design with Neil Welliver … do you know who Welliver is?

LG: Sure. He’s an incredible painter.

Homage to Neil Welliver, 48 x 48 inches, 2014, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: I loved him. He was wonderful and he’s the one who told me to go to Yale. When I went to Yale, it was the time Josef Albers, from the Bauhaus, ran the art program. The majority of the students were painting color dots, whereas at Cooper Union the majority were influenced by abstract expressionism.

At the Cooper Union Nicholas Marsicano was my first painting teacher. There was a setup, a figure or still life, I was trying to figure out what to paint so I kept turning the painting around. It was a mess of incoherent lines. Marsicano came up to me and said “You know, You’ve got something there” and I was thinking that’s how they got you to move away from figuration or any form of realism into doing non-objective work.

I never did a non-objective painting in my life. I just didn’t want to. Another one of my teachers at Cooper was Sidney Delevante. How have you heard of him?

LG: I’m not familiar with him, no.

ML: Yeah, well he was my drawing teacher. While I was painting one of the still lifes from Morris Kantor’s class, Delevante came up to me and said, “Mel, what are you doing? This is not you. You’re a figure painter, that’s where your heart is.”

And so when I got to Yale, I decided on doing the figure. I should say that it was my still lifes, especially the one of leaves that I did in black, white, greys and with a touch of green along with my woodcuts that got me into Yale.

The Woodcut (detail) 58 x 68 inches, 1994

Josef Albers, ran the school in those days. He was very authoritarian. The difference between Yale and any other art school I’ve been in, is that everyone, including the teachers stood at attention when he talked. In some ways, I admire him. You know, I like his paintings and non-objective painting. I have nothing against it. I just don’t want to do it myself.

Francesca at the Door, 57 x 36 inches, 1992, Acrylic on Canvas, collection of The National Academy Museum, NYC

Portrait of a Marriage, (painters Jenny Tango, and Robert Bunkin) 54 x 71 inches, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: Why should you paint what somebody else tells you … if you do that, you’re selling your soul. It’s just wrong.

I really struggled to do the figure at Yale. Neil Welliver was teaching there and was also trying to break away from Alber’s influence. Welliver had been doing color abstractions, that were very pretty but he was trying to move into painting the figure so he defended me. It was a hard time. You know, if you are actually fighting for something there’s something good about it. That you’re sticking to your guns.

Tracey Jones, 48 x 48 inches, 2014, Acrylic on Canvas

Selina Trieff, 48 x 36 inches, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas, collection of The Provincetown Art Association and Museum

LG: After Yale, you went to Paris on a Fulbright. Any interesting stories to share about this time in your life?

ML: When I graduated from Yale I had gotten a Fulbright for my woodcuts and went to study in Paris. I was having something like an aesthetic nervous breakdown. All these voices were in my mind. I remember an incident once when I was in Paris and watching an opera production, I think it was Tosca. I was sitting up high in the theatre, and all I could see was the negative shapes coming at me. You know, because in non-objective painting, the idea is not to get an illusionistic space, but to get the background to come forward.

I didn’t do any woodcuts when I was in Paris. I didn’t want to–all I wanted to do was to paint. One good thing that came from Albers was this: Because Albers didn’t approve of concentrating on the figure, he didn’t encourage or provide for figure drawing, you never had a model in the class. We used to have models, at Cooper Union, but there was none at Yale. So I got into the habit of sort of inveigling people to come to my house to model for me. I’d give them a spaghetti dinner in exchange for posing for me… this was during my time in Paris.

LG: That’s a good way to do it.

ML: And so that helped me a lot because that is actually a method that has lasted all my life. I go to places. I find real people, and they pose for me.

Robert Henry, 48 x 36 inches, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas

LG: One thing that struck me when I was looking at your early teacher Morris Kantor’s work and who also discouraged you from painting the figure… anyway it struck me that he was doing a lot of figures similar to what you’re doing now. Paintings of people in their surroundings, perhaps people he knew. There was a wonderful painting he made with a ship captain sitting in his home with a landscape in the window. Seems odd that he would discourage a student from painting the figure if he was a figurative painter himself.

ML: What year was the painting done?

LG: I think it was in the 50s. Maybe 40s. I don’t really know his work very well at all.

ML: He changed his style constantly. His most famous painting is called, “Farewell to Union Square“. It’s a rose being thrown out of a window on Union Square. He was doing abstractions at the time that he was my teacher.

But he believed, by the way, you should constantly change. But I did learn how to use white. That was the one thing and that has stuck with me.

The Sun Room, Director of Photography and Narrator Aubrey Kauffman and his wife Michele

LG: Many painters seem very opinionated during that time, true believers in the modernist doctrine. I don’t know how much things have really changed.

ML: Yes, they were very dogmatic. There were a group of us who wanted to do figure paintings. Actually one of my friends dropped out of Kantor’s class because she couldn’t take it. It was a time where you were learning your teacher’s opinions. That was it. I’m a teacher, so I think I can say this. They thought that painting should be what they were doing, in fact.

LG: That sounds about right. Let’s switch gears a little now, can you talk about what artists have influenced you the most over the years?

ML: Manet is my favorite painter, that actually started when I was introduced to him at Cooper. I also like, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Piero della Francesca and other painters of the early Renaissance. In fact I named my daughter Francesca after him.

LG: Do you travel in Italy much to see these paintings?

ML: Yes, my wife and I … My wife passed, over ten years ago, but we went to Italy–we went to see everything.

LG: Have you painted there? Or just traveled…

ML: No, I don’t do that kind of painting.

LG: I see.

ML: Also I don’t do sketches. I have to have a person; a figure in the painting, no matter what the painting is about.

But the main thing that interests me is not just the figure. It’s the way the figure related to the background. That has led me to what might be called environmental portraits. It’s mainly the composition of the painting that really excites me, but I must have a person. It’s an essential part of my being, I guess.

LG: Some of your paintings of people in their surroundings reminds me of Vuillard, a portrait of a man in an office with books and papers all around – I forget the exact details

ML: No it is. You mean that Vuillard in the Metropolitan Museum, that painting? I love Vuillard. But I also love Matisse… I love his paintings.

Let me give you a little more of my history. I was doing paintings in grays, black and white when I was at Cooper Union. And it was one of my still life paintings in black and grays that got me into Yale. Albers loved the painting. I mentioned this before. I couldn’t paint realistically at Cooper Union. They literally would have thrown you out.

So I was using bright color. I ended up using a lot of bright color. I thought I was being under the influence of Matisse, Vuillard and Bonnard. Those were painters from the modern movement I was drawn to.

When I got back to America from Paris, I was going back and forth with color in my painting; sometimes with bright colors and sometimes with grays. And then around that time …my good friend and great painter, Bob Birmelin came and said, “You know, Mel, your paintings are schizophrenic.” He said that because my drawing were completely realistic and my color was abstract and all over the place.

Bob Birmelin, 36 x 48 inches, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: By working this way, you know, the color would negate, the drawing. Around 1967 I made a conscious decision to start to paint realistically. I switched from using oils to using acrylics at that time. The first things I painted were nudes, what you usually do.

But in 1968, I got married. My wife, Mary Jo, literally made my life possible. She was wonderful and made everything possible for me to become an artist. Also at that time I got my job in teaching here in Trenton, at Mercer County Community College. At the beginning of my doing my realistic paintings, I would paint Mary Jo all the time. I have two children, they’re grown now, in their forties and have children of their own. I started painting them as well. But then at a certain point my wife didn’t want to pose anymore, she got tired of doing it. So she said, “Go get your students.” So I got students to come to my house and pose. Everybody was clothed, by the way. They came to my house and they posed, you know.

LG: Did you give them spaghetti dinners?

ML: No, I paid them. I pay all my models. I paid them ten dollars an hour back then.

ML: I was teaching art history, I’d say at the end of class, “I need people to pose for me.” I got lines of students who wanted to pose. Especially since they were going to get money. I paid my children, even after a while, as they got older. But they would then pose for me.

ML: Early on, my first approach was to do a drawing and then do the painting.

But then I realized what I was doing, that I was mainly interested in compositions, the relationships of the space that the figures where sitting in. And I painted everything in the space that I could see.

In those days I used a limited palette of eight to twelve colors. I was trying to figure out also to different color combinations. I would do a drawing of the figure in the room and then square off a canvas, proportionate to the drawing and then paint the figure and the environment directly from life.

Joshua’s Tattoos, 54 x 64 inches, 1996 Acrylic on Canvas, *Collection of the Zimmerli Museum, NJ

ML: Around 1980, I had an artistic epiphany. I realized it was the background with the figure that interested me. So I did the drawings of the background first–without the figure. Then I had a model come and sit or stand in the environment and then draw them in the space. A very good friend, an abstract painter who also taught at Mercer, He said, “You know, Mel, something’s happened now with your placement of the figures in your paintings… It’s much better now.”

I was painting my students and also my children. I didn’t get on well with my parents. So I allowed my children to do anything they wanted to with their rooms. The thing was is that I wanted my kids to be happy. My son, Joshua had three friends that were all in a band. They all started writing on the walls and the ceiling of Joshua’s room.

Joshua’s Room, 60 x 66 inches, 1991, Acrylic on Canvas

Francesca’s Room, 60 x 66 inches, 1991, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: And my daughter, Francesca, plastered her walls in her room with these posters of Madonna and Marilyn Monroe. She liked gutsy individualistic women. My wife didn’t like it but I said it was okay. I did four paintings, two each of the two rooms and I think are among my best paintings. In fact the one of my son’s room, Joshua’s Room, is my favorite painting.

My son is now a professional tattoo artist… It is amazing. I always told my kids, I said, “You should do something that you really love.” Well, he really took me seriously. He works in upstate New York, in Plattsburg and supports his three children. I have done several paintings in the Tattoo shop, where Joshua works.

LG: I saw that you had made other paintings of graffiti artists, maybe two other graffiti artists?

Trenton Graffiti Artists, Their Pets, 48 x 60 inches, 2015, Acrylic on Canvas

Trenton Graffiti Artists Homage to Warhol, 48 x 60 inches, 2016, Acrylic on Canvas

Will Kasso 48 x 48 inches, 2015, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: I just tell them my son is a tattoo artist, and all of a sudden I’m one of the gang. That gets me in with all the young people. They’re terrific. I’m now painting, doing a series of paintings of the graffiti artists of Trenton. And they did a painting of me, in fact, on a wall, a huge painting.

mural of Mel Lepzig

ML: After eight months it eventually got covered up.

ML: So I also started painting the graffiti artists outdoors in front of their graffiti paintings. They are now part of my Artists Series.

LG: I see.

I forgot to mention something important… in 1990 I limited my palette to just four colors. A dark red, a blue, a yellow and a white. That’s all. Just four colors.

The reason I did that was that I had done a sort of Matisse-like painting of my wife, when we were first together, using just those four colors. And I really liked it. I thought the color looked really nice.

LG: This helped to unify the painting?

ML: Yes, it does. It’s an automatic thing of sort of harmonizing the whole thing. And you just mix the … the red must be dark. The blue can actually even be a cobalt blue. Mixing those two colors you get a black, which is actually a dark purple. With the yellow and white mixed with the blue and red you get browns and grays.

LG: I assume it also helps to combine drawing and painting together if you’re not having to deal with an overly cumbersome palette with many different colors?

ML: Yes it does make it easier for you, especially as I travel to different places to paint, it simplifies things with only have 4 colors. Well, I added black a few years ago, so I now have five colors.

Lou, 62 x 80 inches, 1996, Acrylic on Canvas, collection of The Whitney Museum

Detail

I had an office mate at Mercer County Community College where I taught. His name was Lou Draper. https://hyperallergic.com/307286/a-photographer-who-captured-the-complexity-of-black-life-in-lyrical-ways/ You can look him up, he is a famous photographer now. Sadly he died in 2002.

ML: Lou was an obsessive collector. In the sense that our office that we shared was filled with boxes of all this stuff. I mean, to give you an example, it would be like, if I wanted to throw out stuff from my office and would put it outside the door. Lou would just bring it back in again saying “why are you throwing this away?” So I would have to go into another building to throw it away. He truly was obsessive.

I did a very large painting of Lou in our office surrounded by boxes with one of his photographs. The Whitney Museum now owns that painting.

Then I realized that If I have my students come to my house to pose, what do they have to do with my home? It doesn’t say anything about them. So I began to think I should make the background say something about the person, like how a cluttered room could say something about Lou. Like how I made the background in my children’s rooms tell you something about them and what teenagers will do.

So from that point on, I started painting other teachers at my school. I started painting at the college, getting people to pose for me, different people, like when I painted the cafeteria workers in the school cafeteria.

LG: I saw that painting. That was amazing, You actually set up your easel right in the lunch line, practically, or …?

ML: Yes, well, the restaurant would be closed. The people who worked there would stay there and pose for me.

College Cafeteria Cashiers, 36 x 48 inches, 2012 Acrylic on Canvas,

ML: And I would paint them there. I liked doing that. I loved teaching. I really did. I loved dealing with students.

ML: It was the painting I did of Lou Draper, “Lou” that gave me the idea of painting the other teachers. In fact, Lou told me “Why don’t you do the other offices?” I then started doing artists in their studios. You know George Nick, right?

LG: He was one my teachers, yes.

ML: I painted George, his wife, and his daughter in his gorgeous studio. Did you ever go to his house?

LG: Yes I have. Great, so you included Assya and Katya in the painting as well?

ML: I painted them. I love Assya, yeah. That’s right. I met them in … Well the reason I painted George is that Neil Welliver knew George.

LG: Right, George studied with him at Yale. In fact I think he once painted Welliver at his home.

George Nick, (with Assya and Katya) 2009, 48 x 48 inches, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: He’s the only person that Welliver ever complemented. He said, “George Nick is really a good painter.” Everybody else, and the list is a mile long, Welliver didn’t like their work. One of my students from Mercer ended up studying with George. Through her I met George on Cape Cod. And I immediately, I told him I wanted to paint him. So I painted him.

I also painted a lot of architects, … Do you know who Robert Venturi is? And Denise Scott Brown?

LG: You know, I’m not really up on my architects, I have to admit.

Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown, 48 x 64 inches 2004, Acrylic on Canvas, *Collection of the Architectural Archives of Univ. of Pennsylvania

ML: They are of the founders of postmodernism in architecture.

LG: I did watch the wonderful PBS documentary about you, Everything is Paintable, where they talked at length about your painting and how you painted the architect Michael Graves at his home. (Visit this link to watch the video – https://www.pbs.org/video/mel-leipzig-everything-is-paintable-91rwyv/ )

ML: Yes, I painted Michael Graves, who lived in Princeton. He designed his house. It used to be some sort of garage or barn. And now he’s made it unbelievably beautiful. In fact, you know, if you see houses like that you think, how can you live in it, it’s so nice. I couldn’t figure out which room to place him in. So that ended up being like a five-panel painting. And he’s only in the middle panel. He was in a wheelchair, because his lower body was paralyzed.

Panel 1, 48 x 36 inches, 2009/2010

Panel 2 48 x 36 inches, 2009/2010

Panel 3, 48 x 36 inches, 2009/2010

Panel 4, 48 x 36 inches, 2009/2010

Panel 5, 48 x 36 inches, 2009/2010

ML: Yeah, I know, it’s a horrible thing to happen to somebody, but he started painting as a result of that.

ML: I love Ibsen, you know the Norwegian playwright? Are you familiar with him?

LG: Henrik Ibsen? Sure.

ML: I read his plays when I was thirteen, and I fell in love with them. There are certain writers I have liked throughout my life, but he’s the one that has lasted all my 83 years. I’ve done a whole series of paintings dealing with Ibsen. I became a member of the Ibsen Society of America. That was founded by a man named Rolf Fjelde, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_G._Fjelde who was the leading translator of Ibsen into American English. And so I’ve done a whole series of paintings on productions of Ibsen plays. I got the people in the drama department at my school to put on productions of Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, Peer Gynt, and Rosmersholm. They did productions of those plays, so I did paintings of the actors and directors involved in those productions.

The Ibsen Translator’s Family Tree, 48 x 48 inches, 2009, Acrylic on Canvas

The Cast of a Doll House*, 2009, Acrylic on Canvas

The Cast of Hedda Gabler, 60 x 72 inches, Acrylic on Canvas, 2009

I also I made a whole series of paintings on Rolf and his family*. With all sorts of Ibsen paraphernalia around. So that’s another series that I have worked on. (*Considered a more accurate translation of A Doll’s House.)

LG: Amazing. What are some other projects you’ve been involved with?

ML: Right now, I’m the artist-in-residence at a high school, and so I’m doing a series of paintings on the high school students. Not just the students; the principal, the teachers–all the people. That’ll end up being about 16 paintings.

Mel Leipzig painting High School students

I also was doing a series of paintings at the New Jersey State Museum. They asked me to be there and I started painting different sections of the museum. And then I met the people who run the New Jersey State Council of the Arts. The young woman who was leading the team, she was interviewing me. She was very pleasant, so I said, “I want to do a painting of everybody there.” So I go now to the New Jersey State Council on Arts and I’m doing a series of paintings that’s much different than my other types of paintings. It’s an homage to all the arts and artists of New Jersey, which includes popular entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Meryl Streep.

Francesca and Louis Married, Acrylic on Canvas, 2002

ML: This is how my paintings progressed. Around 2005, I was painting my son who was grown, and with his girlfriend, who later became his wife. My son has been married twice. He’s just been remarried. He and the woman who became his first wife were living in an apartment near my home in Trenton, and I started doing a series of paintings of them. Then I thought what if he was to tell me “Dad, we decided to move out”. Well, what am I supposed to do with this painting?

So at that point, I decided to get stop making preparatory drawings. In the past I also did a color studies. I would Xerox the drawing, and then do a color study for the painting. After that I would make the painting.

ML: But this time I figured I better not do that. I needed to get this done quickly. So I just started just the painting with the figure, painting directly without any preliminary drawings or color studies.

I really like painting directly the best. My paintings have become more fluid. I have no idea what the composition is going to be until the painting is practically finished.

ML: Do you know the painter Ben Shahn?

LG: Ben Shahn. Sure, I love his work.

Portrait of the artist Bernarda Bryson Shahn in her studio, 2000, Acrylic on Canvas, collection of The Springville Art Museum, Springville, Utah

Jonathan Shahn, Acrylic on Canvas 54 x 72 inches, 2006, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: I didn’t paint him, but I’ve painted his wife, who was a wonderful painter. He died in his sixties. Bernarda Shahn lived to 101. I painted her when she was 98. And I painted his son, who’s a terrific sculptor, Jonathan Shahn. And Lois Dodd … you interviewed Lois, I saw.

LG: I did interview her. She’s a wonderful person. I love her paintings.

Lois Dodd, 42 x 63 inches, 2007, Acrylic on Canvas

ML: She’s a great painter, she’s a great, great painter. And she’s a great person, I love her. I painted Lois, Eleanor Magid, who was awesome, another artist. You know Audrey Flack? You know who she is?

LG: Sure. She was well known for her photo-realist paintings…

ML: I painted her as well.

Audrey Flack, 36 x 60 inches, 2013, Acrylic on Canvas

LG: I think I heard she doesn’t paint anymore, is that right? I also heard that she plays the banjo?

ML: She’s making sculpture now and drawing – she also plays the banjo.I also painted Alex Kanevsky and his wife Hollis Heichemer. I recently finished a painting of Scott Noel? You know him?

LG: Oh yes. We published an interview with him not long ago.

ML: I just finished a painting of him. Oh by the way, my paintings have changed as a result of my painting the graffiti artists. They use brilliant color, you know. It’s unbelievable what they do with color on the outside walls of a place.

At one point it just dawned on me: I couldn’t make the sky just blue. I made it yellow. It fit with the painting that I was doing.

I’m still basically realistic, but it’s ironic that I have gone back now in my old age to using really vibrant colors. I used very vibrant colors in the painting that I made of Scott Noel. I painted Scott very realistically, with his dog, he has a dog that he likes, and then I copied several of Scott’s paintings. But the walls of his studio I went to town with color.

LG: Sounds wonderful. I’d love to see that painting in person.

ML: This is essential. I tell this to everybody I know: You have to learn to trust your instinct. You really do. You know, to be an artist, because I have seen, from my generation… I think this is true now as well. That artists are sometimes ruined by their education. People with tremendous talent during the heyday of abstraction, people with like this tremendous talent for reality, who would be discouraged by their teachers, and then they would go into doing all sorts of garbage. So when they left school, they stopped painting.

LG: I know quite a few people like that.

ML: I think you need to trust your instinct; you have to learn how to do that. So I now follow wherever my whims takes me.

LG: Over the years I’ve heard many people complain about some art teachers, at Yale in particular, who bullied students and would equate problems with their artwork with the student’s moral failure or other means of trying to strip the ego from the student – to rebuild them or something.

Mel Leipzig Oh yes. They were terribly cruel teachers. I mean, Kantor could be cruel. I saw him making fun of students behind their backs. I think, if you’re a teacher–you teach what you know. And everybody has a certain limitation of what they know. They don’t know everything. They may not necessarily be sympathetic but you should really encourage people. You’re supposed to give them something that can last their life.

LG: Right, right. That’s what I liked hearing you say, in one of the videos I saw, where you didn’t want students to paint like you do and instead wanted to help students to find their own voice.

ML: That’s right. Some of my students became very good non-objective painters. Good, that’s what they wanted to do.

Four Painting Students, 32 x 62 inches, 2004, Acrylic on Canvas

LG: Who are some of your students … did Valeri Larko, who paints cityscapes (often with graffiti), study with you?

ML: No, Valeri wasn’t a student … but I did paint Valeri. A favorite student of mine is actually Linda Pochesci. She introduced me to George Nick. She’s a very good painter.

LG: I met her a few times, from a longtime ago.

ML: Did she have long dark hair when you met her?

LG: I believe so. She paints realistic interiors?

ML: That’s right.

Linda’s Studio, 48 x 36 inches, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas

LG: To follow up more on your thoughts on teaching. A lot of students today who want to learn how to paint figuratively are having a hard time because the schools are cutting back or even eliminating on studio practice and instead emphasize art theory.

ML: Oh, I know.

LG: I’m curious what you have to say about that.

ML: I think it’s bullshit. I’m sorry to say that, but most of it is exactly that. I think students should learn how to be vocal, that’s true, but you know, Matisse said, ‘that the first thing an artist should do is cut out his vocal cords.’ It’s ridiculous, they talk all this phony baloney–it’s destroying painting. I have nothing against doing installations. I think all that stuff is good, but we’re in a very decadent period.

LG: So you’re not very hopeful for the future of painting?

ML: You know that saying about how If silk goes out of fashion, it doesn’t stop the silkworm from producing silk. So, what does it matter? There are still artists who want to paint what they see.

LG: I some times think that back in the 50’s and 60’s art students back then were less preoccupied with becoming famous and more concerned about just becoming a good painter. Now it sometimes seems the emphasis is more on how can I leverage myself to get ahead or how can I market myself?

ML: That’s right. Yes.

LG: Anyway, What I wanted to ask you is what makes painting such a joyful experience? I understand that since you retired from teaching and as you get older you’re painting more than ever, still making fantastic paintings.

I’m wondering what you could say about what rewards does painting offer you, other than the money and all that?

ML: I’ll tell you. Painting has saved my life. There’s so much in this life that you cannot control. I lost my wife, it was very hard for me but because I paint I could get through it. Painting is unbelievable in how it can help. I feel that they should teach people, starting in high school, that you should do something that is creative. You don’t have to paint. You can write poems, anything you have a passion for, which is so important for your being. Otherwise, you just stupidly go over and over things in your life. It becomes wasteful. I feel so invigorated after I’ve had a session of painting.

It’s very life-giving. It really is. Creativity is very life giving. Van Gogh would have shot himself a lot earlier had he not been an artist.

LG: It does give us a good reason to live.

ML: Yes. It does.

LG: Not just individually but as a societal level as well.

ML: Yes. It does. And by the way, I taught at a community college, which meant that I had a lot of older students of mine taking classes. People in their nineties, in fact. And let me tell you … One woman, she would come in, she had this thing in her nose, you know, for the oxygen. She’d come in and paint, and she was in her seventh heaven.

They don’t want to become famous. That has nothing to do with it; they just want to do good paintings. It makes them feel terrific.

Self Portrait

Toshiko Takaezu (Triptych), 2010 Acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 120 inches (overall)

Toshiko Takaezu Triptych_panel one, Acrylic on Canvas

Toshiko Takaezu-Triptych pane two, Acrylic on Canvas

Aubrey Kaufman at Mason Gross Galleries, Rutgers State University

Bio From Mel Leipzig.com website

MEL LEIPZIG, born in Brooklyn in 1935, resides in Trenton, N.J. He was a Professor at Mercer County Community College where he taught Painting and Art History until his retirement from teaching in 2013. He has had over 40 one-man shows, including shows at museums, art centers and university galleries in New York City, New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas. He had a Retrospective at the New Jersey State Museum in 1998. In 2009 he was the subject of two exhibitions at the New Jersey State Museum. One, a selection of his paintings completed in the first decade of the new century, “Mel Leipzig, Selected Paintings”, curated by Margaret O’Reilly, Curator of Fine Arts and the second, “Mel Leipzig, The Artist As Curator”, an exhibition of gurative paintings from the collection of the museum, curated by Mel Leipzig.

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His works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in
New York City. In New Jersey his paintings are in the collections of the New Jersey State Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, the Morris Museum, the Noyes Museum, the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers and the Jersey City Museum. In 2003 the American Academy of Arts and Letters purchased his painting, “Bernarda Shahn” and donated it to the Springville Museum of Art in Utah. In Pennsylvania his paintings are in the collections of the Woodmere Art Museum and the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania which purchased his painting “Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown”. In Provincetown, MA his painting “Selena Triff” is in the collection of PAAM, Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

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Leipzig received a Fulbright Grant to Paris (1958-59), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (1959-60), and four grants for painting from the New Jersey Council on the Arts (1982, 1986, 1992, 2002). In 1980 he was the first recipient of the Mercer County Community College Distinguished Teacher Award, Gold Medal and in 1996 was one of the last individual artists to receive a grant in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000 and 2002 he received awards for his paintings from the National Academy, NYC.

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He studied at The Cooper Union (3 year certificate) under Sidney Delevante, Stefano Cusumano, Nicholas Marsicano, Morris Kantor, Will Barnet and Neil Welliver (1953-56), Yale University, School of Art & Architecture (B.F.A.) under Josef Albers and James Brooks (1956-58) and Pratt Institute (M.F.A.) under Nan Benedict, Ralph Wickiser and George McNeill (1970-72).

He is one of the seven painters included in the book SELECTED CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FIGURATIVE PAINTERS, published in 2010 by the Tianjin People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, edited by Qimin Liu, the purpose of which is to introduce contemporary American realist painting to China.

In 2006 Mel Leipzig was elected to the National Academy.
In 2011 NJN, New Jersey Network, produced a half hour program, 3 years in the making, called “Mel Leipzig:Everything Is Paintable”.

He is represented by Gallery Henoch in NYC.
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