@petercusackstudio
An aspire Exclusive Interview With Peter Cusack
Peter Cusack is anartist, editor, and curator. He is the founder of COCOA: The Journal of Cornwall Contemporary Art and has degrees from Syracuse University and Ecole Albert Dufois in France. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of American Illustration, the New York Transit Museum, and the United States Air Force. His work has also appeared inArchitectural Digest, An Illustrated Life, andDrawing Inspiration: Visual Artists At Work. See these impressive art pieces and get to know Peter in today’s Maker Monday.
Andrew Joseph: Can you describe a project that you’re particularly proud of?
Peter Cusack:I recently collaborated with a prominent New York curator and gallerist, Melanie Courbet, Founder of Les Ateliers Courbet, on a commission for three large-scale figurative paintings to decorate her Paris Salon and Tribeca Apartment. What made this project so unique and satisfying was that it stemmed from a series of very personal paintings I created in my studio during a difficult and extended period of transition and isolation in my life. These paintings explored a low-key and haunting color palette, figures in isolation, and shadowy ambiguity. The creative process involved looking inward, and initially, the group of paintings was meant only for my own catharsis. Therefore, I was surprised and delighted when the work began to catch the eye of Courbet on Instagram and eventually led to this commission.
The challenge and opportunity of the commission lay in figuring out how to recreate and harness the very personal aspects of the original series while incorporating the wishes of my client. Over a six-month period, I painted 13 large-scale studies or “practice paintings” that played with scale, composition, and gesture. This process allowed me to warm up to executing the final pieces and, at the same time, create a dialogue with my client to understand what would make the final pieces successful in her eyes.
This commission has added so much to my professional practice in that it gave me a chance to integrate aspects of my creativity that I would normally have kept private. It also provided me with the opportunity to see incidental studio work as seeds that could be nurtured into full-blown pieces appropriate for a professional arena.
AJ: Can you describe a project where you had to work with a specific theme or motif?
PC:“A Letter to Zola” was an exhibition I painted in 2021, in which I imagined the canvas as a space for “correspondence.” The title of the show refers to the famous correspondence between Emile Zola and Paul Cézanne, which has been published in a book that sits in my studio. In the letters, the two artists talk about their lives, their work, memories they shared as youths, and their great respect and connection to nature.
Thinking of the canvas as a space to compose a personal visual letter, I imagined myself taking part in the dialogue between Paul and Emile. I expressed to them my thoughts on nature, 19th-century painting techniques, childhood, philosophy, and modernist doctrine. The notion of “correspondence” allowed me to work on multiple themes while staying within the framework of a historical conversation. While building the show, I found commonality between the contemporary world I live in and the pre-industrial world Cézanne and Zola lived in. This relationship sustained my fascination and allowed me to intersect with nostalgia and the contemporary.
AJ: Can you tell us about a design trend you are excited about?
PC:I’ve noticed many people traveling to Japan and bringing back new ways of looking at the world. They’re inspired by the thoughtful simplicity and organization that permeates Japanese culture. So, I’m excited by a trend in home design and architecture that takes cues from Japanese aesthetics—simple, voluminous spaces; quiet, tonal color palettes; reflections of nature; a soft minimal footprint on the ecosystem; craftsmanship; light; and functionality. I’m also increasingly aware of people reconsidering the need for a large home. Freedom from the demands of a large home seems to be attractive. Both are good signs for our future, I think. Culturally, it seems like we are asking more and more about what the soul really needs—balance, sustainability, presence, nature, peace, and health.
AJ: What’s your favorite cocktail?
PC:I only drink distilled alcohol. I don’t like to add anything with sugar, which I’ve given up. So, I stick to clean, simple drinks like vodka and soda with two limes or a good whisky either neat or with a few ice cubes.
AJ: What is your favorite place to find inspiration?
PC:I split my time between the country and the city. In the city, to find inspiration, I go to the Greek and Roman Sculpture Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Surrounded by these physical expressions of ancient humanity, monumentality, and classical thought ground me. Drawing the space and sculptures feels like I’m rewiring or reprogramming my scattered mind. In the country, I find inspiration by swimming in a local secret ravine, which I hike to with a friend. There, the experience is similar in that I’m surrounding my body with ancient nature. Old, mossy stones that seem to possess stoic wisdom and clear, fast-running water that purifies. All of this I bring back to the studio to reflect on through my work.
AJ: What was the last book you read and how did it inspire you?
PC:I recently finished a book called “The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams” by Sidarta Ribeiro. It explores the life we live during sleep and the neurological maintenance that affects our conscious lives. Before reading this book, I simply felt that while sleeping, my life was on “pause”. Not true. While reading “The Oracle of Night”, I had the chance to keep a dream diary and learned how to understand my dreams as a map of my life, giving me such a valuable perspective. So much creativity is liberated during sleep, and having a better connection to my dream life makes me feel less isolated from a powerful creative source. Dreams are like stars; they’re always there but only come out at night.
Artist Statement |My work is not usually about issues. It’s about people. But I’m not able to keep the wars out of my studio, nor the toxic political unrest, nor the various global humanitarian crises, nor the thought that the climate could be in the process of collapsing, nor the digital dependency that most of us suffer under. My paintings are not bombastic but whispers like one lover does to another. “I’m concerned.” “I know.
Individually my paintings are about memory and loss, the phenomenology of road repair, and the endurance of artifact. Like literature, I’m telling (suggesting) stories about life and meaning.