“What is my inner landscape?” An Interview with Zoë Welsh
Zoë Welsh in her studio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Zoe Welsh: I’m a mixed-media painter. My practice starts with movement where I’m building painting stretchers. I like working on large paintings. Stretching canvas is like stretching skin over a skeleton. I’m creating this thing. It feels less like an object and more like a spaciousness you get to step into.
I use a lot of newsprint paper—the cheap stuff—as a structural element, the scaffolding of the painting. Years ago I began actively tearing up paintings and drawings I’d done on paper and placing them back onto a canvas to create new images. These paintings always come from a physical place; there's all this reaching and pulling. I walk around the canvas on the floor and pour transparent color over the strips of paper.
I love tearing and pasting. The torn edge of the paper creates its own terrain and surprise imagery emerges. A lot of the work has a landscape feel to it. From there, it's about building up many layers of transparent color that are framed by some kind of window imagery.
Night Thicket, 23” x 23”, newsprint, ink and oil on canvas, 2022.
Space On Space: Does collecting play a role within your work?
ZW: This is a relatively new practice of mine where I create ink paintings on paper that I collect in my studio. Then, I rip them up and rearrange them as a collage on canvas. I make a painting out of a collection of different vantage points making a new space on the canvas.
I imagine the mind/body connection, as a landscape space. I look at my collection of images I've built up over time—the ones that resonate with me—and set those aside to tear up later. The work represents where I am physically, mentally, and spiritually. There's a relationship between observation of the natural world and the imagination of my inner workings.
SOS: How is art therapy incorporated into your practice?
ZW: I recently finished my master’s in art therapy. The work I do in my clinical training is separate from my private practice as a visual artist, but it fuels the energy I bring into my work with clients. It’s coming from an ongoing curiosity with how consistent, creative self expression through the visual arts can help regulate our emotions and act as a tool to bring us back into our bodies. It’s a practice of self-care to ask myself, “What is my inner landscape today?”
I love the metaphors that come from the natural world. That's an easy place for me to envision where I'm at. This strengthens my understanding of what it is I need, and what's going on with me.
Art therapy has been most meaningful to me from a personal standpoint before I even began studying it from a clinical perspective. My paintings tell me about areas in my life that have a deficit, something I'm longing for, or change that needs to happen. As I continue to work with clients, I need to maintain this practice as my own self-care.
SOS: “What is my inner landscape today?” Please talk more about this concept and how your work is translating mental space into symbolic landscape.
ZW: I immediately think of a prompt that art therapists use. We’ll ask the client to envision a storm they've been experiencing in their emotional life. It can start with a client expressing, “I've felt sad.” That can be represented by a rainy day, or something more nuanced, like imagining elements within nature—air, wind, water, rock, soil—arranged to create a space that enhances your understanding of your inner life.
For me, it might look like a desert place, but maybe I don't know what the desert looks like. I might ask myself, “What's the path I’m on right now? Is it leading somewhere? Is it a dead end? What's around me? Is it completely open? Is there spaciousness? Am I in a confined space? Is it a laborious environment? Is it easy to navigate? What do I even need at this moment?”
Zoë Welsh working in her studio.
Deep Water, Resting Storm, 84” x 84”, newsprint, ink, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2023.
SOS: You mentioned windows appearing in your work. Why windows?
ZW: When I first started using the window, or really just the square as a tool in my work, I didn't know what it meant. I was like, “Is this just because I love Joseph Albers?” I do love Joseph Albers. Color is a huge part of the work. I think the window represents a liminality that's happening within a painting. It's a threshold, or a space I'm entering emotionally, physically, spiritually, or sometimes all three in the same work.
The window space can be something that hasn't happened to me yet; it’s something that I'm longing for or desire. When I describe this window, I'm talking about these screens of transparent color that lead the eye towards the focal point of the painting. It's a way for me to say, “I am stepping into exploring grief in this painting,” or “I am stepping into my desire for this thing to change,” or, “I know something is changing in me right now, and I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way.” Paintings, to me, are evidence of transition.
Zoë Welsh working in her studio.
SOS: Can you speak to the scale of your paintings?
ZW: People who visit my studio are like, “Wow! You have this series of extremely miniature paintings, and then these giant paintings that are larger than life.” Large paintings require me to involve my whole body. I feel most moved by art when it gives me an embodied experience that downplays my cognitive self. That's what I need from art. It's not what everyone needs from art, but it’s something I love. When I look at smaller works, I read them cognitively, or pick them apart in a way. Big paintings hold space, take over the environment; you become one with them. You get to be in them, instead of just looking at them.
SOS: There’s something commanding about your bigger paintings. It's like facing a mountain.
ZW: In art history, we think about the big paintings coming from the AbEx movement, and all the masculine painter energy. Sometimes I work in an aggressive way. I wonder if people think, “What's happening with this woman making these giant paintings? Is it just her ego?” I think that's one of my biggest fears about the work. I need to feel like I can take up space in a way that is nurturing to me.
Edge of Rest, 48” x 60”, newsprint, ink, and oil on canvas. 2023.
SOS: It's an important space that you're making for others to process emotions. However the viewer experiences your work is valid, but when I experience them, they feel commanding, in a good way. What are you currently working on?
ZW: I recently finished a couple of pieces for a show. A lot of the work is centered around studying what rest means, and stripping away the perfectionistic self. I’m entering into new imagery about abundance, lush places, and soft edges.
The largest painting in the show is titled Edge of Rest. I'm tiptoeing around the edge of being okay with rest. This piece includes drawings from a trip I took two years ago at the National Grasslands in Colorado. It's a giant open space, and there’s basically nothing there. There is one beautiful desert trail I walked. I made a ton of sketches of this place, desiring to be in that openness, to have enough nothingness.
Another painting in the show is called Forbidden Garden. It's lipstick pink, and red tones—colors I don't normally paint in—it’s a stereotypical femininity I haven’t explored. I am constantly in my cognitive, academic brain—losing touch with the sensual nature of being in a feminine body—this painting feels really central.
I've transitioned out of working on mountainous paintings that represent a sense of climbing, barrenness, and labor into imagery that represents more sensuousness, the body, and really juicy colors. Previously, this imagery has felt off-limits to me. It’s playful in a way. I'm leaning into parts of myself that haven’t had a chance to express themselves over the past couple of years.
Otherwise, I’m trying to balance clinical work, my work as a painter, and other life stuff, like being pregnant. Right now I’m exploring, “What is it like to be in a nurturing body that accepts rest, loves rest, and believes that rest is good?”
SOS: Anything else you'd like to share?
ZW: A huge part of my painting practice is that it's a spiritual act of devotion. In my faith tradition, people generally don't paint as a way of prayer. I use imagery as a tool to help see myself on a path with the divine. Painting is a time for me to ask, “Where are we? Show me where we are.” I’m meditating on this and making internal spaces come to life.
Forbidden Garden, 30” x 40”, newsprint, ink and oil on canvas, 2023.
Zoë Welsh was born in Wilkinsburg, PA and received her BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 2016. She currently works out of Radiant Hall Studios in Pittsburgh, PA. Zoë creates mixed media paintings based on her interest in translating mental space into symbolic landscape.
