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When was this piece created? August 2021 – February 2022

What is the story behind this piece? I was painting on a construction site last autumn, which gave me leave to truly experiment. Indeed. The base layers of this piece are a raucus array of line-work, colors dripping and splashing, spray paint, and lettering.

I have been, for a long time, working on the ‘problem’ of how to incorporate words or the ‘gestures of writing’ into my work. Ideas and language are a compelling part of my process, but conveying these without contrivance in a painting is difficult – perhaps because a certain disconnection occurs for me between the bodied act and conceptualizing/articulating in words. Part of the ‘problem’ I’m playing with is why word/written forms feel essential to include in my paintings, (much of the time). To this end I’ve been exploring recent brain research, (currently “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” by Iain McGilchrist).

I often feel ‘of two minds’ and nothing provokes this for me like the act of painting. The resolution that I found in ‘UnPaid Labor’ was to articulate questions, as they came to me. Eventually, “I beg the Question” was the only question that felt relevant, poignant, and open enough to take the time to incorporate and repeat on a substrate. So I did.

The below could all be considered provocation for what came next:

I was focused on a study of texture and liked to incorporate things from my actual landscape.

I am a constant drinker of tea and don’t like creating trash.

I love the sense of things as ephemeral, transparent, and elemental.

I love a sense of dynamic movement, (because that’s the pace of my thoughts?)

And then there are images imprinted upon my mind that tend to repeat themselves. One I relate to a time in Mexico City, looking up at an old building with hundreds of laundry lines draped across/between and the clothing moving in the breeze. Laundry lines, of course, have their own connotation, (depending upon who you are). I love the movement of wind and of the fabric in it and had been sketching little motif images to represent this. I love line. Simple, directional, and clear.

The application of said tea bags brought to mind the contemplative/repetitive acts of domestic labor, especially, i think because I’ve just finished reading De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It felt like hanging laundry in a way. I thought a lot about how it has taken most of my adult life to be able to comprehend why women bring attention to the ‘unpaid labor’ that is ‘women’s work’. To my mind, despite my education, childcare and domestic duties were simply not something one receives pay for, (not important enough? not requiring an education? and apparently (to me, childless, and regularly avoiding domestic doings at most costs) not worth doing unless you have no choice?). It took a really long time for me to understand the implications of that thinking.

Finally, the unprecedented revelation of just how unsustainable ‘middle class’ life is becoming for so many people. The hypocrisy of the reality of ‘essential workers’ (including domestic and teachers) who are over-looked, underpaid, undervalued, abused, and often treated as disposable. I looked up the Boston tea party just for the hell of it, because, you know, here I am in Massachusetts hanging teabags…and was floored by an article that is so evocative of and symbolic of current tensions/issues. So essentially, this painting felt like a revelatory process.

What inspired this piece? I believe in allowing the work to speak, to cultivating as much intuitive responsiveness as possible rather than cogitating a reason or brainchild and then working to articulate that. As such, I am usually in the mature stages of a painting before I begin to consider that it is ‘about’ any specific concept.

This allows me to make connections that I would not have otherwise – new associations from within myself that I could not have articulated before.

That being said, I can look back through the process and note that I was reading Simone De Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’. I was listening to a wide range of thinkers speak about the current political and social situation. I was working and living in a construction site. I was keeping tabs on the movements of the moon and inner planets as is my wont. And I was cultivating ‘Big and Irreverent’ in my practice: both in body and in mind.

Is there an outside element that influenced this piece (i.e. another artist, nature, a novel, a theory, etc)?

The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvoir

The Boston Tea Party

The tea sent to the colonies was to be carried only in East India Company ships and sold only through its own agents, bypassing the independent colonial shippers and merchants. The company thus could sell the tea at a less-than-usual price in either America or Britain; it could undersell anyone else. The perception of monopoly drove normally conservative colonial merchants into an alliance with radicals led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of about 60 men, encouraged by a large crowd of Bostonians…marched to Griffin’s Wharf, boarded the ships, and dumped the tea chests, valued at £18,000, into the water. The Americans were protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and the monopoly of the East India Company. In retaliation, Parliament passed the series of punitive measures known in the colonies as the ‘Intolerable Acts’ including the Boston Port Bill, which shut off the city’s sea trade pending payment for the destroyed tea. The British government’s efforts to single out Massachusetts for punishment served only to unite the colonies and impel the drift toward war… https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Tea-Party

Explain/Tell us anything else you would like us to know about this specific work: I was quite surprised and pleased that such a distinct ‘statement’ emerged from one of my pieces, without contrivance – without trying to ‘say something’. This is the way it must be for me, for I distrust my own agenda and my own small-mindedness when it comes to ‘political’ (what is not political?) or otherwise provocative issues. I would like to allow more such clear ideas to make themselves apparent through my work as this year unfolds.

Explain/Tell us anything else you would like us to know about this specific work. UnPAID LABORDEDICATED TO WOMEN.TO ARTISTS. & TO ESSENTIAL WORKERS EVERYWHERE. And to all who contribute significant portions of their income to taxes whilst billionaires, (who often don’t pay taxes at all) decide what to do with the money. To acknowledge the independent and local businesses sacrificed to mega-corporations who can afford to undersell, exploit workers (and/or take jobs overseas to exploit foreign workers whilst immigrants are blamed for job shortages amidst a labor shortage) pollute our landscapes, dull and homogenize our standards and seed a pandemic of rampant materialism rooted in disempowerment, insecurity and scarcity.

What is one of your artistic goals? My current and the ongoing artistic goal is to learn how to surrender myself to play and experimentation and the radical research of attention and states of mind, AS THEY ARE. This winter season I was exploring the archetype of The Fool. This arcanum represents a surrender, an abandonment of the rational, the critical and the negative. It represents a surrender to trust – of one’s deep instinctive intelligence and to vulnerability.

Do you have any shows coming up? I have 20 paintings currently on display at “Public Eat/Drink” in North Adams, MA. Come have some refreshment after your visit to MassMOCA!

Regan Halas

My life as an engaged artist dates to 2002 with various site-specific and experimental installations, readings, collaborations, directorial photo shoots, pop-up concerts, shows, performances, and projects. These events often ‘happened’ in squats or live-work studios outside of established institutions and venues. My haphazard ‘education’ includes deep dives into the martial arts/contemplative movement, philosophy, poetics, music, meditation, and ritual studies.

I cannot, but through my work, convey the years of extensive and rigorous study, practice, and engagement as an Interdisciplinary Artist striving to understand and embody the creative mind. I live a life devoted to inquiry, practice, and articulation: Essentially, the deconstruction of artificial walls that seem to divide art and life, and the acknowledgment that art is a vital yet currently, largely under-tapped source of life and fulfillment for humanity.

Website: http://unsungstudio.net

Instagram: @UnSung_Studio

Facebook: Regan Halas