Great Art Explained (aka James Payne)

Artist Matthew Lusk talks with Carrie Scott about art practice, community, and the American dream - and how getting diagnosed with ADHD changed everything about how he sees himself as a maker. Matthew is a sculptor, painter, installer, and builder working across media. He's spent the last few years reviving the Goudy Wildlife Club in Newburgh, New York, and building Winter Ours - a makeshift community center born during the pandemic. He's obsessed with questions about belonging, resistance, and why creative practice is an antidote to disconnection.

Artist Ben Mazey was seven years into a career as design director at Kenzo in Paris when the pandemic hit. Stranded in Sydney with an empty apartment and an at-home clay kit, he decided to pretend he was on a self-directed artist residency. He never really stopped. In this episode, Carrie Scott talks with the ceramic artist about his unlikely path from fashion to sculpture, and the deceptively simple rules that shape his practice: a 20-by-50-centimeter rectangle of clay, manipulated just five ways. Ben explains why he's drawn to text pieces that twist familiar phrases into gut-punch questions like "How will you know when you're dead?", and why he thinks his own mortality—and the loss of his mother—has made him a more joyful person, not a darker one. They talk about the seduction of gold and delft blue, the freedom of being "creatively selfish," why niceness isn't a liability in art, and what he calls "empowered apathy." Also: a gold tooth makes an appearance. This is a conversation about starting over, making rules just to break them, and why the best art might come from not needing to solve the riddle.

This week, we're visiting artist Chloe Wise in her Manhattan studio. In this episode: the shift from painting a specific person to painting an archetypal woman, the biological necessity of laughter, the problem with calling women's success an Instagram story, and what Chloe made in 2019 that accidentally predicted the pandemic. It's a conversation about humor, vulnerability, the reverse ready-made, and why the best art might just be the stuff that evades description. Carrie's verdict at the end: she still doesn't fully understand Chloe's work. But that might be entirely the point. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Seen podcast. Liked what you heard? Get early access to these episodes and a ton of other great art content by becoming a member of Seen at seen.art. Join our newsletter:⁠⁠⁠ https://www.seen.art/memberships#newsletter Connect with us between episodes on Instagram:⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/watchseenart⁠⁠⁠.

Carrie first encountered Suzannah Sinclair's work twenty-some odd years ago - Playboy pinups painted on wood, seductive and complicated and genuinely risky - and put her work in a show about women looking at women. Then they lost touch. This episode is the final part of their reunion. Suzannah is a painter's painter who built a real career in New York and Boston before leaving it all for rural Maine, two kids, and a ten-by-twelve studio. She's had gallery representation and lost it. She's been in Artforum and New American Paintings and the Swedish press. She made $127 last year. She has never stopped painting. In this second part of their conversation, Suzannah talks about where the Playboy paintings actually came from (a professor who challenged her to prove she could draw), why she eventually walked away from them, what happened to her career after she had children, the question she got asked constantly that she's still not over (do you still paint?), her egg tempera practice, her publishing imprint Sinclair's Garage, and what it means to be a mid-career artist who is, in her words, ready for rediscovery. Honest, funny, and completely unfiltered. This is what a twenty-year art career actually looks like.

Twenty years ago, Suzannah Sinclair was one of the most talked-about young painters around - making seductive, complicated paintings of Playboy pinups on wood that had the art world paying attention. Then she left New York, moved deep into rural Maine, had children, lost her gallery representation, and largely disappeared from the conversation. But she never stopped painting. In this two-part conversation, Carrie catches up with Suzannah after two decades — talking about the early work and why it started with a pile of her friend's brothers' Playboys, the galleries that closed, the years of silence, what it feels like to be asked over and over if you still make work, and where she is now: painting small luminous egg tempera pieces of her own life, running an artist book publishing imprint called Sinclair's Garage, and ready - very ready - for rediscovery. This is an honest conversation about what a twenty-year career actually looks like. Not the highlight reel. The whole thing. Explore Suzannah's work: https://suzannahsinclair.com/home.html Join our free art newsletter:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/seen/waitlist⁠ If you want to connect with us between episodes, follow us on Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/watchseenart⁠ About the Have You Seen? series: The ⁠Have You Seen? Series⁠ is all about talking to emerging and mid-career artists about their journey to now. Curious about how an artist got to where they are or indeed why they chose art in the first place? Then this series is for you. Join us as we speak to emerging and mid-career artists across the globe. Don’t worry, there’s no hiding behind art speak here, or pretending that being an artist is a bowl of cherries. We’re here to hear it all, straight from the source.