MD: I have been wanting to explore minimalism
more. Before you came over I was reading some things I have been writing about
my practice. These systems of my studio are very similar to what they have been
in the past. I have been developing this process for 12 to 14 years now, but it’s
getting so now that I am refining it. It feels like it is finally landing.
AB: What is your source material like?
MD: My source material is wide and varied, it’s
everything from botany to fashion, to astronomy to art history to all of this
visual information in the digital, visual and printed world. Twyla Tharpe says,
“Everything is source material.” That’s
my process in a nutshell. 5 or 6 years
ago I had this blog called “Accordion File”, it was called Accordion File
because the images came from these physical accordion files that I keep. Then Instagram
happened, which is basically my ‘Accordion File’ now.
AB: So it was a process blog?
MD: Yes, exactly. This is my most current
physical accordion file, it has various images I find, things I get in the
mail….
AB: Anything that strikes you?
MD: Yes, so this one I’ve been adding imagery
over the last few years to yesterday. You can just see my work in these. I
could sift through everyone and tell you why. This one of the hot air balloon,
for example, is something I have been looking at for years. I think it was in
the New Yorker. It looks to me like it fell. This head like shape is something
that I am really comforted by, I draw it all the time. I also look at a lot of
photography, compositionally. I will borrow compositions from photographs. That
photograph in that Huger Foote show of the Zippin Pippin, I’m appropriating
that. So this image is still in this realm of ‘I don’t know why I’m looking at
yet’.
AB: So do you pull these images out when you
are stuck or just whenever you are working?
MD: No, this is just a constant process of
looking, if I’m jamming or if I’m stuck. If I’m stuck then I’m constantly
flipping through.
AB: This resonates with me so much because I
like to think of the process of trying to figure out a painting as a puzzle.
You have all these clues around you, you have to gather the clues and sometimes
it seems like the universe will present a clue, it’s your job as an artist
to put that together. I do the same thing except I do it digitally. I use
Evernote and drag images that I find into folders. I have hundreds of notes
just like this.
MD: I do like the digital and I do use it but I
still feel like I have to have both because I like the tactile quality. This
one right here has been in my accordion file for years. I mean I could make 10
paintings of this. Sometimes I think, “I should make 10 paintings of this, have
a show, let this be a body of work and then have another show based on some
other thread in the accordion file”, but that’s just not how I work.
AB: Yeah, things shift, you get tired of it, it
changes.
MD: Yes, things rise and fall. I am trying to
embrace my process of doing one painting or drawing one way and then doing the
next one really different. I’m trying to
not to judge myself so harshly. I mean it doesn’t fit the ‘professional
practice’ method of “do a body of work, name it, do another body of work . . .”
AB: It doesn’t work like that for everyone.
MD: It doesn’t. I sometimes think I could keep
filtering the world through my way of abstraction for the rest of my life, like
I have in me five hundred more paintings of a continuous body of work. I like
to keep copies of older paintings, just to flip through. For example, lately red,
white and blue are colors I’ve been thinking about a lot the last few years, using
them in a pop way, not a patriotic way. My struggle right now is being kinder
to myself about my process. Accordion file is the big overarching idea of
source material, of where it lands, it shuffles and it rises and it falls.
Sometimes I make copies of accordion file images and then make collages from
those.
AB: So now instead of having a blog showcasing
these visuals, you put these on Instagram?
MD: Yea so now I consider my Instagram feed to
be “Accordion File”, but the thing I miss about having the blog is that I wrote
as well. I like writing about how my
source material lands, even if I’m the only person who reads it. Talking about it really makes me want to
start doing the whole studio blog again.
AB: I think that is a great idea, all of these
images are so important to how you arrive at your work.
MD: That’s the thing about my work, there are
variations, the paintings are different, but what is the connective tissue? The
connective tissue is all this behind the scenes stuff – the collation of source
material, drawing, collage, etc. I do feel that there is a continuity behind my
work, undoubtedly.
AB: Absolutely.
MD: I feel like this painting ended up being a
portrait of my studio. I mean look at the color scheme, all the blue and
browns. It’s basically an extension of my studio, of the real physical
space.
MD: I know, I’ve been playing with that too,
how things change and what happens if you move it and push it in space.
This painting is not done, this painting is about halfway through. All these
drawing marks, I want more of that and less of the painting. I want those marks in the illusion of paint. I
put unfinished pieces up and look at them for a long time.
AB: And you also hide paintings from yourself?
MD: Yea I do that too. These are some
watercolors I have been doing to work out some ideas.
AB: This dark mark at the bottom is so
strange.
MD: Yea that is something I look for in my
work, for there to be an uncomfortableness, I like there to be some dissonance.
AB: Do you consider these finished pieces?
MD: Yea, some of them. I’ll show you my
drawings, because I have different levels of drawings. I mean I have a sketch book in my purse, a
bigger sketch book, drawings that are sketches on big pieces of paper, and then
plenty that are finished ‘works on paper’ that I consider to be finished
pieces. (Sifting through images in the Accordion File) I also use the
combination drawing and source material as a way to develop what I call ‘trains
of thought’. So this painting, for example, was in a show last year at L Ross
Gallery and it was the hit of the show. I got this book from the Brooks, its on
interior decoration and this is a rug from the 20’s. I love this pattern. I
have done so many drawings about this pattern. I am really interested in
imagery that has a lot of information and a lot of breathing room. 
AB: Yea it is so simple, yet so complicated, it looks like a loose drawing.
MD: I know and I love the color, I love all of
it. So I did a tracing of it then I put it in this painting. This painting is
really just about pure formalism. I am still wrestling with this painting and I
may for the rest of my life. I think about these things a lot, repetition, continuum's, years of making, having a studio for 10 versus 20 years…it is all
rising up. What does it mean to make a lifetime of work? I’m also thinking a
lot about three dimensionalities and wondering what kind of material would lend
itself to making this painting in 3D? Maybe that will be what I do in my 60’s
(laughs).
AB: Is this a bag?
MD: This is a barf bag from an airplane in the
sixties.
AB: It’s beautiful, it looks like a piece of
art.
MD: I know, industrial design has just gone down the tubes. I love stripes. I am always thinking about different kinds of stripes. I mean, truly, I could just paint stripes all the time. Agnes Martin, I bow at her alter. My new favorite tool is art center’s sign painter brush because it gets such great lines. So this is a drawing I did in 1999.
AB: Wow, it is so strange how things resurface
in our work.
MD: The subconscious mind is a powerful thing.
I really think about that a lot and where I am on that trajectory. I think that
this is where artists can get confused is when they don’t let this process of
discovery happen. If you don’t work on the side of things, do lots of playing
in the sandbox, then making can be stifling. I feel like the Accordion File is
my research and development.
AB: You are gathering information.
MD: I am gathering information, creating a
theory that turns into a train of thought. Are you familiar with Leigh Bowery?
He is a performance artist
AB: Again with the head.
MD: I know, I love the figure. I did some self
portraits recently because I was teaching that at Flicker Street. I have also
been categorizing collages. These are collages for paintings. It’s that
red white and blue again. This is a piece where again I got out of my comfort
zone and started using those colors you aren’t supposed to use together.
AB: I don’t think there are any rules like that
anymore.
MD: Yea I guess I mean my own personal rules.
This was based on a book I have on Vogue covers from the 20’s. This one has the
head shape again. It is just looking at things in a different way. I do play
with Photoshop a little bit but I get bored on the computer really fast. This
is a project sketchbook that I did a few years ago that I am still thinking
about. The Rozelle Artist Guild did this sketchbook project where everybody got
this tiny sketchbook and could do whatever they wanted to do with it and then
for the show. At the show, all of
these hung from the ceiling at equal height. It was totally democratic. I liked making these drawings because it
forced me to do something within different parameters than I am used to. I
can’t tell you how many times I get stuck and look through this book. 
AB: These images are great. They remind me of Amy Sillman, yet they are minimal.
MD: I love Amy Sillman. My summer vacation is
to go to the mecca of minimalism in New York – Dia Beacon. I want to absorb that courage because
minimalism is where I feel my work is going …I want to show you this.
It was in my early 20’s when I really started
developing my taste and it is still the same. There are like 5 things that I
want to spend my life thinking about, one thing is I want to study how this
Ellsworth Kelly painting and this Joan Mitchell work, both of which I
discovered as a young artist. How are they related? This Ellsworth Kelly is really my comfort zone though.
AB: Even though it is so minimal?
MD: Well, it’s the hard edge.
AB: Is it expression and looseness that makes
you uncomfortable?
MD: It’s the mark making, I can do it but this
is the part of me that I would like to lean in harder. It is hard for me to
make expressive marks. That’s why I do things like making expressive circular
marks over and over again before making them in a painting. Another
life-long thing I’m working on, pulling drawing marks into my paintings. 
AB: That’s interesting because this is a
perfectly married image of these two, expressive marks and hard edge. Now that
you say that I see your struggle with that in all of these paintings. It seems
like you are slowly letting go of it. However, in some of your earlier
work, on your website, there are paintings that are pretty expressive and
loose.
MD: It’s almost like I kind have gotten tighter
as I go. I am still learning from this little Rozelle sketchbook. Its like saying,
what is your teacher now, who are your teachers? Sometimes you are the teacher
and sometimes you are the student. Being aware of what informs you. I feel like
all the answers are in my studio though, they are hidden in all these things. 
AB: It’s like a puzzle and you have to put the
puzzle together.
MD: Yea and you have to be in a good frame of
mind to do that. I paint but I really think of myself as a multimedia artist
because I look and think about so many different things. I am excited to
lean into that in the coming years and wonder what my sculptures will look
like.
AB: It is exciting to be planning for that and
feel comfortable with those changes.
MD: Yea because it is not always
comfortable.
AB: Yea it won’t be. I think the most exciting
work is when you get a sense that someone is truly following their intuition
without worrying about what anybody else thinks.
MD: I know intellectually there are no rules
but I am always creating rules for myself and I am just trying to slowly, over
time, break those down and just do what I want.
AB: I feel like that’s what we are all trying
to do. However, I think it can be good to create parameters for ourselves. I
mean we have to do that to an extent, if we don’t it is so easy to quickly become
paralyzed because then your options become too limitless.
MD: It’s like you want parameters that can be
breathable and moveable and not too fixed.
AB: Yes.
MD: That’s where the idea of space comes into
my work. I want a mental space, an interior space. I do a lot of work to create
an interior space so that I can have the space to make work that is more free.
When people see my work I want them to get lost in that non-verbal place where
constriction doesn’t exist. We as artists are often asked what is your work
about.
AB: I hate that question.
MD: I hate it too. It’s especially hard for me
because I don’t exactly know what it’s about. I’m thinking a lot about how it
makes me feel out in the world. I recently went to visit a friend in Asheville.
I walked in and on his mantel he had a painting of mine tucked in-between all these
little treasures. It made me so excited to see my work in someone else’s stuff,
just gathered around it, it wasn’t’ like this precious painting on the wall by
itself. It made me feel so connected to this human being in a way that is
completely non-verbal.
AB: It’s a piece of you and your time wading
through all of these clues that you have gathered.
MD: That are just essentially formal visual
elements juxtaposed in a certain way. 
AB: Very formal and something that someone else
would see and maybe not think twice about, a scrap of color or an old ad. They
become so personal and intimate to you and it goes into the work. Then you are
confronted with a piece of you that becomes their everyday life.
MD: Yea and resisting self doubt, I wonder does
the world need another pink circle on a white background? Well, it needs
mine.
AB: I think there’s something to that. When I got out of school I felt so tired of defending what my work is about because I hate that question so much. I will often avoid telling someone that I am a painter because I know that question is the next thing. I like the idea of unapologetically making formalist work.
MD: I like the idea of unapologetically making
anything.
