Challenging traditional ideas about landscape art, Carolyn Meyer describes her process when she is creating her pieces as a push and pull, scrap and smash, throw and remove paint. Considering her daily commute as “her muse,” she uses photographs that she impulsively takes from her car window as a foundation to create abstract, chimerical illusions where the usual frustration, noise and exhaustion due to traffic seem to dissipate. As the Associate Director of  the School of Fine Arts at the San Francisco Academy of Art where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Fine Arts, Carolyn discusses her teaching goals and methods, explaining the importance of having art teachers who are also practicing professional artists contending with the constraints of the art market.

You began your career as an art director for an advertising agency in San Francisco, why did you leave this job and how did your work there differ from the work you are doing now?

How fantastic that my career began with advertising! I was determined to get a job in adverting and got lucky because I wasn’t really very good. How could I be? I was 21, had rent to pay. After scores of interviews, I was finally at the right place at the right time. But here’s the clincher – I worked on accounts that took me outside of the office and that was the best part of working in those days. Outside. San Francisco is the most beautiful city in the world when you have a job. Fast-forward to today and I feel the same exhilaration for this magnificent city.

The business of adverting is selling and the art aspect was not important enough to me as painting is. When you create your own work you feel a deep satisfaction of creating without the need of an approval committee. I love teaching art students to learn how to be able to do this.

What inspired you to become an artist and what lead you to oil painting?

Becoming an artist feels like some personal approval rating when you are a child. This rating is the exploration of making something out of nothing and is addictive especially when you have family that offers encouragement like mine. Mind you, none of them were artists but they were thoughtful enough to buy me crayons, paper and pat me on the head.

From my earliest memories, I recall being outside. I grew up in the desert of Arizona with big horizons, sunsets and this created a need to be around water, which partly explains my love for living in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco.  In school, I would draw the desert landscapes and images from the Mexico. My mother could identify every plant and rock so I learned early on about how distinct everything was.

I was around 9 or 10 when I was given an oil painting kit in a wooden box. I began to study each bit and piece of what was in this wonderful box. I opened up small tubes of colored goo, ran my fingers over the small palette, held the tiny brushes like magic wands and then came the big deal. Oh yes, the lovely thick yellowy liquid in a glass bottle. Linseed oil. Even today, I can clearly remember the smell like a perfume for this special world I was beginning to discover and it would last a lifetime.

As the years went on I used oils and other supplies. By the 1980’s I was using oil paint exclusively and found the more paint I used the better my painting intention was made real.

Did you have any fears about becoming an artist? Was this something your family supported?

I got into adverting thanks in part to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where I have worked for the last 16 years. Since I did not come from an artistic family, I came to the Academy for an education and advice. With the help of their good advisors, I decided to focus my creativity where I thought I would be able to get a job. I didn’t see how art galleries were a viable way of making a living at that time. So I majored in Advertising but took as many painting classes as I could.

How did you become interested in combining traditional techniques including impressionist styles with modern subject matter?

Something about the isolation of growing up in a remote area made me visually hungry for art. From books, I had the history but nothing about the current art market came my way. When I moved to San Francisco at 18, I practically lived at the SFMoMA. I fell madly in love with the Bay Area figurative artists and that was it. I still am. The use of design, color, expression and recognizable subject matter combined with abstraction were the visual springboard I was hoping for. Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Nathan Olivera, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown were a few of my new favorites.

When I was working on my masters degree, a focus became clear. I love being outside in nature so I would work towards landscape paintings using a combination of traditional and impressionistic skills. But as much as I tried to control my self, the bay area figurative freedom of expression was soaked into my core. Since then it is one long commitment to using massive amounts of paint and answering the never-ending question, “how long does it take for your paintings to dry?”

Do you consider yourself an abstract expressionist or do you not appreciate such labels?

I suppose I am an abstract expressionist. As much as I tend to have an emotional response to the paintings I make of NYC, SF and Italy – I am acutely aware of value patterns, value relationships, color harmonies, design and atmospheric perspective.

You enjoy listening to jazz, is that something you listen to while painting and what type of jazz music inspires you?

I believe that music carries information between the hemispheres of my brain so I make it a point to play it continually in my studio and classroom. Jazz for me is like abstract expressionism – raw, original, and improvisational; I never get tired of it. I listen to rock and blues also. I am mad about the classics like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Jimmy Hendrix, Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughn but on the lighter side, Boney James, Terrance Blanchard, Diana Krall, and Steely Dan. Music is my energy fuel.

Is intuition part of your process of painting, or are all your paintings carefully calculated?

My paintings are mostly calculated in terms of composition, subject matter and design. I think, plan, crop, change and delete.

The intuitive part comes after this planning phase and then the paint assault begins. I use tubes and tubes of paint and for the most part destroy the look of what might have been a careful plan. I push and pull, scrap and smash, throw paint and remove paint. The intuition comes when I decide the painting is finished.

What drew you to painting city scenes from your commute and do you photograph these moments before painting them?

This was a period in my painting career when I was a true workaholic. I discovered that just driving from Sausalito to San Francisco was about as fucking beautiful as I could ever want. This was my commute and I was happy to consider my commute as my muse. I then perfected the best way to take photos while driving and not crash. The photos were pretty bad if you looked at them like a photographer. But for the painter they were all I needed to remind me of visual clues.

When people think about a morning commute, ideas of noise, frustration, traffic, and exhaustion often come to mind, however your paintings convey a dreamlike and serene yet emotional sentiment that seems to stray away from realism. Can you speak more about your intentions when creating these pieces?

Through my paintings, I made peace with the commute. I was no longer in a hurry in the same way because while I was on my way to work in San Francisco, I was also, in a sense, in the painting process. That’s the workaholic thing. You see, I was working, on my way to work. I no longer needed to hurry or dread. I was where I wanted to be even if I was stuck in traffic. Don’t cry for me Argentina, I was able to look at either side of the Golden Gate Bridge – towards the beautiful skyline and bay or the other side, the Pacific Ocean.

How have you handled the business side of being an artist?

I am smart enough to know that I need gallerists to do that for me. When I was Director of Galleries I could easily sell other artists work but I can’t sell my own. Too emotionally invested to get out the hammer to hit someone over the head to make them buy my own work.  I rely on galleries to do that for me. In San Francisco, I am represented by ArtHaus, Hang Gallery and in New York by the Wendt Gallery.

Who or what have been the greatest influences?

My two sons Geoff and Sean continually amaze me. Geoff is in advertising and a painter. Sean is in the Army, stationed in Germany preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in the fall. Traveling has also had a big influence on me.

As the Associate Director of the School of Fine Arts at the San Francisco Academy of Art, how important do you think it is for art teachers to be artists themselves? How has being an artist with gallery representation helped you teach your students?

The way we teach at the Academy makes it critical that our teachers are practicing professional artists. We teach skill based, time honored classes that are demanding of students time, energy and focus. We want students to be able to choose a direction of expression based on knowledge. So you see, our teachers must be able to show by example in the classroom and in the art market.

Being represented by art galleries allows you to see a conclusion to the art making process. Art shows, meeting buyers and art lovers is an important step. I have sold hundreds of paintings and that experience is shared with my students to the extent that I know what is needed to take your work to market, so to speak.

You received your BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Academy of Art, how have your teaching methods differed from those prevalent when you were attending school?

My teaching methods are built upon what I learned from master artists coupled with my love for abstraction. I have a serious need for creating an environment of inclusion for all of the students. No matter what their interest or skill level, I show them how they can be the best artists possible.

How important is it for your students to learn how to market themselves as artists and make their work “sellable?”

Most likely because I wasn’t sure how to make art that would sell in galleries when I was 18 and so I got into advertising first, I feel I can give students that kind of direction I didn’t have. Discussions and development are based on intention matching the end result and creating a body of work that feels cohesive. If artists are not interested in that and want to explore work that is not as definable, more avant-garde, I will work with them to develop language to explain themselves and their work. Ideally, I want artists to make a living off of their artwork. I teach them how to get there with their work not just through the development of their own work but by visiting galleries and museums to see what has sold and what is relevant in today’s market.

As the Director of the three Academy of Art University downtown galleries, what recent changes do you see in the San Francisco art scene? What would you like to see more of?

Just this year, I was appointed to Associate Director of – not only the undergraduate school of painting – but the MFA program as well. With this new responsibility I have stepped down as Director of Galleries to focus my attention on the educational side of our programs. San Francisco has some great galleries and a few have come on hard times recently; that is sad for them and artists. Naturally I would like to see more sales for this industry to thrive. That means we need people and businesses to buy more art. Galleries need to carefully choose to show quality work that reflects what the market wants along with education for the new collector who may be reluctant to buy.

What future project are you looking forward to working on?

Every summer, I teach landscape painting in Italy. I have about 20 students and we bake in the Italian sun for 6 hours a day, painting places like Montopulciano and Cortona in Tuscany and visiting Rome and my favorite, Florence. Italy has taught me the lesson of slowing down and how to make peace with hot weather reminiscent of my early days in Arizona.

What would you like to spend more time doing?

I would like to spend more time coming up with ways that art can contribute to the awareness of our environment. I am a founding member of the Bay Wood artist, a group dedicated to the preservation of bay and woodlands in the Bay Area. I am no longer a member due to my current workload.