Bella Pettengill

I think in image. Image is all that I am. I am all about shape and reference, and I used to draw a lot of cartoons when I was younger, so that definitely comes out too. I have always been interested in cartoons, and the way cartoons are a form of abstraction.

I draw religiously all the time, especially during the day when I'm not in my studio. Since I was a kid, I have always drawn, always kept a sketchbook, like dozens of sketchbooks at this point. 

And I am always taking pictures. I am always looking, looking, looking. 

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to local graffiti, and the covering of graffiti all over town. I am thinking about it as a metaphor for the rise in fascism—this idea of smothering and covering. It really feels like the impulse is to always hide and cover. There’s patches everywhere, and it's like: how could you find those patches more beautiful than someone else’s work? But I also find the patches really beautiful, and it's this conversation of two separate people interacting.

I'm also trying to pay attention to how people are using paint out in the world and the sort of marks that they are making. I’m calling it “wild painting”: any time I see painting out there, whether it's half of a painting on a wall, or leaving a tag, or painting a mural.

I’m definitely in a phase of experimentation, or maybe I will forever be in that phase. I’ve made peace with the fact that I gotta switch it up every time that I make a new painting—but they come together because I’m using the same paint, I’m the same person, and they tell the same story.

I get bored quickly, and there's so much visual input all the time, so I'm just moving on and on and on to the next thing.

I’m trying to learn as much as possible right now, and trying not to settle.

Speed is important to me. I'm very urgent when I make, never worried about wasting paper or canvas, engaging as much play and experimentation as possible.

I'll make a painting and I'll ask: what excites me about this painting? And then I'll make the next painting about that section of the previous painting. 

I think of my paintings as jokes without the punch line—like the set up of a joke. Like pointing at something funny but not saying what’s funny about it.

I love being able to take a drawing that took me a few seconds in my sketchbook and giving it so much time in a painting. It's like paying a respect. I love honoring image.

I have been making a lot of prints lately, too. Lithography is my favorite because it's the closest printmaking technique to drawing. I love the laborious aspect of it. Using my body for art's sake is the best feeling. 

I lost my mom to breast cancer when I was 16, and that was a real traumatic experience and something I've been healing from for the past decade. So I think about that a lot, and about the health of my own body, and the planet’s body. I would say that's the central theme of all of my work.

This painting called Gas is about the contamination events that have happened in the past 2 months. I am always thinking about systemic poisoning. That’s what makes me the most angry and passionate, and so that's what shows up in the work.

Making for me has always been about healing. It's never been about perfection or making the perfect image. I'm making because I have to, so I’ve never been too precious about it.

Making is so important. Everyone needs to be making.