TRANSCRIPTEleanor Spiess-Ferris (00:00): So, what are we doing here today? You don't want to talk about my art and God, that's hard for me.
Ricky McEachern (00:07): Well, we can talk about whatever you want to talk about if you're a, so what happened was when we did the checking in, when I did the checking in with you, I had a lot of questions about there's a lot going on up here with you, which is expressing itself on the canvas. And I kind of had a lot of questions about that. You know, like where, where things came from. So I think what I want, does that make sense? Are you okay? If I, if I just ask you questions about your history and how you got into art and things of that. Okay. That's what I like to hear.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (00:45): You're the one who is running this show and I'm just here to hopefully make you happy.
Ricky McEachern (00:53): Okay. Well, you definitely, you, you made me happy just by being here. So let's start with, let's start with this. So when we did the checking in with, which was you know, a video that we did, where we were looking at your artwork and you were talking about talking about the artwork and there was a lot going on inside your head that was coming out on the canvas. So it was, and so I thought I found that to be very interesting. Can you tell me like when that type of stuff happened with you in your head do, were you doing that expressing what was going on inside of you as a kid? Were you an artsy kid?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (01:42): Yes, I was. I was my mother was very smart. I was the fourth child and she was tired of having children. So she just left the screen door open and I was lucky enough to have an orchard just down or where the irrigation ditch that I went to. And I thought a lot, I kept thinking about things that were happening in the family and trying to make sense of them and observing the nature around me. And of course, getting into trouble as one does when one is little and getting in and doing things that maybe nobody knew about because I was let go let loose on this little tiny farm. And I was gonna say, I don't know. I just grew to thinking about things and being rather an introvert it's in my dote of, you know, my dotage, my PLA my Chicago life, that I've become more of an extrovert. So
Ricky McEachern (03:09): It does. It does. So you grew up, was it an Oklahoma that you were grew up?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (03:14): No, Mexico, Northern New Mexico.
Ricky McEachern (03:15): Okay. New Mexico. And you grew up in a rural area, it sounds like a farm. And you were the youngest of four now, do you have older brother? Is it older brothers or mix?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (03:26): I had two older sisters and one older brother and they're all gone.
Ricky McEachern (03:31): Okay. And were the I'm sorry were they much older than you?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (03:37): Yeah, well, yes, they were. My sisters are much older and my brother was seven years older than I, and I was in an accident. I was not planned, which is that's great. You know?
Ricky McEachern (03:51): So you didn't have a neighborhood where there were lots of kids that you could interact with. So you were kind of on your own.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (03:59): I had to walk at least a mile to visit a M my really good friend.
Ricky McEachern (04:07): Okay. So, so it sounds like you're one of those people like me with a very active brain and you were as a kid, which I was as well. You know, my situation was a little different because I, well, I'm the youngest of five. I have all sisters, but I grew up with lots of neighbors, lots of kids. So I did have an active brain, but I was able to talk about all these crazy ideas. And, you know, I think everyone thought I was a little bit of a wacky kid, but they, you know, they liked me and they were used to, yeah. Yeah.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (04:48): That's really special. And somebody listened to you as a kid.
Ricky McEachern (04:52): They did. So when did you discover art and was that immediately something that connected to what was going on in your head? Can you tell me about,
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (05:06): Well, like I said, my mother raised chickens and she took care of a household and she did all that and she liked to read. And the thing that was most important to her was making sure her youngest child was sort of out of the way. So she brought a bot tempera paint and brushes and paper. And let me go to my room or be in the living room with a bridge table and a glass of milk and a glass of water. And I paint it from, from the very beginning. I can't remember when I haven't painted, I painted all kinds of things and being the only one in my family that liked music. I listened to opera on Saturday and classical music, nobody else listened to classical music. Matter of fact, the house was silent. It was a silent house. So I did a lot of my learning by listening to the radio. I heard a harpsichord, which I had this just like, wow, I've never heard such a thing in my life. You know, of course I also like country Western songs too.
Ricky McEachern (06:36): Now, what age was this? When you got the, these paints?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (06:42): I must've been folding.
Ricky McEachern (06:44): Oh my goodness. Wow. So painting has been part of, of you for your whole life.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (06:51): That's right. And it kept me out of trouble and out of the bars and off the streets. I don't know.
Ricky McEachern (06:59): So this is kind of a weird question, but like, how would you describe your relationship to painting? Is it like a friend that you've had as a child? Like how would you describe it?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (07:13): Oh, it's everything. It's not only a friend, but it can be an enemy. It can fight me. I learned to talk to it. I learned to talk to my work. I learned, I always was narrative painter. I had my book, house books. I don't know if you know what they are but they're like a series of books that have children's stories in them and they have beautiful etchings. So as a child, I decided I would create a story using different pictures in the book. And so I would take a, a beautiful lady from one and draw her out and then a horse from another. And I started by making these visual collages out of these etchings, these wonderful etchings in this series of books. And I could see, I could make scenarios out of plucking images from all these different stories and reconfiguring them into my own story. And that's how I learned to draw.
Ricky McEachern (08:35): So it sounds like you had like a sense of confidence about what you were doing. Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (08:40): Well, my, I was fortunate, my second to the oldest sister was taking high school art classes and she ended up being a very well known and brighter in Santa Fe. So she had to babysit me. So she would take me and her paints and my paints out and she would instruct me. So she was really my first teacher. And I can remember, I could, this is what is so really exciting. I remember that you can ruin things and that it's okay because I remember sitting next to her and she did this wonderful, wonderful landscape of the trees and the house and blah, blah, blah. And it was just wonderful. And the next minute she screwed it up and I saw, I mean, I saw her frustrated and upset, but then I saw her go back. I mean, pull out another piece of paper and go back. And I realized then that it's, it's an ongoing process that you're going to lose some and you're going to win some. And I was little when I realized that this is what it's about. It's not about finishing something and making, you know, like pinning it on the refrigerator or something like that. It's a matter of process that you're constantly winning and losing at this game. And so I think that sort of held me together, the idea that you can screw up. Yep.
Ricky McEachern (10:28): Yeah. And I think that is, that is a lesson that applies to everything in life. So that's wonderful that you learned that as a kid. Yeah, it certainly certainly applies to art, but you don't want, you don't want to quit just because something isn't working or you can't feel like you're a failure because something isn't working, it's part of a process and you've got to stick with it and you've got to stay stable.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (10:55): Do you feel the same way? It's a learning thing. Every time you do a podcast, you learn something every time you do a painting, you're learning something. Sometimes they don't work out. Sometimes they're tremendous successes, but really when you start, you have no idea what's going to happen and it's sort of an adventure.
Ricky McEachern (11:15): Sure. It is. So you mentioned that your sister was your first teacher. When did you start getting more like instruction in art? Because I'm very curious about this part of your story. Having such a history and a lot, you know of producing all of this artwork and sketches before you even have like formal art training, when did you actually start getting, or did you ever get formal art training?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (11:48): Well, you know, we learned from many different and an artist, a musician has their ears, right? An artist has their eyes. Was it, there was an artist by the name of folk artist by the name of Barela. And my mother's cousin had a gallery in townhouse and we would go visit her aunt, the aunt Maggie and her cousin at the gallery. And in the gallery, they had all the touts, famous towels artists, okay. Their paintings. Well, I knew them. I wasn't interested in seeing another Adobe house. What I was interested in was the sculpture that Barela made, which was folk art. And and in one corner of their gallery was what is called a card of death, which is created by a, with created by a pendant 10 days, which was, is a religious offshoot of Catholicism. And it's a sculpture of a skeleton in a cart with bow and arrow and Micah and its eyes. So when you look at it, the Micah flashes and there's this feeling that it's alive. And then on the floor of the gallery was this beautiful Cottonwood sculpture of the snake that was winding around with it smells open, ready to devour a cotton wood rabbit.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (13:49): And those things that are, I can remember sitting there, I must've been five, six years old sitting there and realizing that that's really what I loved. I mean, I, the other paintings, they were wonderful. I understood color. I looked at color, but it was the emotion, the emotion created by these pieces that I really gravitated to. And of course they had a lot of Santos. I mean, these are the things that inspired me.
Ricky McEachern (14:24): Thank you for sharing all that. So you were activated it stimulated and inspired. You were inspired to do what you were inspired to create something you were inspired to paint your exp or to tell me more about like what you were inspired to do.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (14:44): Well, I all I know is that I wanted to tell, I never, I, it wasn't until recently that I realized what my work was about. And my work is really about grief and there's all kinds of grief. You know, there's grief of a death, there's grief of youth, there's grief, you know, there's all kinds of grief. And I realized that when I was looking at reflecting back, I'm really realizing that was I the snake? Or was I the rabbit? Was this a skeleton for me? Or was I the skeleton? You know, I mean, it's the, I like that little twist, the little, the little thing that makes people question, the hidden things in work. The realization that maybe you don't know everything that's going on I don't know everything that's going on that kind of trying to put that into words.
Ricky McEachern (16:12): Yeah. So I think what I'm trying to figure out, so this is great, great answers. I think what I'm trying to figure out is, so it's one thing to be seeing other people's work and seeing the snake and the rabbit and seeing yourself in there and trying to figure out where do I fit in and getting all these ideas, but that it's something else to be in your studio or at home on the, on the bridge table and creating stuff. So I guess I'm trying to figure out when you were younger, how seeing all of that stuff, and if you don't have an answer, that's fine. How, what was happening that you wanted, that it was be re routing through you and that you wanted to express it on paper canvas?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (17:05): I don't know. I wasn't good at anything else.
Ricky McEachern (17:09): And you felt that you were good at this.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (17:11): And I felt that this was this. I was good at this. I knew, I knew how to do this. I can't do math. I'm a terrible speller. I wasn't good at school, but I always was the better artist and always had a different take on art.
Ricky McEachern (17:37): So how did you know that you could do it well? Is it because people were telling you or was it you're looking at it and you knew this is great. I it'd be both
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (17:50): Both grade school that I went to. The principal asked me to do a painting up the school. Well, I'm sure what he thought I would do would be a lovely little landscape painting with this lovely little old fashioned school that looked like a castle. Well, I didn't, I think I disappointed person at that time online magazine or was it post magazine? I'm not sure. What's his name? The commercial artist. Rockwell Rockwell did a painting of children all over the place. And what I did was I took a closeup of this school and I painted children falling out of the windows and running around and doing wild and crazy things. And that was an oil painting too. How old were you? I must have been eight or nine, something like that.
Ricky McEachern (19:03): Well, and what did the principal think? Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (19:05): They hung it in. They hung it in at the school. I hear that the school has sent burn down and that the painting burnt up with it. But I don't think that that's the idea that the principal had. I'm sure that the principal wanted this lovely painting of the school.
Ricky McEachern (19:29): So that's fascinating to me. So when did you think that that's what he wanted or did you not, are you just like, obviously you can look back and realize that's what the principal would have expected when you were eight years old and it was requested. Did you even think that, or did you just paint what you thought?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (19:49): I just hate it. What I wanted to paint, I guess nobody told me what to paint. I guess if they had said we want a nice little landscape with a tree and swings, I would have done that, but they just requested a painting. So I did the painting that I wanted to paint and I don't know. I mean, it wasn't until later thinking about it and I thought, Oh my God, that poor principal, she didn't want my painting. She wanted a landscape painting. She wanted an architectural painting.
Ricky McEachern (20:27): I think that's amazing. That's great. So let's, I want to know about your, your thoughts or your relationship to like formal art training. I went, I took a class at the Florence Academy of art. Have you heard of in Florence, Italy, and it's like super rigid, you know,
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (20:51): What's his name here in Chicago, very rigid. You have to do plaster casts.
Ricky McEachern (20:56): Yeah, exactly. All that. I thought it was great. But I, that is a, it's just interesting to think of that sort of formal rigid training against like someone who started painting as a four year old and, and had it as part of their being at such a young age,
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (21:19): Formal, the formal issues are very important in order to carry off your own, your own thrust. Ricky McEachern (21:31): Right. So that was and you mean things such as composition value hue, like all that type of stuff and you start, and so you, you started to learn all that as it sounds pretty young as a teenager.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (21:45): Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I understood that. I understood it. I mean, I don't know where it came from. Maybe it was genetic, I don't know, but I don't know where it came from. I understood it to get better at it. It's another trick.
Ricky McEachern (22:02): I feel the same way. I feel that particularly composition I think it's maybe because I started, I'm not sure, but composition is something that I've always been very, like, I got it immediately. And honestly, even when I learned about value and saturation and you, all of that stuff made complete sense to me now actually being able to control it with my paintbrush and my palette. That's another whole, that's another whole story. And I think understanding it actually probably causes me more frustration because, you know, I can see where I'm not fulfilling what, you know, what I what I want. So in your email to me, you mentioned, I wish I had the exact words, but you, you use something, you, you say that like your artwork is, is kind of like you.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (22:56): Yeah.
Ricky McEachern (22:58): And that's how you feel. You feel like that is how you connect with the world.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (23:03): Yes, yes. Yes. Particularly as I'm getting older. I mean, it's definitely that's me. I mean, if we have an essence, that's the essence, you know, that's it, I don't know. I mean, I had that discussion last night with Umberto about that I don't really care if if museums have my paintings and if they survive and all of it, I don't, I really don't. What I care about is the next idea that I have. And am I able to execute it? Oh, I think all that fluff is really nice. I mean, I think that's really nice that you interviewed me and that I had a retrospective and all that. That's, that's, that's much, very much of an honor. That's very nice, but that's not the reason that I work. That's not the reason why I do what I do. I have this feeling that we are all traveling. Some of this travel outward, they're outward travelers. They're out in the world. I'm an inward traveler. And I have traveled deeper and deeper into my inner thoughts over the years. And
Ricky McEachern (24:50): Well, that makes sense to me. But what it makes me think is what if you didn't have, cause there's a lot of people that are, have a personality type like you, where they are very much inside themselves and there's a lot going on and they are, that's how they're traveling through the world is in their head. We have the wonderful advantage that we get to, you have this outlet and you have this skill so that you can express all this stuff. There's people that are, have a similar mindset as you and they don't have a creative outlet. So they're just traveling through life and no one gets to know what's going on.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (25:32): No, I mean, that's well, you know, I teach people like that. I teach people. I did, I, I have retired from teaching now. But I have taught people who wanted to be artists when they were 18, but their mother told them they should be an accountant. And so now at whatever 62, when they retire, they decide they want to be artists again.
Ricky McEachern (26:06): Yeah. And what happens?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (26:08): I try to help them be that artist again.
Ricky McEachern (26:15): Is it possible? Is it possible? Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (26:17): Yes, it is possible. It's a long, it's a long road, but it's possible. It's not whether you show, you know, it's not, whether you have a, have a painting in a, in a, somebody else's own, it's that expression, getting that feeling, getting your adventure, your images, your ideas out somewhere and struggling with those issues that, that makes you alive. I guess
Ricky McEachern (26:56): You're making me think about, about me and my artwork and, and what am I doing? That's what you're making me think here. Well, whether I, whether I'm focusing too much on whether or not people are interested in what I'm producing, as opposed to
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (27:15): People, don't worry about others. It's always in the work. It's always in the work. And that's what I've always told my kids and my granddaughter. And it's always in the work. What people think you have nothing to do with what they say. You cannot base your life on what they think, because believe me, most of the time, they don't think, okay. And they're not thinking on your level anyway, or your wavelengths anyway, don't worry about what other people thinks, improve the, what is your narrative? What are you trying to say? And let the chips fall where they may, because you can't, you can't do anything about that. Only thing you can do about is making yourself a better artist and finding your narrative or your vision or your whatever am I, God, that's hard enough. That is hard enough. So
Ricky McEachern (28:23): Do you feel like there is something core about your artwork that has been consistent since you were a little girl or has everything just completely changed over the years?
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (28:38): No, there's, I think there's some fit core. Like I say, I think that I, I am a narrative painter. I tell a story, I'm a storyteller. I come from a family of storytellers. I tell a narrative that's probably based more in grief and trying to understand life and death kinds of things. Yeah. I think that's always been the core always and nature and ecology. And I think that's always been the core. Oh wait. Okay. One way or another.
Ricky McEachern (29:25): Can you tell people people that are listening to this that maybe were, are, are artists as kids and they're now accountants, and now they're looking to be either an artist or more create creative. What would you, what advice would you tell them? Draw an
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (29:42): Apple. That's what I would tell them, draw an Apple. Think about the app and as many different ways as you can think about it. And I think that will start, well, it could be a cucumber or it could be a banana, or it could be an egg, but draw it in as many different ways as you can think to draw it. And I think that will begin to break your ice. Okay. It's very simple. Just take up a pencil and a piece of paper and draw an Apple.
Ricky McEachern (30:33): So you think people are, think people in society are kind of iced up. Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (30:40): What do you mean by stuff?
Ricky McEachern (30:42): Well, you said it'll break the ice, meaning that people are
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (30:45): Well, your own, it'll start the flow, your own creative flow. You have to break, you have to break down your own barriers. I mean, if you haven't been, if you have always wanted to be an artist and you were told you couldn't be an artist and you were an accountant or you were whatever, you know, whatever you were a lawyer. And all of a sudden you said, okay, I really want to do what I wanted to do when I was 19 years old. Then you have, you have a lot of barriers there. I have a lot of things that are keeping you from doing this. You have guilt, you have you know, you have lots of things that are just keeping you from being that. And so the thing to do is to say, okay, first step, I'm going to draw an Apple. Yeah.
Ricky McEachern (31:44): That's an easy, easy thing to start with.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (31:46): Right? And then I'm going to draw the Apple. Like a Cubist would draw the Apple.
Ricky McEachern (31:54): I tell people to dry to when you're having your coffee in the morning, rather than being on your phone or on your computer, checking the news, have your coffee and draw a coffee mug and draw a coffee mug every day.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (32:09): Does it make it? And then, and then if you get yourself a little a bunch of paint and I, like I said, I love Bosch because it's, so it can be so tiny and you get an art book and then you look, Oh, gee, whiz, look at that. What if I did a painting, like my teeth, I draw my coffee cup, like my teeth and all of a sudden a pointillism. What if I did it? What if I did my coffee cup or my Apple? Like I was Surat. I mean, all of a sudden you're starting to break down and you're starting to learn different things. And I would say by the 20th drawing, you would have a pretty good idea of what you were doing. I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's easy. That's where we all start. Yeah. So, okay.
Ricky McEachern (33:17): That is, that is a good answer. A good answer to my question. Well, Eleanor, thank you very much for chatting with me. This has been great.
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (33:26): Oh, you're such a darling and this has been fun. And any time you want to chat again love to chat with you.