Figuring out how to give his characters logic is part of the job that Spears enjoys. Exaggerated limbs, explosive anatomy. The muscle tissue in the biceps looks swollen, but at the tendons it feels like piano wire. It helps to reinforce the moment of transformation that the characters are going through and that we experience vicariously.
Spears says, “I often think about the problem of articulating a surface in a way that forces the eye to move across the painting in a specific way. The eye may be blocked at junctions: elbows, knees, ankles, etc. So I look for paths through the forms to connect them. I often deviate from anatomical accuracy to create tension in the composition. There are also details that use psychology (sexuality) to manipulate the eye.”
Compulsion: lips, ears, nipples, fingertips, eyes, etc. I will use the bulges and depressions of the musculature as inflection points to modulate the impact of these signifiers.
His process was about staying true to said original inspiration while leaving room for improvisation. There is a danger in allowing improvisation. The work needs to be fresh. To avoid boredom, as he describes it. Too much improvisation can cause a piece to lose its specificity. Too little and it becomes academic.
He cited his 2024 work “Sunbathers.” It starts with a clear idea. The face has a doll-like temperament. Arm and arm length, hip angle. But it took him a lot of hard work to achieve this result. Figure out the chest, then the belly. Working with a combination of anatomy, his taste, and a lot of trial and error.
“I think leaving the right amount of room for improvisation is something I’m getting better at,” he says. “Too little and my solutions become boring, too much and there’s a danger of breaking the credibility that connects the audience to the work.”
Spears is reluctant to speculate too much on the inspirations and references in his work. Much of what we see in his studio has been teased out, combined, remixed and filtered according to his unique intuition and taste.
However, when looking at his work, it is difficult not to connect it to modernism and the Surrealists. Culturally and historically speaking, this was a particularly important turning point. A time when the world is short-circuited and a new order begins. The impossible becomes reality, and from our perspective everything seems mundane and bizarre. A world at war, a world at peace, with economic turmoil and a widespread desire for change.
For Spiers, modernists inspired the need to make connections. Speculation, confrontation, equivocation. The tension between the resolved and the unresolved, and the effort to make this dissonance part of the overall work without becoming degenerate.
“I enjoy the challenge of superimposing logic, order, and solutions onto propositions that seem to reject rationality and systematicity. Perhaps it is this attempt to unify contradictory forces that helps create the dynamics of tension and release that animate my work,” he says.
I don’t consider my paintings successful if I try to empathize with the characters I create. “
But it’s not just modernists. His influences include Tarantino, David Lynch, Sonic Youth, Caravaggio, British classical music, American jazz, Derek Jarmen, and Steven Spielberg.
He recalled David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” – which he once saw as a young man. How heartbroken he was after witnessing the tragedy of Joseph Merrick. From it he learned something about form and content. The relationship between the two is complex and contradictory. The power of counterpoint. How to use it to achieve balance. He mentioned David Cronenberg’s “Being.” The film shows the way landscape, architecture and bodies interpenetrate each other. The dissolution of separation and the elimination of difference.
“It’s the audience’s job to make the connection,” he said. “It’s hard work, and we shy away from that. But once we surrender to the task, we expand and become part of something bigger.” *
This article was originally published in High Fructose Issue 73. The full issue is available for print here!
