Nancy Lamb: Social Butterfly with Bite

DN: Which is how I met you. I came to meet you at Artspace because Vincent Falsetta at UNT showed me your spread in New American Paintings and said, “You should go meet Nancy.” That was maybe 2003, 2004.

NL: Vincent Falsetta?! I love his work, and by the time I realized I had to get something of his, I’d have to put it on layaway. He’s kickass. I love him.

DN: There is signage in the gallery that encourages people to post and tag themselves or friends on Facebook when they see people in your photographs. How has social media affected your art practice and your relationships?

NL: It has helped me a lot because I have sometimes felt isolated.

DN: Do you think it is the private studio practice that is isolating?

NL: No, I think it’s my habit of staying up all night, and most of the people I know have regular day jobs. Even my husband had to get up for work at 5:30 every morning, and that’s usually when I was going to bed.

DN: You have a wide diversity and range of friends, and people who like you come from all walks of life. You are so very open, and I was wondering if you were like that as a child or what you were like in high school.

NL: You know what I used to do in high school? I used to study the annual, and I’d learn everybody in the annual, not only in my class but everybody. I wanted to be able to say hello to everybody in the hall, so I could say, “Oh, hi!” “Hi!” But as far as having a diverse group of friends, I like to talk about a wide variety of things.

I used to be able to invite people into the studio while I painted, but I realized that I don’t like what I do as much when there are other people around. It really has to come from some other place. People talk about the “zone,” and it really does exist, and I find that my paintings are so much better when that comes into play.

DN: One thing that is notable about your paintings and other work is the precision that you demand from yourself, not only in details but in the preparatory work that is involved and the finish.

NL: [Daniel Blagg] used to say, “I’m not afraid to paint sloppy,” and every once in a while I’ll put some sloppy stuff in there. I just set really high standards on what I can do with my hands.

DN: People know you most for your Social Spaces series of paintings, but you have worked in a wide variety of media.

NL: When I started doing artwork, I would do anything. And the weirder it was, the more fun I had. I did the Jackalope [on the roof of RLB Sales and Leasing on Camp Bowie Boulevard], for instance, and I have done about five headstones. They were on copper and I etched and patinated them, and I thought they were beautiful.

DN: Is it the challenge of doing new things that you haven’t done before?

NL: Yeah, and playing with a different medium. Steve Jobs did all these different things that had nothing to do with the direction that led him to the creation of Apple, like taking a calligraphy class. But he realized later when he was designing his first templates that the skill of calligraphy came into play. … Whatever point in your life you are, everything you do comes into play at this moment, so doing lots of different things just makes sense.

DN: I see your work and your life as an artist as seeking new forms of communication and as a product of your desire to make connections with people.

NL: Well, you can’t talk fast enough to enough people to tell them what you feel about something. And then there are those people who aren’t going to listen, but they have their own things going on. If somebody can stop for 10 minutes and look at something that you did, that is a great honor. And I don’t set out overtly to make statements like a lot of artists do, because I think, “What the heck do you care what I have to say?” Jennifer Casler Price [Kimbell Art Museum’s curator of Asian and non-Western art] came up to me and said, “Your work is all so happy, and I really love that it’s happy.” That sounds like I’m some kind of sentimental person, but I tell you what: I can’t paint when I’m angry. And there are artists who can. I’m not J.M.W. Turner. I’m not going to lash myself to the boat to live through it to paint it. I need to be contented, relaxed.