Conversation with Keith Spencer: Humor is important!

In the art world, painting car covers is not something that an artist usually will do, however, Keith Spencer broke tradition and turned car covers into a sense of humor and have the car covers entered the art world. By looking at his car cover works, I feel like Spencer must be a person that is full of humor also in his daily life. Spencer’s sense of humor is being fully expressed by the first 2 minutes of the zoom meeting. He started the conversation with a great joke, “knock, knock, who’s there?” He set the atmosphere for the whole zoom meeting which contains humor and relaxation. Also, he must be an artist that lets his current situation take his life and turns it into something that is incredibly funny for viewers. Spencer mentions, “My painting or my art practice is responding to my circumstance where I’m living at what’s available to me.” 

Spencers’ idea inspired me to think about the things that surrounded me, like newspapers, magazines, and menu papers, what is available to me that I can turn into works of art. Personally, I think, using the things that are available to me, and turning them into works of art can best demonstrate my own identity and my own personality. LIke Spencer, he paints on what is available to him, like the car covers, and turns them into something that can reflect his identity in humor. Spencer’s car covers lead me to find what is available and as a result, I recreated the desk lamp. I didn’t realize this can be such a wonderful experience. My lamp has reflected my inner mind of being a princess. Spencer decided to do the car covers under the affection of his family members, and I am surprised that he took the challenge to turn them into something that shows his humor and identity.

By looking at his studio through zoom meetings, we see that his works have been transformed from realism (landscapes, house paintings) which we can identify the subject to that abstract realm. He mentions that when doing realistic paintings that made him feel like he has been entering the 70s, he couldn’t find humor in the work. Car covers are a wonderful way to let him regain that sense of humor once again. In Spencer’s opinion, he thinks that there are lots of things going on in our daily life, and we shouldn’t be focused on one thing. It is important to experience different kinds of things, and find the response to the situations that you are in. I agree with him so much, because I think we are going through a lot of situations nowadays, and we may be going through different feelings and emotions as well. It is important to catch that feeling at the specific time and respond to it in an appropriate way.