Scott Listfield: Where the Astronauts Roam
- Interview and portrait by Sawa
- Published:
- In Features
Scott Listfield’s canvases plunge us into strangely beautiful, post-everything landscapes with a lone astronaut as our guide. It’s a world that hints at the dystopian, yet within its quiet expanse, he unearths moments of profound beauty and lingering hope.
Sawa: What did you want to be when you grew up? And how did you discover your true passion of becoming an artist after your first art class in college?
Scott Listfield: Big surprise, when I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. Runner up was probably Superman. At five, both seemed like solid career options. I eventually gave up on those dreams not too long after my first roller coaster ride, which did not go so well. Actually going to space was probably not in my future.
But as far back as I can remember, I drew a lot in my free time, and when I was supposed to be doing homework. Or classwork. Or sports. It was never something I took seriously until I reached college. I went to a liberal arts school with no plan to become an artist. For the first time, I got to choose my classes. I’d always done art, and the thought of taking serious college courses without drawing sounded blah, so I signed up for an intro drawing class and quickly realized I was in over my head.
We were using real art supplies, like charcoal, and ink, and drawing from a still life, talking about artists I hadn’t heard of. I floundered until I realized halfway through that first semester, that people hung out drawing in the art rooms until late working on projects. So I started doing that, too. And it was fun. But more importantly, it was serious. I thought of anthropology and math as serious, but art as fun, and I realized I needed to approach art with the same intensity. And so I did. And I haven’t stopped since.
Something clicked in place inside of me during that first drawing course. It wasn’t long after that I realized I wanted to be an artist.
Talk more about the process of actually going out and DOING it vs. just having the notion of wanting to be an artist. What would you say to other young artists on this topic?
I think it’s great if people want to be an artist, whether they go out and do it or not. Whether you spend eight hours a week, or can only carve out a few minutes, neither makes you any more or less an artist. But the world will set roadblocks. Constantly. There are a million pretty good reasons not to be an artist. If you’re young, or in school, or just getting started, art is probably fun. Eventually, inevitably, it will become less fun.
You’ll hit a point where skills plateau. Where you think all your art is crap. Where your job takes up too much time, and you don’t have the energy. Or your social life, or your family. You won’t have the time, space, or money. Or you’re frustrated the work isn’t paying back in any meaningful way. For a long time, few people will see it, like it, buy it, or whatever. You’ll get annoyed you’re working so hard and the guy who taped a banana to a wall is making a bajillion dollars. These are all valid reasons to stop. There’s only one good reason to keep doing it: because you like doing it.
This seems simple, but keeping yourself interested in your own artwork is a major part of the job. Possibly the most important part. And once you get beyond making artwork just for yourself, art is something of a job. That makes it less fun. See? Already you’re having less fun. Keeping it fun takes work. I know that seems paradoxical, but trust me, it has its rewards. You need to always be searching for the thing you enjoy. For me, I like to paint. I enjoy the process. But not all of it, and I’ve found ways to cut out parts I didn’t enjoy. Or at least to streamline it, so I’m spending most of my time on the fun part.
The difference between doing it and wanting to do it is work. You make art when you’re tired, unmotivated, or when it makes you no money at all. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing art only occasionally. Not everything has to be a job. But if it’s going to be your job, you had better really like it a lot. Because it’s not a great job.
I know one of your main motivations to start pursuing your paintings more seriously, was after the death of your college friend Ostoj, who is now an easter egg in many of your paintings. Can you tell me about that?
Chris Ostoj was a good friend in college, more like a mentor. He was a couple years older, infinitely more worldly than me. On the first day of my junior year, he saw me reading a Cezanne book in the art building cafeteria, and decided we would be friends. We were largely inseparable that entire year. Then he graduated, moved to New York, and slowly faded out of my life.
I already knew I wanted to be an artist when I met him, but much of my passion and drive I learned from Chris. He was one of those singular people you only come across a handful of times, if you’re lucky. They leave an indelible mark and then, often just as quickly, move on, changing someone else’s life, and then someone else’s.
My first five years after college, I was busy doing things that weren’t art. I met my girlfriend, who would later be my wife. I got a job, then a career. I never stopped making art, but I stopped pursuing the goal of being an artist. Which is fine; there’s nothing wrong with that, if you’re happy. I don’t know that I was, but then Chris died. And I took it hard.
We all do. I was young, inexperienced with death. I didn’t know how to process losing my friend, or the idea of my own mortality. Not everything that came of that time was good, but one thing was: I took a hard look at my life and realized that if I was going to be an artist, I needed to be serious. Ostoj and I used to joke in college about going to New York and taking over the art world. We knew it was a pipe dream, but joking about it made it a thing, something to aspire to. When he passed, I had to be honest. Five years after college, I hadn’t done anything to make that happen. I had maybe eight or nine mediocre astronaut paintings. It wasn’t something I took seriously anymore. If Ostoj weren’t around to make our dreams a reality, I guess it was on me to do it. And so I did.
It’s not that simple. But I set out to get a show, or at least have enough paintings done so I could if the opportunity arose. I pulled together about twenty paintings, and when you’re ambitious and prepared, sometimes things come your way. Not always, but sometimes. A show in a gallery fell in my lap. If I hadn’t made myself ready, it never would have happened. That show, in and of itself, was not exactly a springboard to success; that gallery went out of business a few years later. But the show wasn’t the thing. Being serious was the thing. Being motivated and prepared was the thing. Ostoj pushed me over that line one last time.
Not long after, I started painting him into my work. Usually as a bit of graffiti, hidden on a wall or a car or something. I think he would have gotten a kick out of that. Just the name Ostoj left somewhere, unexplained, over and over again. I’ve done it enough that people notice. They ask about it. And so I get to tell them about my friend Chris. I get to think about him often, and although he has been gone twenty years, his story lives on in my work.
I often chase that feeling in my work. Sadness but also beauty. There is something beautiful in the end of things, just as there’s something beautiful in being alone. But the sadness is always there, too.
I see a progression from your first paintings to your newest work. But the idea, the vision, was always there. Can you talk about the evolution of your work?
I’ve been doing this a while. Sometimes people are surprised to learn just how long, because I know that people familiar with my work—not that I’m super famous—mostly know it from the last five to ten years or so. But I made my first astronaut painting in 1999, over 25 years ago. I had my first show in a coffee shop, probably in 2002 or 2003. My first gallery show was at the end of 2004. In the 2007-2008 range, my art career died a quiet and mostly uninteresting death. There was a recession, and all the galleries I had worked with went out of business. After years of hard work, I was back to square one, and the really humbling part was knowing that, for the most part, no one cared. My wife, a couple friends, and the small handful of people who owned one of my paintings were probably about it.
I thought about painting something else, or quitting painting entirely. I was working a full-time job back then, and painting was a difficult, time-consuming side hustle. Was it worth it? I thought about that a lot, but eventually I decided it was. I loved painting, and I still had things I wanted to say. If I was going to do it, it had to be because I wanted to. If nobody else cared, that had to be okay. That was a tough time, but it signaled the start of my next chapter. I doubled down on my own vision. I followed my own weird route forward. I kept pushing. It eventually led me to a career as a full-time artist, which I didn’t think it would.
As my career started taking off, for real this time, I eventually left the day job behind. I was painting full-time, making a lot more work than before, and I was starting to get many solo shows for the first time. I think that was the next step in the evolution of my work, as the groups of paintings I was making for these solo shows began to become more like discrete chapters in an ongoing book. Each chapter stood on its own, but each also had some connecting threads to those that came before and after. It allowed me to talk about a lot of different things in my work. It eventually allowed me to be more personal in my work. It led me to paintings I don’t think I could have possibly imagined I’d be making 25 years ago, back when all of this nonsense started.
There is so much unexpected beauty around us, and it comes through in so many of your paintings. You have mentioned that the dystopian topics of your paintings are bleak, but they are also depicting the beauty in this world. Why is it important to show this beauty?
There’s a feeling I get sometimes, most often when traveling or taking a long walk alone. You crest a hill and suddenly a city you’ve never been to is laid out below you. Maybe it’s night and the lights are twinkling for miles. And you get this simultaneous feeling of euphoria, but also loneliness. You’ve stumbled onto something magical, seeing it now but perhaps never stepping foot here again. You’re aware of the beauty but also your own mortality. Life is short and the world is infinite. There’s probably a German word for this, something that loosely translates to ‘happy loneliness’ or something.
I often chase that feeling in my work. Sadness but also beauty. There is something beautiful in the end of things, just as there’s something beautiful in being alone. But the sadness is always there, too. I think our world is a really beautiful place, and we forget that sometimes. And sometimes all our human stuff gets in the way of that, too.
Speaking of dystopia, when we first spoke it was during the lockdown era of the pandemic and a wild election year. Things seem to have only gotten crazier. Talk to me about the dystopian backdrop of your work. And also, are current times leading to any new series of paintings? It seems like with the way the world has been going, you will have no shortage of content to inspire your work.
I go through waves where I’m tired of depicting the world as a wasteland. There have been instances over the last handful of years where people have told me something like, “The world outside sure looks like one of your paintings!” While having my finger on the pulse of the future might be good for business, it’s pretty terrible for the world. Frankly, I’d much rather have my paintings feel a bit more like fiction.
So yeah, sometimes current events are super inspiring. I love that, because I paint relatively quickly, I can respond to things almost in real time. But sometimes the bleakness of the news cycle wears me out, just like anyone else. There’s only so much I can handle. At times like those, I turn my art into more of an escape from the present time. Maybe let’s zoom ahead a few centuries or millennia, to a time where little trace of our current stupidity is left.
What is your daily routine? Does it involve painting everyday or does it come in spurts?
I treat painting a little like preparing to run a marathon, which is a strange metaphor for me to trot out, since I’ve never prepared for one, nor would I ever want to. But I find it useful to get into a daily rhythm. I don’t paint on the weekends, because I need some time to be a functioning human in society. Otherwise, I paint every day. I do a morning shift, break for lunch, then an afternoon shift, break for dinner, and often an evening shift as well. This schedule allows me to get a lot done, though it leaves little wiggle room for that human part. So I’m trying to scale back a little on the evening shift so my wife doesn’t feel like she’s married to a ghost.
I don’t like taking long breaks. I’m not sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. I like to be in the studio, feeling like I’m accomplishing something, always moving forward, always checking off boxes. The idea of momentum feels pretty important to me, both in my work and generally speaking for my sense of self-worth, so I try to keep it going. Maybe it’s more like riding a bicycle than a marathon? I don’t know, I don’t do that either. Maybe I need better metaphors.
What state of mind or being are you in when your ideas come to you?
I like to get out of the house, clear my head, put music on my headphones, and walk to get inspired. But I’ve found that inspiration can strike at any time, as long as you keep your mind thinking about the things you’re interested in, or the things you want to say. Many years ago, I worried that when I left my day job to paint full-time, being in the studio so much might somehow impair my ability to come up with ideas, because it is often helpful to get away to generate them.
But it turns out the type of low-level, semi-aware musing I do while painting—where I’m one half concentrating on the painting and one quarter on the music or podcast I’m listening to—letting that free one quarter of my brain power roam on its own is also pretty useful for coming up with painting ideas. So I definitely still try to find time to get away, go for a walk, listen to something, and see new things. But it’s not a requirement.
How do you find inspiration to keep going when the world is appearing to be falling apart?
I paint primarily because I enjoy it, but right behind that is because I feel like I have something I want to say. Painting is just the way I can get all these ideas off my chest.
Whether the world is falling apart or not—and just to be clear, I very much prefer it when it is not—I’ll have something to say. It’s just that in troubling times, my work maybe feels a little extra relevant. Instead of painting far-off futures, my paintings might be depicting something a bit closer to the present. While that’s certainly disturbing, and I wish it weren’t the case, I often think of my work as a glimpse into a possible future. And one of the reasons that might be less bleak than you think is because despite the dystopian overtones in much of my work, that future is not yet written. Even when the present seems especially dark, as it often does, we still have the power to do something. There will always be powerful forces pushing back against us, of course, but knowing I’m doing something always makes me feel at least a tiny bit better.
I am more drawn to the community aspect of art, and less interested in the pretentious high art world. I feel like Thinkspace seems very much like a family environment, and I know you grew close to Shawn. And you have the painting of Shawn called “Forever.” Can you talk about being close with her and the gallery?
To be blunt, I’ve been painting the names of dead friends into my work for decades now. I’m not entirely sure what my goal was when I started, but I’ve come to believe in a very real and tangible way that it allows them to live on, in a small way, in my work. How do I know this? Because when I paint their names, I think of them. They stay with me; their memories don’t fade. Sometimes other people who knew these friends occasionally reach out. They find their friend’s name in my work and ask questions. We share stories, or old photos. Then, there are people who’ve seen my work and never knew my friends, but they see these names repeated and wonder what it’s about. So they ask me. And I get to tell them.
These friends of mine are gone. There’s nothing I can do about that. But I get to think of them regularly. I get to talk about them regularly. I get to remember them and to make sure they’re remembered. They inspire me every day I’m in my studio, and I wouldn’t be painting still if not for them. If that’s not a very real way that their legacy lives on, then I don’t know what is.
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