Midsummer’s Eve 

Curator: "Midsummer’s Eve," a whimsical painting by Scott Gustafson, seems to pull us directly into a fairytale. It has this ethereal, dreamlike quality… how does it strike you? Editor: Initially, it’s the luminous paint that grabs me. It’s an acrylic, apparently, allowing Gustafson to build layers and manipulate light so expertly. The texture seems incredibly smooth and deliberate. Curator: I see this piece as really playing into classical ideas about nature as a space of enchantment, far from the masculinized world of reason. The figures—fairy, frog, owl—create this liminal space where expectations about identity and even species break down, allowing new configurations. Gender, power...all destabilized in the space of this painting. Editor: It’s clever how he gives each creature its own textile and tool. Like the insect orchestra, equipped with miniature violins... There is a deliberate act of handcraft, and each figure speaks to labor being something other than only human. Curator: And the symbolism! The owl, traditionally a symbol of wisdom and magic, wears a flower crown...subverting its conventional meaning. Instead, it almost becomes a symbol of revelry, which disrupts our standard relationship with the natural world. Editor: Absolutely, there is so much intention. But while it may disrupt conventional notions of work, what kind of labor goes into this kind of whimsical scene? The act of rendering alone is immense... where the execution almost overwhelms content, bringing out more ideas than are apparent on the surface. Curator: In this light, this painting speaks to how fantasy worlds offer alternatives to dominant societal structures and modes of thought. How does that potential reflect the labor of imagining and creating? Editor: Looking at the surface qualities – texture, the pigments themselves – directs my curiosity towards the physical act and tangible social reality of making it all. I am intrigued about the means of creating the work. Curator: The intersections of these figures open our eyes to the subversive potentials of artistic spaces in re-situating what we think we know. Editor: Yes, thinking of this idyllic scene and then realizing that to achieve such apparent ease took tremendous practice. It helps me focus less on subject, and more on how the image itself was realized.