We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Mackey a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michelle, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Sometimes meaning is best understood through absence. In 2022, an abandoned gas station was demolished in Dallas, Texas. Not just any ol’ place, this gas station was “Star Service Station,” Clyde Barrow’s family’s residence in the 1930s. After a developer destroyed this gas station, a greater public interest emerged, which is why the editor of D Magazine asked me to write about my time creating art from this location, while it still stood, a process which I describe in this article for Dallas magazine:

“…I saw no signage, no gas pumps, no people. This is the kind of place that inspires my artwork: a structure in between its former and future identity, left abandoned to the elements without plaques or preciousness…

This was where Mr. and Mrs. Barrow, Clyde and his younger siblings resided. In some strange way, the structure I stood before connected this long-dead family to me. What was it like to keep moving through the mundane details of daily life while your son was on a killing spree? What could the ghosts tell me?”

My drawings from the station and reflections on the history and mythology of Bonnie and Clyde ultimately culminated in a two-person painting exhibition in New York City in 2012. A New York City gallery exhibition is a satisfying accomplishment for any artist, but this project became even more meaningful in 2022 when I wrote the article. I was able to re-visit my own artwork with the benefit of reflection time. And I was able to share my belief in the power of physical place with the readers:

“Star Service Station exists now only in memory. But to create a true sense of the place, I had to be there. In the actual space, I learned things I couldn’t learn any other way…Things that we can only learn about ourselves, our world, our history, by being there, in front of the thing.”

You can find the full article here:
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2022/november/capturing-the-history-held-in-the-walls-of-the-old-barrow-family-gas-station/

Another meaningful project brought me to Odessa, Texas where the land is hot, desolate, and rich in oil and gas. A local hydrologist showed me sites of less lucrative anomalies in the land, like sinkholes and flooded dry lands. I was interested in places that had experienced a shift, sudden enough to cause surprise. Like many research trips I have taken as an artist, my takeaway was not as I planned. The sketches and photographs of the sites were not the seeds that germinated into paintings, rather it was our discussions that gave me the tools for a larger vocabulary of understanding. Hydrologists describe land with a subterranean focus and geologists discuss time as though billions of years were mere days. Experts in these fields helped me see through a different lens, one that revealed drama where I once saw stillness. Through pivotal conversations with geologists in Wyoming and Texas, I now had the tools to witness the mutability of an ever-changing landscape, as fleeting and awe-inspiring as the sunset, even while appearing as solid as a mountain.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I only want to put artwork into the world that feels like it speaks to the mystery of beauty and truth in this fragile, complex life.

I am baffled by time, that unseen force tipping its hand through seasons, sediment, weathering and age. My paintings explore time through the exploration of place.

In my past work, I researched sites containing remnants of a buried past, whether in the former dead zone of the Berlin Wall, the 9th Ward in New Orleans post-Katrina, Detroit’s abandoned Michigan Central train station, or the Barrow family gas station in Dallas.

After a 2017 trip to Iceland, my focus moved from abandoned architecture to the extreme landscapes of Iceland, Wyoming, Texas and Arizona. Buildings are built for human scale, but these vast landscapes expand our perception into awe. To understand a geological story, which happens over eons, we must enter the “deep time” that writer John McPhee discusses in his book, Basin and Range. In my current paintings, I am using the specific colors, curves, and unique shapes of Enchanted Rock and Grand Canyon to peer beyond one lifespan into the deep time that stretches before and after all of us.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Collect art! Buy a painting or sculpture. Attend live theater, concerts and book signings – individual artists need your support in order to do meaningful work.

When you invest in art, you are entering into a dialogue with that work. A painting on your wall will reveal itself to you in different ways as you interact with it over the years. Like any complex organism, art needs time to reveal its facets and depths. And it’s not just artists who need collectors. Both in the creation and the enjoyment, art reflects the shared and profound experience of being human.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Over the years, I have known artists who have achieved high levels of measurable success – Guggenheim grants, art reviews in reputable newspapers and magazines, exhibitions all over the world and acceptance into competitive residencies – none of these artists make a living solely or consistently off of their artwork. This is an important fact to learn early on so you can position your own goals for success. In other fields, a business continues because its services are remunerated. An artist needs to keep going and developing even if this means cobbling together various other jobs. Success for an artist is to create enough open space from distraction to be ready for inspiration. For me, I count my galleries and exhibitions as successes, but the hidden success is a life of consistent studio practice, turning off the phone and being quiet.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.michellemackey.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/mackeypaints/
• Other: vimeo: https://vimeo.com/229057578 https://vimeo.com/230215479

Image Credits
Elizabeth Lavin Photography (for the first image of me seated in the studio)