Patty Carroll, Panther, 2020
Patty Carroll was recently featured by Art Fluent and interviewed on the artistic process behind her distinctive images. Read below for excerpts of the article:
You create these incredible, full-scale sets for each photo. What is your process like from your first idea to the final image?
The ideas come from a variety of sources. Sometimes I have an actual idea about home that becomes a picture, but usually it starts with a prop or a title. For instance, I found some green fabric that had stylized marijuana plants on it. Since dispensaries are everywhere now, it seemed like a good time to bring it in a picture. In response, we made a kitchen picture called, “Pot and Pans” in shades of green. I made brownies and the woman is holding a cheroot. Another example; a friend of mine gave me a brown vintage donut phone. I usually do not use brown as a color palette, but it lead to us doing a picture called “Glassy Eyed.” My assistant always wanted to do a picture with amber glass in it, so this became a retro 1970’s picture in browns. We also did an entire room installation with it in a gallery. Early on, I made a picture based on the Victorian short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” where the woman goes mad as she is confined to a room with it. It was a natural idea for the series! "The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight." - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
After the initial idea or color is determined, then it is a process of gathering everything to go in the picture-furniture, objects, lamps etc. that we find or build. Things move around, the figure is put into the set, the whole thing changes about 50 times. I start taking pictures of it to establish the square crop and then we move things around, take things out, add more things, change something and take a picture each time. We look at it on the computer screen that is large to see details, and then repeat the process until everything seems right. It often takes several days of this before it is done. I only fix color and small annoying things in photoshop. We do not add anything digitally, it is all done in the set.
The women in your photos are always buried under all that chaos, they're hidden, yet completely the focus. What does anonymity mean to you in your work?
Because the woman is engulfed in her objects and home, she becomes part of it, so that she is seamless with the surroundings. Her identity is fused with her environment. She is anonymous, but present. Also, I am careful that you never see her face because I do not want these pictures to be a portrait of particular people. Rather, the figure is a stand-in for the viewer. My hope is that people will relate to the scene or the circumstance that the woman finds herself in- and place themselves into the picture. So, the woman is anonymous, but is everyone.
Your collection says so much with its humor! How do you keep things playful while making such a strong statement about domestic life and gender expectations?
I grew up in a household where you had to have a sense of humor, or you would just cry all the time! My mother was very witty, sarcastic, and found humor in everyday occurrences. I inherited her love of the absurdity of life, and try to show that in each picture. In a way, this is a tribute to my mother, who suffered awful situations yet, had a great time in life.