Anthony Haden-Guest on THE VOICES OF SILENCE Group Show

By ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST July 29, 2025

This show is about the processes artists go through in the making and developing of their work, such as that broody silent period as they await the bobbing of fruitful material and useable ideas to the surface. The processes differ with each and every artist, of course, so to S.L. Fuller first. In the early 80s S.L, yes, she prefers initials, was the lead singer with a hot band, Kid Creole and the Coconuts – Remember Stool Pigeon? If not, check it out - and she took up painting while sailing. “I was doing primitive figures but it was just simple stuff,” she said. But she did get attention from a conservancy in Dallas, Texas, alongside a lake in which a woman had drowned in the 1920s. It was doing a hundred year anniversary. ”This gala event was going to be called Lady of the Lake,” Fuller said. A woman from the conservancy asked Fuller “Can you draw a woman representing lady of the lake? I know you love everything Deco.”

  Meaning Art Deco natch. Answer Yes.

  “In 15 or 20 minutes I drew a woman walking on water and blowing bubbles to the moon,” says Fuller. That would be the birth of the Les Demoiselles, a group of drawings of what Fuller describes as over-privileged young women. “Every morning after that it was like I was being channeled,” she said. “For 26 mornings I would get up at 6.30 in the morning and draw another girl.” Each with a nifty caption, such as Daphne drove her own Delage barefoot and dressed to the nines. And the silence was crucial.  “As a former recording artist it was a rare and necessary place to regroup my thoughts and emotions, “ Fuller said. “When I paint or draw, I am silent for hours.”

  Stuck. one of the strong fabric portrait pieces by the Brooklyn-based artist, Alayana Coverly in the show, was motivated by her fear that women would lose their access to healthcare. “I think this word “silence” has such a weighted feeling right now” she has written. “But as artists we will continue to make our voices heard.”

ALAYNA COVERLY , Stuck , Oil on Canvas - 48 x 36 inches - 2020

   Many artists decide on their art career early. Not so Bill Buchman. He was at school on a houseboat in in Amagansett on Long Island sound, taking classes in figure drawing and painting, a fun diversion for – his description - a frustrated sixteen year old. “We had canvases and oils and drawing materials and nude models,” he said. “Every morning I would do a drawing for two hours and every afternoon I would finish an oil painting. It just came out of me. And then having long walks on the beach and thinking this is what I’ve been looking for. This fulfilled all my worldly desires. I knew at this moment that this was what I was going to do. And I came back from that and announced it to my parents. Who were absolutely horrified. They thought I was going to become an engineer or something. The die was cast right there.”

BILL BUCHMAN, Zentopia 4, Acrylic on 300lb. Arches Paper, 30 x 22 inches, 2025
 

   Silence is on the mind of Carol Bolger. “I always used to be running, running, running,” she says. “I was afraid if I sat too long I would never get up. Now I focus on sitting still and not always having to be doing something. So I’m going to go to the water’s edge, I’m not going to take a book or a phone or anything. And I just sat and sat and sat. And over the years I’ve gotten very comfortable with it. I’ve grown roots in stillness. Working the way I work it’s really meditative. I’ll put it up and bash away, sometimes you wreck it, sometimes you make it better”.

  How often does she wreck a piece?

  “Let me give you a number. I would say 40 percent of my work I just throw away. Or I use parts of it. Or I paint over it. That is also important. I never used to let myself do that”.

CAROLE BOLGER - Xenophora Pallidula - 40 x 30 - Graphite, Gouache , Acrylic on Arches Paper - 2024 
 

    So to Evan Sebastian Lagache. What age was he when he realized what he was going to do? It was 2013 or 2014, he says, and he was in his senior year in high school. “I dropped acid one day and just decided to paint. I don’t know what told me to paint but I remember the first painting I did. It was after I read Siddartha by Herman Hesse. My English teacher asked  us to do an assignment, to represent the book. So it was a painting of Gautama meditating in the woods by the Bodhi tree to become the Buddha.

EVAN SEBASTIAN LAGACHE - Stratus - Acrylic on Canvas - 48 x 60 inches - 2023
 

S.L. FULLER - Taylor - Ink on Arche Paper - 24 x 18 inches - 2022-2024

  “And after that I also wanted to taste Nirvana. So I found a joy in painting and I enjoyed the visual and mental escapes that psychedelics provided.
And I loved painting as the outlet during that time period.”

   What effect does acid have on art-making? Can you distinguish between canvases painted tripping and painted straight?

   “There’s no real difference,” Lagache said. “The wires that are connected kind fire off all at the same time. Your body starts to perceive the deeper levels of understanding in a metaphysical way . “

   You make it sound really desirable, I observed.

  “Yeah?” Lagache said. He laughed. “I don’t do it anymore. I’ve seen too much, man. It’s about gaining understanding and growing.”

   And the silence?

  “In a city as loud as New York art was my escape. The noisy bustling of the world around me, so much action, cars honking, people talking, someone skating over there, even in the middle of Washington Square Park, the moment I started painting the whole world faded away. And I found myself in a place of silence.”  WM