CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/10/2017

"I think painting is my sexual preference." Amy Sillman: The ALL-OVER

Amy Sillman’s 2011 oil painting “Black Doorway” is reproduced from The ALL-OVER, the beautiful new monograph from Dancing Foxes and Portikus. “I started painting seriously after studying Japanese language, literature, and writing for a year in college,” Sillman says in conversation with interviewer Fabian Schöneich. “But, once I got there: oh, painting! Painting has taught me everything I know on this earth! Sensuality, depth, surface, changes, the unknown, the hard-to-understand, the mysterious, the high, the low, the poetic, the intellectual, the dumb, the immediate. Oil painting specifically because I can change it endlessly; I don’t like the plasticky quality of acrylic paint. But that’s just a material choice. Painting is like a love affair. I think painting is my sexual preference.”