WALTER PRICE on the cover of The Brooklyn Rail | in conversation with Michelle Grabner

On the occasion of his solo exhibition Pearl Lines at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis—on view through December 8—WALTER PRICE joined artist and Brooklyn Rail contributor Michelle Grabner for a conversation, now in print.

"Michelle Grabner: I want to segue to color, and I’m going to give you some observations on color because color, I believe, is as important to you as your embrace of line quality. Friedrich Nietzsche said all that has given color to existence still lacks history. John Ruskin declares color as sacred. And Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that color spurs us to philosophize. I’m wondering, what is your thinking about color? How do you locate it in the world, and how do you think about it in your paintings?

Walter Price: Color, for me, is more about play and dancing. I like to make paintings with color palettes that are both congruent and incongruent. I don’t think each color has to get along, because when you’re working in a workplace, everybody doesn't get along, but y’all work together to make sure that company is good. So I kind of see it as that.

Also it’s a way to dance around the politics, being a Black artist, you know certain colors or certain figures—if you paint them brown or black, it starts to read into politics, Black life, and all of this stuff. So I feel like color is also a device that I use to work with and against how people read my paintings based on my biography. But mostly I approach color as play."

Read the full interview here.