TEA WITH painter colleen herman

I actually don’t remember when I first met Colleen Herman, a painter who splits her time between her East Village apartment, upstate NY house, and Brooklyn studio, but I’ve been lucky enough to see her art shows in New York and Los Angeles and most recently, to drink TEA WITH her together in her art studio. This interview has been majorly cut down because Colleen is the kind of person that you can hang out with for HOURS talking about the way that the sky reflects the water in the Hudson Valley and while I know that my readers are interested in tea, I don’t know for certain whether that interest extends to the sky beneath which we drink it.

Which actually reminds me of a podcast.. (very brief aside..) I’ve been exercising more. Which means that I started listening to podcasts for basically the first time because I otherwise get so bored doing any kind of cardio, and I really like art critic Jerry Saltz’s instagram presence so I searched Jerry Saltz podcast before doing the steps the other day and what came up first was something truly random from 2022 with Jerry, about his life and background which included being a truck driver for ten years, but during it he was talking about how during cave man days (also, apologies if I’m butchering this retelling) we looked to fire for the spiritual, or we looked towards fire, in the caves for the connection to the sublime. And then, during Michelangelo’s time (which is how this topic came up, because he was talking about how people don’t really make paintings on ceilings anymore) but like 1400s-1700s in the west, humans started looking upward for the sublime, to the sky. In the 19th century it moved into nature, but he was saying that now, he thinks that we look for the sublime “the buzz you get from it all” in each other. He said to the interviewer,

“I’d rather be with you, two losers chatting, maybe than even standing in the Grand Canyon.”

Okay one other thing that I just need to say before sharing the interview and photos of Colleen which is truly off topic but just needs to be said. This is the best time of year, at least in New York, to eat dinner. Tomato season, cucumber season, melon season. The markets are — wow, incredible right now.

Okay! Here is TEA WITH Colleen Herman. I truly loved having this conversation about a month ago now and left feeling so inspired by Colleen’s work and the way that she lives her life. I’m excited to see what comes onto the empty canvases that I saw in her studio last month and love thinking about her sitting in one of her many chairs, having a cup of tea, and thinking about what she will paint that day.

She always had it wrapped up in an Hermes scarf. And it’s like you might need this scarf and you also might need this tea cup. - Colleen

Colleen (C) I love your ring!

Maria (M) It’s from Alice (Alice Waese was the first TEA WITH interview, read it here). I told her, before I was even dating my husband, that when I get engaged, I want her to make my ring.

C Did she cast it with the diamond inside?

M I have no idea, I don’t really know how it works?

C I did metal-smithing in college so I’m a dork when it comes to that stuff. Diamonds are a very hard stone so you can typically do something cool and use the stone at the same time whereas with other stones, because they’re softer, they’ll crack under the heat of casting the metal so you have to do it separately. But if they’re cast with a stone inside, it’s a more holistic situation from start to finish.

M How long have you been in this studio?

C It will be 4 years in July. I was in Tribeca, which sounds glamorous, but I was above a 7-11, Atomic Wings, and McDonalds, so the aroma of chicken fingers- and I’m a vegetarian- it was so gross. But then they decided to turn the building into condos. I came [to this studio] during covid and felt like there was potential here to grow and expand what I was making and to be amongst other artists here. Alex Crowder is downstairs, I have some other friends in the building and in the area, so that felt good.

M Has your work changed since moving here?

C I feel like my work is always changing in some weird way. It was all abstract at the beginning and in the past few years it’s been more floral leaning or landscape, pointing to something organic and nature in a more semi-specific way whereas before it all looked like chaos. I’m trying to embrace what’s coming in. I feel like it’s changed because I’m more comfortable with what’s happening. Does that ever happen with you?

M That sometimes happens to me with my writing. Like I’m going to Italy in a few weeks..

C For the retreat!

M Yes, for the retreat, and I realized that even though it’s a writing retreat, I think that I’m just going to watercolor paint while I’m there because I never get a chance to do that anymore.

C Yea, like you’ll be outside your comfort zone, so you want to do something new. That’s so exciting! Are you doing two retreats back to back?

M I was going to, but I’m going to Milan afterwards instead with my sister.

C You can go to Ginori!

M Yes! I kind of want to get a new tea set for my home. I have my grandmother’s old ones, but I also want my own.

C That you can pass down to your daughter.

M Exactly. And I’m thinking of Ginori.

C And like, do you get the full pink and green one or do you get a multi color set of all rainbow tea cups. The colors are so good. The green and pink combination is so beautiful.

M How do you know about Ginori?

C Prior to painting, I designed textiles for Calvin Klein for almost ten years and was very involved in that world, I went to Salone Mobile every year and Maison Object and was entrenched in it and it was on one of those trips when Ginori was coming out as not a dusty old grandma brand anymore. That’s when they introduced the new palette of colors.

M Do you do the art fair circuit now instead?

C I’ll be showing in Paris for the first time this fall!

M With your traveling and your work, what do you do tea wise?

C I don’t drink coffee at all so I bring matcha with me and I bring my whisk because I don’t want a clumpy cup. So that’s what I do as a morning ritual. When I’m going to see nieces and nephews, they know that I have to have my matcha in the morning and it always looks like fun so people want to have it together. It’s not just like coffee that’s been sitting there for three hours from whoever started it in the morning.

Also, with loose teas, I love the whole ritual of using the kettle and making a pot of tea in the studio. I find loose tea so soft and supportive to shift a mindset. I find that making the tea slows you down and then you get to use all the fun glassware.

M These [cups] are so cute!

C These are from Oaxaca, I just picked them up.

M Do you have a teaware collection?

C Behind that wall is my kitchen, back of house, changing room, storage, all that stuff. So I have a little dishware set and it’s fun to pull it out when there are visitors. But it’s also fun when I’m here alone, like if I need to switch out the energy, I’ll go to the back, make tea, pull a book from the shelf, freshen the eyes, freshen the palate.

M I’m actually really inspired by your studio setup because we don’t have any comfortable chairs or a couch in my studio. We don’t really have a chill spot. 

C If you count the chairs in here it’s silly. When I have a lot of chairs, I find that I sit in different places and it helps me have fresh eyes and know what to do. But the couch is huge. You need to be able to lay down.  You have to have a couch. This is Ikea from the 80s.

*at this point in transcribing this interview, I stopped for almost two hours and rearranged and cleaned the Masha Tea studio.* 

C  You’re catching me in this really weird pocket of staring at blank canvases, which feels really good, and a couple of things in progress. Whatever is around is in the field of vision and will show up somehow in the new pictures. Whether it’s a shade or a stroke or a color combination.

When I was in Mexico City this past April and May, I started working with these satin ribbons as a way to swatch and look at ribbons and work on color relationships and take a different direction with the palette.

 M I really like this situation! (pictured below)

C Well this [chair] was Isioma’s. I’m really into this urgency/safety orange. It feels really good to have this in here. I like to think of paintings more like sculptures and objects.

M So you drink matcha every morning and then.. You have tea in the studio sometimes?

C Yes, or in the evening.

M Do you have any tea cups or anything at home that is very special to you?

C I don’t know if it’s a woman thing, maybe it’s an everybody thing, but I feel like collecting vessels and cups and bowls on my travels is very special, even it’s a favorite glass that I found on the side of the road. At home, in the East Village, our apartment is very minimal. Our whole kitchen is black and white. We have, also from Oaxaca, these clay cups, very brown, earthy, every time you drink out of them, it smells like the ground. 

Upstate I have cups from Mallorca and Paris, but what you’re asking about the vessels just made me think of this woman Diane that I’ve traveled to India with, she’s a family friend. A really beautiful woman. She always had a Mary Poppins size bag and the whole world was in this purse of hers. And she would pull out a teacup - she was always ready with a teacup and a saucer in her purse.

M Is she older than you?

C Much, she’s nearly 70, 75 at this point and we were traveling probably 15 years ago so she was in her 60s. And I was like “What are you doing?” And she said “I’m a lady.” Because we were in some beautiful place looking at Indian cashmere and they asked, “do you want some chai?” And she said “I’ll take it in my cup” instead of a paper cup. I was just thinking of that woman with a tea cup in her bag. And it made me wonder are we going to be those women?

M Probably.

C I mean, are we now?

M I feel like bringing your own tea cup sounds so lovely. 

C I know. She always had it wrapped up in an Hermes scarf. And it’s like you might need this scarf and you also might need this tea cup.