Spencer Plumlee

“I approach each new piece trying to think about my work as a time capsule. What does it mean to preserve a moment?”

Thanks for taking the time to meet with us. Can you share some of the key moments or experiences from your past that led you to become a painter? Were there any specific artists or artworks that inspired you?

There wasn't any really specific moments, I've just always been creating. I've always been making art, even if it was horrible art, I just continued to make art. It's become sort of like a coping mechanism for life and an outlet for any and all things to invent or reinvent whatever I am thinking, and also a platform to make work and express myself in a way that I can change at any point as well. So there's not one piece, just the continuation, I would say. I've been painting, I think, since I was four years old and selling my work professionally since I was fourteen. So now I've been doing it, what is that? Twelve years now? I'm twenty-six. So a long time. That's just been pushing me forward with the momentum of following what I've already wanted to do.

What medium do you primarily work with and what draws you to it? Do you experiment with different mediums? And if so, how do they affect your artistic expression?

I primarily use acrylic and oil paints as my primary medium, but I do dabble in woodwork, light sculpture, things like that. Kind of all around. I've just started playing with airbrush, and I use gouache sometimes too, and charcoal (vine charcoal most of the time) as well. So I just play around with a lot of different stuff. I've been dipping my toe into ceramics too recently. My friend just got a kiln, so that's been exciting. I try not to limit myself on any medium and if I have an idea, even if it's bad, I'll try to follow it through and see what happens.

Your work has a very distinct style with bold color usage. Describe your typical creative process from the initial spark of an idea to the final brush stroke. How do you approach each new piece?

I approach each new piece trying to think about my work as a time capsule. What does it mean to preserve a moment? Preserve a present moment, while also thinking about what it means to be present. If you can recreate an experience, but also have an experience through a painting, whatever that means in the moment with the idea, it’s usually about chronicling life or chronicling a thought or the idea of being present.

“I approach paintings through a non-dualistic mindset, so just thinking about how two states of existence can exist at one time, even if they're in contradiction with each other; preserving a moment, but knowing that that moment is gone. Trying to make work that reflects those ideas is how I approach things.

Chronicling my life and the people that are around me, and the unique existence and privilege it is to know the people that are randomly around me, and not so randomly around me too, at the same time. I think about portraiture in that way too, where it's like if I didn't paint, would these people ever be painted? I think about that a lot too, and about all the people that don't know a painter and their faces never get painted, and that makes me sad. I think about that a lot too, and the 40,000 people that die every day and how many faces we won't get to see. I mean, really. I think about that a lot. I know that's dark, but I think about those things all the time and try to just use my time as a painter, as a privilege to capture what I'm seeing, who I get to know, and the unique aspects of that time passing, but still always trying to be present at the same time.

Many artists have recurring themes or concepts in their work. I feel like you've started to talk about that, but if you have anything else to add, what themes do you find yourself returning to? What draws you to explore them?

Well, I've been thinking a lot about death. I think it's just hilarious that Barbie came out, and was also talking about death at the same time and in a lot of similar ways. I think we ignore it or just put it off in a lot of ways, and it can always happen. It could happen randomly. It could happen right now. You know what I mean? And so I think about that a lot, and that derives what I choose to create, what I choose to focus on. But I don't want it to be... I don't want it to be only dark and only sad. I want it to be celebrations of life, celebrations of being present, how lucky we are if we get to see an older age than we are now and just how everything will change. I think about... I think about my friends dying all the time. If we're lucky, “if we're lucky,” we'll get to see if our friends are alive or not by the time that we're old, if we even get to be old.I think about that all the time, and I've been thinking about it recently.

“Experiencing mindful death and trying to keep it with us in a way that's not scary, but in a way heightens the present moment to a point where it's like: I take nothing for granted and I try to take nothing for granted and just expressing and feeling gratitude for every present moment. I try to place that into the paintings.

It goes back into that time capsule thing where even as the present moment moves past when I made that painting, I can still relate back and hold space for whatever I was feeling or whoever I was around at that time. So yeah, that's what I've been thinking about.

How has your style and technique evolved over the years? Are there any specific milestones or breakthrough moments in your artistic journey that you can share?

Yes. So for a long time, for like three years, I didn't use black or white in my paint. I've just now started to reintroduce only white, because I realized I didn't know how to use it, and that felt like a crutch again at the same time. Just using cools and warms of the primaries pushed the limits of what my color decisions would be, and that helped me really narrow down and diversify the color choices in a way, because I am working with such a limited palette. That really pushed me, I think, further to develop my color sensibilities, I would say.

Handling the entire surface of the painting, not only paying attention to what I'm focused on, but really touching every corner. Almost treating it like a grid in a way where I am still acknowledging the space around and not just a focal point. So that is one of the milestones I would say, that helped me make art better or make my art how I want it to be better.

Being able to go to these residencies and be around other people and see how they're problem-solving with paint has been really helpful and influential. The ability to have friends that are in the same career and space and life goals. The marathon of being an artist and being a painter has really just helped. So building that community, I would say, is a huge milestone for why I'm still able to do what I do, and why I have other people that I can talk to about what I do.

Seeing how you've evolved, what chapter or phase of your journey do you feel you're in currently?

I would say that I'm still in an early point in my career. I think once I'm 30, I can confidently say I'm mid-career. Even if I've been doing it for 12 years, I still feel like I'm early on. But in those early-on years, I feel like I've accomplished a lot. Just trying to push that momentum forward, I think, will allow me to say that I'm mid-career. I try to just be here and then just see what happens and not think too much, too “what my career could be,” because it's always changing and I don't want to place any limits on what that could look like. But at the same time, yeah, I would say I'm still “early career” because it is, like I said, a marathon of living and working and making work as long as I can. So yeah, it's a long time.

Where do you find inspiration for your art? Are there certain places, experiences, or emotions that consistently drive your creative ideas?

Again, I guess we touched on them a little bit, but I would say experiences drive everything. I think about what moments are rare in life and trying to capture that. My work aims to chronicle the human experience and my human experience and the people that are around me. I would say that just living, in general, really provides me with any materials and inspiration to paint from, and the people that I'm around specifically as well. Involving portraiture, I think, inspires what I want to put out there. I just think about those rare moments, and that's what I like to capture.

What makes you stay curious and engaged as you continue your artistic pursuits?

I stay curious by trying to be better with every new piece. I try to improve every single time I make new work, and that pursuit of just being better technically and conceptually, that never ends. It's absolutely endless. You can shoot a perfect arrow every single time after practicing, but there's always new milestones to make for art in so many different ways. And so I think that that ceiling-less, limitless pursuit, I think, is what keeps me curious and engaged.

Artistic pursuits often come with challenges. What are some of the most significant challenges you face as a painter and how do you overcome them? Additionally, what do you find most rewarding about being an artist?

The most rewarding thing about being an artist is the ability to paint and just keep doing it, not stopping for any exterior reason.

“I feel like I can always just return back to what I was calling earlier, “The Paint Dungeon.” I mean that in a good way. I love just locking myself in a room and painting and thinking about it and finding that flow state of creating.

Some of the challenges, I think, are just challenges that everyone experiences. Money. Capitalism! Being able to live, being able to trade people for art is amazing. Trade for food, trade for other art, trade for utilities, anything. That is both a reward and a challenge. The ability to sell the work, make money from it is always a problem. Stacking the money in a way that I can fund future endeavors and be able to keep producing and keep making art that I like, that is always a challenge. But I think, like I said, it's a marathon. Just continuing to build that up and build up those endeavors that make it easier for me to create art. Putting art at the focus of my life and letting the rest fall in place, I've always trusted that, and here I am and it's worked thus far. That doesn't make it an easy pursuit, but it's definitely a worthy and worth-it pursuit. So I would say, those are the rewards and challenges. It's mainly just like regular life challenges that go into already wanting to do something that's perceived as difficult. Because it is, it is difficult. But just being tenacious in that way, that I just keep doing it. Even if I lose money sometimes, that's okay too. And like I said, putting art at the forefront of my life has been the best reward, and challenge, at the same time.

I know you also do murals. How do you find these differ from your standard canvas paintings?

They're just bigger, they're just bigger. If I have a time crunch—usually there's more time crunches with murals, whether I'm renting equipment or it needs to be done for a certain event or something—in those cases, I'll have someone help me, like my boyfriend. He is a great assistant. Having that is the only difference, where I'll bring in people if I need to cover large amounts of wall one color or prime stuff really quickly. It becomes more of a group effort, in a way, to help get it going. But usually, it's still the same process, just involves… just bigger. It's just bigger.

When someone views your art, what emotions or thoughts do you hope to evoke in them? Is there a particular message or feeling you want your audience to take away?

It goes back, I think, to what I was saying earlier. I just want people to be present and know that this was a real experience. Look, just look. The more that you look, the more that you'll be rewarded by looking and by being present in general. Working that into our daily lives. I think that that's the most powerful tool that I could ever give to a viewer.

Just recognizing that these are real people, these are real things that are happening around us and not just, I don't know, frivolous ideas. They're real. Just knowing that after we're all dead, that these ideas are like time capsules, they’re history being painted. They're important to the people that were around at the time and were involved in the making of it.

“It's almost like... Almost like archaic tombs in a way. That's the theme of the next show. It's like a cemetery. It's headstones of my life. I still want people to be able to be present within the work, even if that time is gone, in the future, too.

Among your portfolio, do you have a favorite project or piece that holds special significance to you? What makes it stand out from the rest?

That's a hard question. I love all of my paintings, really. But I would say the one that I did, Tulsa 99 Years Later, it's out in the hallway. I would say that one because I made it into a community fundraiser at the same time, and we raised $4,000 to the Greenwood Cultural Center during the 2020 pandemic, quarantine, all the marches, everything. I never tried to make a fundraiser ever before. I never tried to actively grassroot-build community and bring people together through mutual aid. I was so terrified that it wouldn't work. Then it did. I was just ecstatic about that. Just reminding myself that not working in a vacuum is important, and building community through art is possible and powerful and real. I want to do that again. I just haven't found the right one that I want to use yet. But I would love to support the Greenwood Cultural Center again and make more fundraisers through painting accessible to our local community, because I really think mutual aid is important and valuable. I think that one really pushed my ideas over the edge of what is possible in enacting change in real situations, and not just 200 years after we're dead.

I think that that one and The Ecstasy of St. Vitus painting also had a similar community response wherein I connected to an experience that a lot of people have had. That in itself was also really powerful. It was fun to see how everyone's reaction to it was this bonding experience in a way, too.

Tulsa 99 Years Later

Can you tell us about the second one a little bit more?

Yeah. The Ecstasy of St. Vitus, it's a painting that I debuted at the second or third Art House in Tulsa. It's four by four foot, and it's like an amalgamation of different influences. The Ecstasy of St. Teresa is a sculpture in Italy that I really like that I based the pose off of. St. Vitus is a club downtown that everyone really enjoys and has good experiences in, that I know of. I wanted to create a community time capsule, not just for me, I mean, including me, but also including portraits of all my friends in the space. I think that that really impacted everyone who saw it and had been in the space, because it really drove home the thing that I'm trying to do in all my paintings, but not everyone has been in those spaces and had a connection to it. And so when they did, it became just almost this bigger cultural phenomenon that was really exciting to see how everyone reacted and interacted with it.

What's the painting scene like for you here in Tulsa? It looks like you're very active in the art scene. Tell us a bit about that.

I've been active in it for a long time. I've been active since I was fourteen, I would say, in the community.

“Tulsa is one of those places where the more that you put into it, I feel like the more you'll receive. The community is very loving and supportive and it's exciting to be a part of it. I feel like I've seen it grow astronomically since I was fourteen, and that's really exciting. I think it's an emerging art city. I think there's a lot of unique voices that come out of here. My goal is to just keep building and interacting with that community and seeing how it changes over time. I think it's just the beginning, really.

This is more of a fun question for you. I know you love to travel. Do you have any fun stories? Any other fun facts that you'd like your fans to know about you?

Ahhhh, my fans? Haha, no. I camp a lot. I rough it in my van a lot, and that's really fun. I'm very interested in insects and finding different bugs out there is probably… And rocks. Rocks and bugs are a fun fact, I guess, a hobby of mine.

I have lots of fun stories, but it's hard to... It's hard to think of one right now, but I have lots of fun stories where I've just seen wildlife. The last trip we went to Yellowstone and I saw six bears and two eagles 10 feet away from the car, huge. We almost hit a black bear, on accident. We didn't! But it came out of nowhere and we were like, “Oh, my gosh!” We're still going slow. They just ran out into the road, because that's their home. That was an experience. And just hearing weird noises at night, little groundhogs that scream next to your tent, just the sounds of the forest. We went snow hiking through New Mexico, and I almost fell off a mountain. So that was scary.

Yeah, just being safely reckless, and finding new adventures has been a real hobby of mine, and hiking, and just mindfully walking around and just looking at things in front of you has been really fun.

“I'm a huge fan of I-Spies, so I'll just sit and draw and just look for weird things that I haven't noticed yet in the forest and in all these places that we've hiked.

Looking ahead, what are your artistic goals and ambitions? Are there any new directions, techniques, or projects you are excited to explore in the future?

If I think about some of the top dreams, as an artist, I would love to do more work for musicians. I would love to do more album work. I would love to do a presidential portrait. I would love to do a tour, like a band almost, but tour around with a specific body of work. I would love to do more international shows. We showed in Italy once, and that's my only claim to international shows. I would love to do more and just travel more. But yeah, those are the dreams.

You have a solo show coming up next week. Tell us about that. Any other upcoming events we can find you and your work at?

I have a solo show September 8th at The Studio Tulsa, and it's called Psychedelic Cemetery. It's very much about all the concepts we've been about throughout this interview: holding mindfulness, being present, impermanence, death, life, all those things within us at all times. That's mainly what the show is about. It's going to be up there for a while. And then it got picked up by RSU, the same show, and it's going to be there October 10th through the 12th, I believe. And so it'll be up there for a month at Rogers State University and their Gary Moeller Gallery of the Fine Arts. So that's exciting!

“There's going to be plenty of opportunity to see the work. It's a huge show. It's got four interactive sculptures that I built by hand, thirty plus paintings, and a lot of them that I hadn't even shown, I haven't posted online about them. So just a lot of new, exciting work. My friends are going to be making food at The Studio show, food and drinks. And so it'll be really fun and hopefully just like a party, but surrounded by art. So that's what is on the up and up.

You teach painting as well. What are your best tips for anyone out there who might be looking to learn?

Don't be afraid to make bad art. It's okay. It's okay to be new at something. It's okay to be learning about stuff. Don't let the fear of starting make you never make work. I would say use your resources that are available to you. If you can audit a college class. If you can't do those things, YouTube University is an amazing place to learn things. Reaching out to people that are local to you if they need assistance, that have work that you admire. If there's any bigger studios, like ceramic studios, that you could go help at and work at. Surround yourself with the thing that you want to learn and that will always yield the best results. Just really dive in if you can. Start off as small or as big as you want to and don't let the fear of failure stop you.