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ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists

Advertise on podcast: ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists

Rating
★★★★★
4.8
from
46 reviews
This podcast has
85 episodes
Language
English
Publisher
Isaac Mann
Explicit
No
Date created
2022/03/29
Latest episode
2026/10/22
Average duration
80 min.
Release period
16 days

Description

Welcome to ARTMATTERS! This podcast is a passion-project, a one-man show, a her-cu-le-an effort, by the Detroit-based artist Isaac Mann. Every episode is an in-studio conversation. Episodes drop every two weeks, with a new, fantastic, talented, professional artist each time. Topics can, and often do, include technical practices, daily studio insights, studio notes, career advice, influences, relationship advice, tips for a healthier practice, and a healthier life in gen and, as always, hope, depression, expectation, success and failure.  If you’re enjoying this podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber! 

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Check latest episodes from ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists podcast


#84 with By Spruce
2026/10/22
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists My guest today is Hazel, the founder of By Spruce, a New York-based knitwear brand. She is largely self-taught and learned her craft through YouTube videos, experimentation, and trial and error. I joined Hazel in her studio to talk about how, since launching in December 2024, she has been developing her own designs and building a business around her love of knitting, crochet, and sewing. We cover knitting machines, sewing patterns, and yarn, as well as the subtle art of balancing a creative project with a full-time job. We also talk about Hazel’s constant refrain when she designs: “Would I wear this?” And she shares her plans to launch a knitting circle in her studio, a space for makers to gather and connect. We close with some advice for anyone sitting on an idea and waiting for it to be perfect: just start. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]   host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: By Spruce www.byspruce.com insta: @byspruce_   Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#83 with Matthew Miller
2026/10/08
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists My guest today is the painter Matthew Miller, a Brooklyn-based artist who has exhibited in New York and abroad. He received his BA from Messiah College in 2004 and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2008, where he was awarded a postgraduate fellowship. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and Two Coats of Paint, among others. I joined Matthew in his studio last month to talk about side paintings, oddball works, and the complicated feelings that can come with using your own face as subject matter. We discuss his obsessive search for the perfect paint mixture, the literal hundreds of hours it takes him to finish a painting, and his ongoing battle with his own technique. The second half of our conversation turns to the New York Academy of Art, where Matthew and I both earned our MFAs. We reflect on the gap between our memories of the school and our feelings about it now, including its handling of the controversies surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and the Academy’s administration. From there, we move on to student debt, advice for younger artists considering grad school, and building community. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]  host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Matthew Miller www.matthewmiller.nyc insta: @matthewmiller   Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#82 with Greg Burak
2026/08/27
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists. My guest today is painter Greg Burak. Born in Haverstraw, New York, Greg received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Painting from Indiana University. His most recent solo exhibition was at March Gallery in New York, with previous solo exhibitions at Fortnight Institute. His work has appeared in group exhibitions at Turn Gallery, Venus Over Manhattan, and 303 Gallery. He lives and works in Queens, New York. Now get ready for some real painting talk! I sat down with Greg Burak in his Queens studio to talk about how a painting gets built (and rebuilt) and what it means to keep changing the rules on yourself. We talk about moving between acrylic and oil, his shift away from flatness and toward forcing space into a painting, and how a problem with a figure's feet sent him down a rabbit hole of perspective and volume. We get into rhyming shapes, the weight of placing a hand, and the perfect pitch of Corot. We also discuss the tension between observation and invention that has run through his entire practice. We talk about how Greg sets new parameters for each body of work in response to the last, the difference between single and multi-figure compositions, and artists like Cézanne, Tintoretto, and the Quattrocento. Finally, we get into finishing, knowing when to stop, procrastination, and what a good day in the studio actually looks like. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!  If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected] host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Greg Burak www.gregburak.com insta: @greg.burak Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#81 with Beldan Sezen
2026/08/13
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists My guest today is painter and artist book maker Beldan Sezen, a Turkish-European artist based in New York and Amsterdam. Her paintings, held in private collections internationally, are built through a process of layered, gestural abstraction — response and revision until the composition resolves. Her painting practice sits alongside a long-running practice in artist books, which are held in the permanent collections of the Getty Research Institute, the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Stanford University, MIT, and the Herzog August Bibliothek, among others. I sat down with Beldan Sezen in her Gowanus studio to talk about her move from graphic novels and comics to artist books and painting, and the question that drives that shift: what is the form the work wants to be told in? We discuss the immense freedom of the artist book, her philosophy of intuition and experimentation and how it's never what she wants, but always what the work wants. We get into the difference between creating something new and reproducing, the rhythm of book days and painting days, and her relationship with painting itself. Finally, Beldan shares her love of fellow artists like Nancy Spero, Anselm Kiefer, Charles Schulz, and more. And we close on the importance of always asking for help and Beldan's complicated feelings about titling new work.Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!  If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected] host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Beldan Sezen www.beldansezen.com insta: @beldan_sezen Contact Cypher ( Comics commissions for human rights and social justice storytelling) Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#80 Spectacular! Leo Ambrosio, ARTMATTERS' Youngest Guest (Bonus Episode)
2026/08/06
Welcome back to a very special episode of ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists.  This BONUS mini episode celebrates Episode #80 of the Pod - and features a very special guest. The youngest one in ARTMATTERS history, in fact. Before we begin, I want to take a moment to say thank you. To everyone who's listened, shared the show, supported on Patreon, and to all the artists and friends who kept telling me to keep going over these past four years. Because projects like this are funny. They don't come with obvious signs that they're working. There's no paycheck. And because it takes so much time, out of my own studio practice and out of the time artists generously give me, there have definitely been moments where I've had to ask myself not whether I believe in it, but whether the value is worth what it costs everyone involved. And whenever I've hit those moments, there have always been people who reminded me that these conversations matter. Thank you. Since we're hitting 80 this week I'll also mention that incorporating video into this project has definitely added to the overhead and time the show requires. So in the spirit of an NPR pledge drive, if you've been here a while and you're in a position to support, becoming a patron or making a one-time donation would mean a lot. I want to keep this show listener supported and ad-free as long as I can so if you'd like to help, that's the best way to do it.  My guest today is Leo Ambrosio. Leo is eleven years old, going into the sixth grade, and he recently exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum. It began with a program called the Basquiat Project.  The Basquiat Project is an arts education program developed by the Brooklyn Nets in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. It ran in fifty Brooklyn middle and high schools, asking students to make work about bullying, anxiety, and how you move through it. Out of everyone who submitted, about a hundred pieces made it into the show at the Brooklyn Museum. Leo was one of them.  For today’s episode, Leo and his mom joined me in my Bushwick studio. Leo got his hands dirty and helped me prepare some new paintings, then we sat down with the mics and had this conversation. We talk about Leo’s mixed media painting that was selected for the Basquiat Project, about finishing a painting and second guessing yourself, about Frida Kahlo and the Knicks trophy and drawing hands and art camp.   Enjoy the episode! The Basquiat Project  Patreon  Isaac Mann Leo Ambrosio
#79 with Matthew Weinstein
2026/07/30
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists My guest today is artist and writer Matthew Weinstein. Over the course of his career, Matthew has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries throughout the United States and internationally. His solo museum exhibitions include the Johnson Museum at Cornell University, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna. In addition to painting, his practice has also included writing, animation, film, and interactive media. His work has been featured in The New York Times, T Magazine, Artforum, Art in America, and The New Yorker, and is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Denver Art Museum, and numerous other public and private collections. I sat down with Matthew in his Greenpoint studio, where he told me why he believes every painting has a beauty mandate and why he distrusts art whose primary goal is to mean something, saying that meaning can feel like litter in a painting.  We discuss beauty versus prettiness, humor, queerness, and the way doubt and impatience are ever-present in his studio practice. Matthew also reflects on obsession, arguing that for some artists it isn't a choice, and that it is neither good nor bad, but simply the thing that fuels the work. We discuss the creative crisis that led him to explore animation and why painting and writing remain the bedrock of everything he does. Matthew also discusses his airbrush collaboration paintings,  the influence the artist Hiroshege has had on his current work and why it has taken Matthew years to figure out how to paint a straight line. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]  host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Matthew Weinstein www.matthewweinstein.com insta: @matthewaweinstein Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#78 with Erin M Riley
2026/07/16
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists Erin M. Riley is a Brooklyn-based artist whose large-scale woven tapestries explore intimacy, memory, trauma, and identity through meticulously constructed images assembled from personal photographs, found imagery, and internet culture.  She received her BFA from MassArt and her MFA from Tyler School of Art, is represented by P·P·O·W in New York, and has exhibited at institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, Museion in Italy, and the 16th Lyon Biennale. Her work is held in numerous public collections, and she is the recipient of both a United States Artists Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Art Purchase Prize. I sat down with Erin M. Riley in her Brooklyn live-work studio to talk about why she intentionally lives where she works and how weaving dictates every aspect of her daily life, physical health, exercise, fasting, posture, breathing, and endurance. We explore the importance of slowness, what it feels like to spend four months making a work you can't truly see until the very end, and the dramatic reveal after removing a finished tapestry from the loom. We talk about designing and improving weaving tools, the importance of keeping a personal archive, her fascinating system of hand-dyeing, mixing, and preparing yarn before she weaves a single stitch, and the changing place of textiles in contemporary art, and whether the old art-versus-craft debate is finally vanishing. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]  host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Erin M. Riley www.erinmriley.com insta: @erinmriley Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#77 with David Humphrey
2026/07/02
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists Today's guest is David Humphrey, a New York-based painter whose work has been shown nationally and internationally, and who has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in the art world, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize. He teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University, is represented by Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York, and is the author of Blind Handshake, an anthology of David’s art writing. On today's episode I ask David about how he knows when a painting is finished, his works on paper, and what late-career de Kooning taught him about the surface of a painting. We get into what David calls the "ecology" of his studio, the sociability of paintings, decision-making in the studio, and the question of shallow vs implied space in his newer work. We also talk about his recent show at Kate Werbel Gallery which features works on paper, wall painting and installation. Finally, David reflects on navigating privilege and provocation during his career, including a memorable and charged moment at a Hunter College lecture that I was actually in the audience for. We finish up by talking about the stakes of painting and the absurdity, weakness, and humor inherent in the medium. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!  If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]  host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: David Humphrey www.davidhumphreynyc.com insta: @aikenhump Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#76 with Margaret Curtis
2026/06/18
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists Our guest today is Margaret Curtis, a feminist painter born in Bermuda whose vivid, densely layered canvases explore power dynamics at both the personal and societal level. Margaret is an inaugural recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, and her work first gained national recognition in Marcia Tucker's landmark Bad Girls exhibition at the New Museum in New York in 1994. Since then she has shown at the Brooklyn Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Wexner Center, with recent solo shows at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Post Times Gallery in New York City. Her work has been reviewed in the Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Harper's, and is held in permanent collections throughout the United States. I sat down with Margaret in the last days of her exhibition entitled ‘S at Post Times in Lower Manhattan. I set up the mics and the cameras and Margaret spoke to me about endurance, dumb mark-making, her beloved Quinacridone gold and how she describes a day in her studio as 30,000 nonverbal decisions, and feeling practically broken by the end of it. We talk Cricut, Frisket, Speedy Carve and Dibond as well as the cake decorating tools that she snatched up in a deliberate act of rebellion against her painting instructors - and originally kicked off this predilection for alternative mark-making, Margaret explains why she believes style is a market pressure, not something worth pursuing, and that each painting demands its own visual language. She also talks Jack Whitten, gives some great final advice, and tells me why painting has always been "her friendliest enemy.” Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]  host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Margaret Curtis www.margaretcurtisart.com insta: @margarcur Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#75 with Catherine Haggarty
2026/06/04
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists Today's guest is Catherine Haggarty, a Brooklyn-based painter, educator and founder whose work has been featured in Artforum, the New York Times, Hyperallergic, and BOMB magazine, among others. Catherine has exhibited widely across New York, LA, and Miami and has been a visiting artist at institutions including Cornell, RISD, Pratt and Rutgers, where she also earned her MFA. She co-founded NYC Crit Club in 2017 and also created the Canopy Program, a one-year mentorship platform now serving artists all around the world. On today's episode I joined Catherine in her Crown Heights studio for an expansive conversation. We discussed the emotional weight of years of unsold work in storage to what it really means to slow down and become more deliberate as an artist. Catherine speaks to me about motherhood, sustaining a practice over decades, the difference between style and voice and what led her to co-found NYC Crit Club and build the Canopy Program into the global platform it is today. We also talk about drawing, watercolor and other painting practices, as well as the importance of saving money and taking care of your body. Enjoy the conversation! Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected] host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com  insta: @isaac.mann guest: Catherine Haggarty www.catherinehaggarty.com  insta: @catherinehaggarty  insta: @thecanopyprogram  insta: @nyccritclub Canopy Program Application - NOW OPEN Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#74 with Brittany Fanning
2026/05/07
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists On this week’s episode I’m joined by Brittany Fanning. Brittany Fanning graduated from the University of north Virginia, and moved to South Korea in 2015. She spent seven years painting the neighborhoods around her, drawn particularly to the contrast between new Brutalist structures and traditional hanoks.  After relocating to Los Angeles in 2022 her work shifted toward the city’s architecture, flora, and fauna. Fanning  began exhibiting in Korea in 2018 and has since shown at Steve Turner and The Lodge in Los Angeles, Galerie BHAK in Seoul, as well as Mindy Solomon in Miami and Artemin in Taipei. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Portray Mag, and Type 7. She is currently based in New York.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ I joined Brittany Fanning in her studio, surrounded by rolled and unrolled canvases and at least one painting she's threatening to destroy. We get into her process: the impatience that launches a painting before the plan exists, and the small linen studies she uses to dig herself out of the compositional holes that impatience creates. We also talk about her push away from photo reference, her complicated relationship with the figure, and her black-and-white paintings. And then we get into the art world stuff: galleries that don't pay, galleries that disappear, and why Brittany has made a bit of a tradition of calling people out on Instagram right around the holidays. It's a hell of a conversation, articulate, transparent, and resilient. Without spoiling it, I'll just say: good luck to any gallery that tries to mess with her. Listener note: Brittany's candor about her experiences with Pictorum and OTI inspired me to share my own, with Primary Projects in Miami. It felt like the right time. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!    If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected] host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Brittany Fanning www.brittanyfanning.com insta: @brittanyfanning Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#73 with David Ambrose
2026/04/23
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists On this week’s episode I’m joined by David Ambrose. David Ambrose was born in 1960 and lives and works in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He received his BA in Fine Arts from Muhlenberg College and his MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania. He has exhibited widely over the past four decades, including solo exhibitions at the New Jersey State Museum, where he was the subject of a mid-career retrospective, as well as Gold/Scopophilia in Montclair and Tibor de Nagy in New York. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at Pierogi and Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, among many others, and is held in public collections including the Library of Congress. Ambrose is the recipient of multiple fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, most recently in 2022 to 2023. He has also taught at institutions including Parsons, Pratt, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. I sat down with David in his New Jersey studio last month and we discussed the surface of a painting, building paintings, building objects, planning for abstraction, materials and pigments, damage and repair, crosshatching, carving, and the use of non-traditional tools. David Ambrose also explains why there’s no rush, how linear thinking has served him through the years, allowing for change, quality and beauty, daily practices, handling rejection, building  community and his new works on paper. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!    If you have any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]   host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: David Ambrose www.davidambrosestudio.com insta: @david_m_ambrose_art Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#72 with Will Hutnick
2026/04/09
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists On this week’s episode I’m joined by Will Hutnick. Will is a painter based in Sharon, Connecticut. He holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BA from Providence College. Hutnick is a 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Painting. His solo exhibitions include High Noon in New York, the McDonough Museum of Art, Geary Contemporary, and Pamela Salisbury Gallery. His work has been featured in The New York Times, New American Paintings, and Hyperallergic. He's held residencies at Yaddo, the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, and Vermont Studio Center. Will currently serves as Director of Artistic Programming at the Wassaic Project, a nonprofit that uses art and education to foster social change. Will and I sat down last month at High Noon in Tribeca, where his solo exhibition  “Time’s a Goon” was on display. Will and I discussed planning a painting, starting a painting, new content, landscapes, working on 15-year-old canvases, his printmaker background, the challenges of editing and finishing and his love of works on paper. We also discuss chance, noise, and the lack of control, decoration, orchestration and the arbitrary, Will’s work as Director at the Wassaic Artist Residency and the simple efficacy of the Thank You Note. Before we begin, a reminder that ARTMATTERS is entirely listener-supported. If you want to support the show and help make more conversations like this possible, consider joining the ARTMATTERS Patreon. Supporters get video versions of every episode, as well as more behind-the-scenes content. Find the link in the description or go to patreon.com/artmatterspodcast Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]   host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Will Hutnick www.willhutnick.com insta: @willhutnick Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
#71 with Bruce Tapola
2026/03/26
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists On this week’s episode I’m joined by Bruce Tapola. Bruce Tapola was born and raised in Ohio and received his BFA from the University of Utah, and his MFA from Montana State University. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received several awards, including the McKnight Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship (1995, 2001, 2017). His work has been written about in Artforum, The New York Times, New American Painting, Art Papers, and New Art Examiner, and is in numerous public and private collections. He taught painting and drawing at St. Cloud State University in MN from 2000 to 2022, and in addition to his studio practice, Bruce is a member of the artist collectives Paintallica, Free Art School, and Artpolice (RIP). Bruce lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota. I sit down with Bruce back in December in Saint Paul, in his backyard studio with a wood-burning stove. It was a cold day, but the studio was cozy and Bruce, I discovered, as you will shortly, is a talker so we covered a lot of ground. Bruce discusses rejecting cleverness, when something smells like art, humor in art, sameness in imagination, screaming colors, sneaking up on a painting, magic, ceramics,  the price of art, emptying-out content, outsider art, having a family of artists and painting the perfect cloud. Before we begin, a reminder that ARTMATTERS is entirely listener-supported. If you want to support the show and help make more conversations like this possible, consider joining the ARTMATTERS Patreon. Supporters get video versions of every episode as well as more behind-the-scenes content.  Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!   If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]   host: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Bruce Tapola insta: @btapola
#70 with Hiba Schahbaz
2026/03/12
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists On this week’s episode I’m joined by Hiba Schahbaz. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz trained in traditional Indo-Persian miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Her practice spans oil, wood, paper, black tea, and water-based pigments. Schahbaz received an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute and has exhibited internationally since 2002. Recent exhibitions include the FLAG Art Foundation, Almine Rech Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and Jeffrey Deitch, as well as a public art commission for Rockefeller Center produced with Art Production Fund. Her current retrospective, Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden, on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, brings together roughly fifteen years of work tracing her evolution from the disciplined traditions of miniature painting to expansive, immersive works. I sat down with Hiba in her Bushwick loft studio and asked her about the “aha” moment - when a new idea begins to take shape. We also talk about cut-outs and shifting scale, the difference between one-off paintings and a sustained flow state, learning from mistakes, and why she never lets a painting leave the studio before the idea feels fully resolved. We talk materials and process, how Hiba starts a painting, and how she approaches large commissions, museum projects, and multi-panel works differently. Hiba discusses maintaining a daily studio practice and how it shifts with seasonal rhythms, the difficulty and necessity of waiting for ideas to develop, and the importance of physical health in the studio and taking responsibility for one’s body over time. Finally, we talk about avoiding creative burnout through continuous learning, and why Schahbaz believes in committing fully to the path of an artist without a Plan B. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter! If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!    If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]    host: Isaac Mann  www.isaacmann.com  insta: @isaac.mann  guest: Hiba Schahbaz  www.hibaschahbaz.com  insta: @hiba_schahbaz Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.

Podcast reviews

Read ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists podcast reviews


4.8 out of 5
46 reviews
★★★★★
NeweStartFarm 2026/07/11
Great Podcast
I listen while I’m working. It’s wonderful to learn about others’ processes. I got a real kick out of the David Hornung interview. He taught in Freshm...
★★★★★
UARK Painting 2026/01/15
Takes the time
Takes the time to really dig deep into the thinking and processes of guests—gentle pulls it out of’em. Nothing superficial here.
★★★★★
Grayson$ 2025/11/22
Love this podcast!!
This podcast is greattttt for people who want to learn about a diverse range of artists of today in all types of mediums. As a young artist myself I’m...
★★★★★
Nerdpatch 2024/02/01
Valuable show for artists
5 stars. This show is a great asset for artists. So many honest and important conversations. It’s hard and often demoralizing trying to be an artist a...
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