Keltie Ferris and Peter Halley on the Mysterious Joys of Making a Painting
b'Artists Peter Halley and Keltie Ferris first met sometime in the mid-2000s, at the height of the abstract painting revival. Halley, a pioneering Neo-Conceptualist renowned for his disciplined grids, was head of painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art; Ferris, a graduate student with a knack for wielding fluid materials like spray paint.\\xa0\\nNevertheless, their work had a lot in common: a love of color, especially jangly fluorescents; an embrace of digital influences; and a desire to release painting from both its figurative and abstract forebears.\\n\\nThrough the course of the teaching relationship, each found a respect for the other\\u2019s practice, and the conversation has continued\\u2014even if the two artists don\\u2019t actually talk as much as they once did. To pit their paintings against each other today is like seeing estranged cousins reunite: time has changed them, but you can\\u2019t deny the shared DNA.\\n\\nAs New York\\u2019s first IRL art fair kicked off last week with the Armory Show, both Halley and Ferris presented new works at Independent Art Fair, known in certain circles as the \\u201cthinking person\\u2019s fair,\\u201d which debuted at the Battery Maritime Building in downtown Manhattan. Ahead of the fair, the teacher and his former student reunited to catch up and exchange ideas. Artnet News\\u2019s Taylor Dafoe tagged along (virtually) to record the results.\\n\\nWhat followed was a rare glimpse at two artists talking shop, in a freewheeling discursive conversation about about color, working methods, and what it means to make non-figurative painting in a time when figuration reigns supreme.'