Philip Mullen

“It’s a very fortunate blessing to find something in life that you like enough that you do it before you’re paid for it.” 

Philip Mullen is a painter and professor emeritus. Philip Mullen reflects on decades of artmaking and mentoring and why South Carolina and a bathtub shaped his creative life. 

Interview

Transcript

Nora Smith 00:00 

Okay, there we go. Alright, to start. What do you do for work, and where are you currently working from?  

Philip Mullen 00:07 

Well, I’m a painter of large acrylic paintings, and I have a studio in Columbia. Great. It’s, my studio is designed for large paintings. It’s 1300 square feet made as a studio for that. Actually, when I first built the studio in 1989 and when, right after I built it, a national magazine was running this. It was called The Artist Magazine, and I think it may have had the biggest circulation of any art magazine at the time, because it was, it was aimed at a really clever group, and that was amateur artists who think they’re pros, very large audience, but it’s, you know, it’s a great audience. It’s a wonderful thing for people to go into. But they used mine as an example for how to set up for big paintings.  And the two, the two items that kind of got them interested was, I needed a big sink. Big sinks are really expensive, but mobile home Bathtubs are really pretty cheap, and you can mount them up high, like a sink. Of course, the guys who installed it kept saying, what are you going to have a ladder to get into this thing? No, no, guys, it’s a sink. It’s a sink. And then during the time I did, it was, was I was represented for 35 years by David Finley galleries in New York.  And those shows, you know, I had, like I said, 14 solo shows with them over the 35 years. And those shows often would have 40 to 45 pieces, half of which have six foot dimension, or half of which just had a four foot dimension, and maybe a few larger one, ones included. And because, the way I do my edges, I can’t set them down, but I’d have a lot of paintings collected up at any one given time. And I designed a very simple rack that I could hang 46 foot paintings on without without the edges touching anything crazy more answer than you probably needed. Oh no, that’s perfect. I warn you, I was once interviewed on the radio, and after 10 minutes, the interviewer said, Mr. Mullin, I was kind of hoping to ask a second question. 

Nora Smith  02:45 

Okay, well, this one kind of wraps in with the first one. How long have you been working there, and what is your official job title?  

Philip Mullen  02:53 

Well, my only official job title now is artist. And I guess I have a sort of official job title as distinguished professor emeritus from USC. I had a very good arrangement with USC. I taught there from 69 to 2000 and, but I took nine. I did not teach in summers, and I took nine years of leave during that time. So, I taught 22 because those New York shows took an enormous amount of time to put together. You really put it this way, my art gallery friends were very suspicious of my teaching, because they said, If you teach, you can’t paint enough. And my teaching friends were very suspicious of my art gallery’s success because they said, You can’t sell without selling out. And each of those things probably has some basis in possibility, but there’s certainly things you have to watch out for.  

Nora Smith 04:06 

Yeah, well, you just do, you do it all. 

Philip Mullen 04:10 

Well, I was a bit of an obsessive worker for decades and decades. It didn’t make me socially very interested, but I had a lot of artwork done. And the teaching, you know, the teaching like that, was wonderful, because I didn’t end up doing it quite it wasn’t like I was doing it all the time. You know that one period where I literally was taking half, where I had 12 years and only taught during fall semesters, yeah, and worSo, SSo,it made my teaching much more exciting for me, and it was like a chance to talk to bright young people about the only thing I knew anything about. And it it, you know, while I’m sure there were other. Teachers that were more talented as teachers than I was. The one thing I could bring to it was especially like the graduate students might see me working on a particular painting and then end up seeing that painting reproduced in arts magazine, for example. Yeah, really. And so it brought the, the sense, I think, to students, that it could be something bigger. That was especially to actually, before I built the studio in 89 because the I had a studio at the university furnished and, you know, graduate students and undergraduates were in and out of that while I was down there. 

Nora Smith 05:40 

That’s so cool.  

Philip Mullen 05:42 

Well, I tell you, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a very fortunate blessing to find something in life that you like enough that you do it before you’re paid for it. You do it if you’re paid for you do it if you’re not paid for it, you you know people, I said, Oh, man, you’re so disciplined. Yeah, you’re always in the studio. I wasn’t disciplined. I was self-indulgent. I was doing what I know, that’s what I wanted to be doing.  

Nora Smith 06:11 

Yeah? Super cool Okay, so this is more of a question specific to your area, okay, in the creative field in South Carolina. What is one thing you love about working in the creative field in South Carolina? 

Philip Mullen 06:29 

Well, one thing that was that I found really great at first, when I was young and needed to get get grants for something was that while there may not be as many grants here as there are in a bigger city, when you stop to think about how many artists are per grants available, it’s pretty rich here. When I got with my gallery in New York, I had had, I’d had the good fortune of being included in a show called the Whitney Biennial. It’s a show at the Whitney Museum in New York, and in 719, 75 and and I knew I wanted to have a gallery in New York, so I wanted to take advantage of that. I took a year off of teaching, moved to New York, and did that that I did have sabbatical money. That time, most of my leaves were unpaid, but I went on sabbatical money.  Spent all of my own money, but got what was at the time, a quite large grant from the Arts Commission to go there, rented three fifths of Andy Warhol’s old factory, and lived and worked in that course, lived illegally, the commitment, lot of commitment there. Yeah, I learned a couple of very important skills there because of living illegally, you know, because if you’re in a place that is selling commercial in New York, they only have to give you heat six days a week. Oh, yes. And so first we crank the heat up, you know, very high on Saturday night and hope to survive till Monday later.  I learned two of the skills I developed was how to hot wire a locked elevator and how to start up a furnace in a big building. Wow. And none of the other tenants complained, and the building manager didn’t like the building owner. So I’m sure he figured it out when he came in every Monday and the furnace was on.  

Nora Smith 08:29 

That’s so funny.  

Philip Mullen 08:32 

The art world, the painting world, has changed a good bit since then. Now I loved, absolutely loved the notion of earning money, selling paintings in New York and spending money in South Carolina. You can see where that might work. Of course, one of the things I did learn is, if you’re going to do that, you’re not just making paintings and somebody else is doing stuff for you. You are pretty constantly working on business things as well. For sure, for sure. Yeah. How would you describe your local professional community around you? It’s a lot like most places. There’s a few people who are, who are, You know, real top notch pros to deal with. There’s a lot of people who it’s a hobby for, and it’s a wonderful hobby to take up, you know, I mean, I was reading one time about in different professions, what age you pick at boy, you don’t want to be a female gymnast, you know, you, you peak very early in life, but being an artist was actually the thing that you the people peaked at the latest in life. Yeah, you know, it’s sort of something that you can do for a long time. So I would describe most of the community. Unity as a sort of normal hobbyist community. But one of the funny things, you know, in certain in certain areas, there’s, there’s sort of funny things that occur in terms of how people develop, like, if you want to learn yoga, real well, pretty quickly you end up going into yoga teacher training. I mean, even if you don’t want to teach, you go through yoga teacher training, and all of a sudden, then you’re trained yoga teacher.  

Nora Smith 10:33 

Yeah.  

Philip Mullen 10:34 

So, you’re out teaching yoga. If people go and take a painting, go into it. I mean, very quickly, way too quickly. Generally, they feel like they need to get out and start selling their stuff. And I’m a little suspect that that was, that was certainly not me. Now, when I did it, I got, I was obviously really serious about it, because, you know, I’ll tell you that year in New York, while it was professionally very important, it was very lonely, I’m going around to galleries, trying to get into galleries. They’re being approached every day by artists. Many of them are not very polite to you. You know, it pretty gruesome thing. You know, to be an artist, you’ve got to have it in one seat. You’ve got to have a big ego. I mean, the idea that, the idea that you can make something and somebody else should actually take time looking at it, is pretty amazing. Yeah, that they should actually pay you for it is incredible. But myself, like most artists I know, have very fragile egos. You know, it’s so getting out there and trying to do that part about promoting it is something now, I did, you know, I lived in New York.  I did not want to raise a family in New York, like South Carolina that way. I, you know, in 69 when I was looking for university teaching position, I very specifically looked at the south it’s one of those, you know, I didn’t know where I was raised. I went to nine schools before I was out of high school. You know, when I went to college, I thought I’d settle down, and most of us in states in the north, but for three years, it was in we’re in Texas, and that was the only place that the weather made any sense to me. So I focused on South Carolina, and the position I got here worked out so so well for me. Fortunately, I never really had any reason to not want to just stay. 

Nora Smith 12:55 

That’s great. That’s great. How would you define success personally? 

Philip Mullen 13:06 

Well, I think one of the wonderful things about being a serious artist in an art is that we define other artists’ success in terms of the work they do. We don’t define it in terms of how well they do business. Mm, hmm. We all know people who have who are just out of the out of this world, sensational painters, lot of depth to their work, and all who never get any recognition. We also know people who are just hacks who make tons of money because they’re great businesspeople.  

Nora Smith 13:45 

Yeah, 

Philip Mullen 13:47 

In a way to me, success has to do with putting together a life in which I could do spend a lot of time making paintings. Now, there were parts to that that were, you end up doing some other things in order to make that happen. You know, in my case, one of the things I did was I did an academic PhD, which was, boy, not my forte. I was, I mean, that was three years of struggling, but it gave me a wonderful way to get into a really good academic position, which gave me a basis of support and encouraged me to do a lot of painting early on. In those early years, I used to send a lot of shows around the state, including one to Coastal Carolina, probably back in the early 70s. 

Nora Smith 14:50 

How lovely….

Philip Mullen 14:51 

It might have been later than that, because actually, one of my students ended up as a theater professor at Coastal. 

Nora Smith 14:58 

Are they still here? 

Philip Mullen 15:00 

I would Imagine not, and they must be retired by now. I cannot remember her name. 

Nora Smith 15:09 

That’s alright. 

Philip Mullen 15:10 

She did have it. Have you ever seen the movie sleeping with the enemy? 

Nora Smith 15:13 

No, but I’ve heard of it.  

Philip Mullen 15:16 

Yeah. Well, it’s almost just a two-person thing, but she’s a bit part of that.  

Nora Smith 15:21 

Oh, okay, that’s super cool.  

Philip Mullen 15:23 

If you ever watch it, she’s a nurse and she’s a professor at Coastal.  

Nora Smith 15:27 

Oh, that’s super cool. Okay, great to know. I find out so much doing these interviews with people, yeah, so kind of going back to the beginning of starting your career. What was your biggest fear when you decided that you wanted to do something in the arts? 

Philip Mullen 15:41 

My biggest fear, well, I certainly had no encouragement. I’m not going to say the words online that my dad said to me when he realized I was actually going into being an artist. It’s not something you want to publish. So that was, that was a big challenge. Yeah, I’m sure, I’m sure, fortunately, I ran across people who gave me enough encouragement. One thing that helped me a lot was that I graduated in the lower half of my high school class.  I did not want to go to college. I didn’t know what else to do. I got to, you know, I went to the University of Minnesota. I had been such a poor student, I realized I’d never get through college, so I figured, and I was not an art major, so I figured I’d go hang out with my buddy Mike, who was an art major. And I got over there, and I realized that the beginning art classes were not much fun, and the art majors had to take them, but I didn’t,  I sort of had to talk this professor into letting me start in that upper level, middle level, I should say mid level painting. Course, he did not want to do it, and I was kind of persistent. And he finally said, okay, okay, I’ll let you in. And under his breath, he said, In the other guy’s section. And turned out the other guy was Ed Corbett, who back when abstract expressionism was getting going, and the Museum of Modern Art did a show of 16 of the young abstract expressionists. Ed Corbett was in it. That’s so cool. So my first teacher was an absolute top run guy, and I thought, and I had had really very little success in life. So failure was like, was getting pretty, if not comfortable with it, at least used to it. I just this is wonderful. These guys get to spend tons of time just making paintings, making paintings. What could be better? You know? Yeah, I still feel that way. That didn’t go away. And that’s amazing. That’s amazing to have it last that long. You know, I mean, and I was, what was 18 years old, then I’m 82 years old. Now, it’s great to have something stick with you that long.  

Nora Smith 17:55 

Yeah, that’s amazing.  

Philip Mullen 17:57 

It is, it’s, it’s, I don’t feel like taking credit for that so much is just being very thankful that I stumbled upon the stuff that made me want to do that, you know, right?  

Nora Smith 18:10 

So, what would you say is the best and worst advice you’ve ever received about going into the field or being in the field, just some things you’ve heard? 

Philip Mullen 18:22 

Think of anything, anything that I really think was best or worst advice. I think a person needs to be realistic about what they’re willing to put into it and what they want out of it.  

Nora Smith 18:35 

Yeah, 

Philip Mullen 18:36 

I had some wonderful art students over the years, some that I’ve you know remained long term friends with. I don’t know you might, you might even see above my head one of my ex-students works if, if, 

Nora Smith 18:46 

Oh, no, I can’t. 

Philip Mullen 18:49 

I pride myself in the fact that my student’s work does not look like mine. It, it. You know, there’s something important to all that these two guys are guys that are like me. They’re driven to make this stuff. They can’t help themselves. They’re they’re quite different in terms of how they handle their business around it. Now, that’s one way you can go into it. Now, there’s a lot of other art students who really got a lot out of it, but I’d see him afterwards, and it’s, I always hated this one as subjective. Well, I hate to tell you, I’m really not painting anymore. I’ve gone into I’m doing something else. Well, that the point wasn’t that everybody become a painter.  It’s, you know, you took a sociology class, you took a history class, you took a math class. You can become a mathematician. You know, it’s, it’s a lot of that’s about rounding it all out for yourself. Actually, in a way, when I get done with it, i. A class that I invented that I taught, not for the art department, but for the Honors College, is probably the class that I am most proud of having come up with when I was teaching at the university. Was it was called the artist experience, and it was only 15 people could be in it, but you’ll see why. As I tell you, it was, it’s basically an art history class, I don’t know, an art appreciation class.  However, you never saw a slide in it. If we learned about ceramics, we went to a ceramic studio. Graduate students there taught each person how to how to make, how to throw a pot. Two weeks later, we go back and do a Raku firing. Say, learn it from the inside out. We visited artists studios and went to art shows. Now, what the purpose of this course was, is not to develop artists, but the purpose was to develop people’s appreciation for the Arts. I think art department should be doing way, way, way more of that. It’s it’s not so great for the egos of the professors who want to teach graduate students and the people who are really going into it, you know, sure, and I value, you know, these, these, these guys work, obviously, who were former students, and I value the kind of careers they put together, but I think as a general service.  And then what we would do is we would end the course with a three-day trip to New York. And that was when I had, when I had a lot of good New York connections. My former Los Angeles dealer had moved to New York, and she would lead the trip. Some she would lead a day of the trip. Sometimes my own gallery would always do a wonderful thing. Oh, we go to, we go with to, went up to Peter Finley gallery and his son, Josh, who worked there. And he was young, and the students kind of related to him, you know. And he, I remember, one year he’s passing a sculpture around. It’s about two and a half feet high, heavy pieces going around, gets a halfway around the circle, and he announces that it’s a dega with a kid holding it. I mean, he’s probably still clenched in this position, you know? And Josh says, no, no, no, no, don’t we. We’re not a museum. We’re trying to sell this piece. People touch it. I mean that opportunity to, like, hold something like that, and then you I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art, and one of the girls in the class who probably hadn’t gotten too far out of South Carolina Previously, she calls me over to Van Gogh’s Starry Night was up, which calls me, and she says, Dr, Mama, is this? Is this? Is this the real Starry Night? Yes, this is a real Starry Night, You know. And my gallery would always take them in the back room and pull out all paintings for them and stuff. So it was, that’s why I called it the artist experience? It, it. We didn’t. Didn’t do it by teaching about art. We did it by experiencing, yeah, I didn’t have to worry. I didn’t have to worry about grading. I mean, this is honors college class. They’re all a students all the time anyhow. And so what I did, I did the grades were simply based on attendance and a certain amount of projects they did, we would do, they would have to do, do certain, I mean, I’d have them do, have them do, I don’t know your visual artist at all.  

Nora Smith 23:53 

No, okay, well, 

Philip Mullen 23:55 

I had them do an exercise called negative shape drawing. It’s, it’s,  

Nora Smith 23:58 

I think I know what you’re talking about. 

Philip Mullen 24:00 

Okay, it’s sort of a, it’s it’s a beginning, it’s a beginning drawing thing. But they would not, and we, you know, we’d spend not the time that an art major would spend on it but would spend a period on that. But they would never grade it on the quality of the work because that’s not the point. The point was to get to the head of it. And, I mean, that is where I would really like to see training in, not just in visual arts, but in the arts in general. Yes, go because being an artist who does what we imagine, you just make this art and people buy it. That’s like, it’s like being an athlete who plays for it’s a pretty small percentage of folks that that works out for, yes, yes. And the commitment is just, it’s more than most people really want to make to it and more than we. It makes sense for most people to make, 

Nora Smith 25:03 

Yeah, 

Philip Mullen 25:03 

And interestingly enough, of any classes I ever took taught, I still, I mean, here I am, 25 years away from having retired to university, and within the last year, I’ve still gotten some correspondence from some of the people who took that course. I mean, it was, you know, it was something that, it’s something that offers a kind of art, art can enrich, enrich everybody’s life. 

Nora Smith 25:34 

I agree. I would take that class. I would take that class. 

Philip Mullen 25:38 

Oh, whenever they opened it up. It started with seniors, you know, I mean it, it was filled the first day it was opened up.  

Nora Smith 25:47 

That sounds awesome, yeah, um, yeah.  

Philip Mullen 25:51 

And it was a very simple idea of art appreciation. But whoever got interested in art by looking at slides, I don’t know, you know, whoever got interested in music by memorizing composers? 

Nora Smith 26:06 

It’s, it’s, that’s such a great idea for a class. And I can imagine how amazing that was, teaching that, and the students experiencing that, such a great take on it, because now it seems so distant when you’re looking at slides of how to do things, instead of experiencing it like it completely distances it, yeah, from you. And it’s, it feels impossible, almost in a way. Yes, yeah, that’s so cool. I love that.  

Philip Mullen 26:34 

What is the area that you’re studying in?  

Nora Smith 26:37 

I’m in English, in English, yes. So, everything you’re saying, I’m like, it’s going to be my writing, because I would like to be a writer, and so I totally understand the artist. The whole it’s Yeah, 

Philip Mullen 26:52 

Every Wednesday, including today, almost every Wednesday, I have lunch with a writing friend of mine. Oh, really. And one of the things that I like about talking with him is it’s so nice to talk across disciplines, because you tend to talk about the bigger picture, as opposed if you talk to people in your own discipline, it can kind of get into, you know, how do you compose this sentence? Yes, how do you make this color transition and things like that? And we find that there are so many things about how we work. crossover. 

Nora Smith 27:44 

Yes, exactly. That’s so cool. Yeah, everything you were saying, I’m like, yeah, yeah, makes complete sense, even to me. So, yeah, yeah. So, I’ll keep you updated. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. If you have any questions, just send me an email, send me a text, but I will keep you updated.  

Philip Mullen 28:06 

Good. Well, it’s nice to talk to you. Nora, me too.