ARTIST SPOTLIGHT // ANDREW PINKHAM
Tomorrow Never Knows
Andrew Pinkham doesn’t want you to know when you are
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
His images are idea-driven, he says. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get what you put into it, and it’s only as good as what that idea is.” There is always the temptation to take things too far, or to be too overt with your symbolism: “You can use your creative abilities to get your point across. But then—then there’s a certain point where you’re just kind of gilding the lily,” he says. “Everyone needs water, but we don’t need to be waterboarded.”
A recent image, inspired by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is called “Handmade” and he struggled with what to put in it aside from the main figure, dressed in an Atwood-inspired Handmaid’s Tale costume. A gavel was in the running. In the end, he chose a single, red- painted fingernail, to emphasize the feminine.
He says he eased up a bit on his own symbolic restrictions when he was creating the image for “Red Flag,” in which a skeleton is whispering to a man in a red hat. The subject stands wrapped in an American flag with his back turned to us as he looks out over a field. The meaning of this most American symbol has changed for Pinkham over time, and he knows it still means different things to different people now. “It used to mean one thing to me as a kid, you know? You’re proud to be an American and whatnot. But, what is it? Now ... it can be anything from a dog whistle to somebody old-school who loves living in America. But it really sort of gives us pause.
... The messaging of it can really differ from one time point to another.”
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