Roux Academy Alumni Profile

Critics gone into exaltations trying to describe Arnie, "not Arnold," Palmer's paintings, calling them "drippy," "gooey," and even "masticated." They hang in institutions as hallowed as the Met, the MOMAs on both coasts, and the Guggenheim, and the most prestigious galleries in New York and London. Arnie is also a graduate of the Roux Academy and he was generous enough to sit down with us and talk about his formative years as a student on the North campus, as well as life in the outside world. "To be honest, I never expected this kind of success. Part of me longs to go back to those days, sharing a studio, working in obscurity, but with friends."

"Being an artist these days, people tend to latch onto you. It's a cult of personality." He laughs. "Maybe it's the hair."

Palmer is quite the icon. I saw him most recently in the last Sunday Times, exiting the annual Costume Institute Gala Met Ball with a pretty girl on his arm and that effervescent, Polidenture smile on his face. He's the kind of celebrity unique to New York: an artist, an intellectual, a painter of all things. And unlike say Warhol or Pollock or Basquiat, artists we consider endemic to New York, he doesn't seem the least bit gritty, damaged, or addled. Maybe he's from a different time. The era of the new Times Square, with its squeaky clean streets and Good Morning, America crowd. Or maybe he's just an artist with a more solid constitution.

Not that a lack of demons has affected his art. His paintings have both liquidity and punch, kind of like being knocked down and tumbled over by a powerful wave. Trying to hang onto the conviction that you're an adult now, you're not going to drown. At worst you'll emerge with some scrapes and spitting salty water. Yeah, that kind of a punch.

His work has been called "explosive," "timely," and, memorably, "Prozac-ian."

Q: What is it that fuels your work?

AP: I wanted to create art that reminded people of what it felt like being alive. Not just the sensual but the visceral. And to be happy about it. I'm not the kind of artist that believes in the merits of suffering.

Q: I noticed you've drank about a gallon of green tea since we've started, is that normal?

AP: I did literally live on this stuff at Roux. Tea fueled all-nighters! Not very debauched, I know, but true.

Q: How did Roux Academy contribute to your growth as an artist?

AP: During my first year, I had been messing around with inks, Sumi inks and blockwash techniques, combined with the tag style I was seeing on the streets. It was very cartoony and figurative. The second year I remember sharing a dorm room with this metal shop dude and he was describing his work to me in these oddball colors. I mean, he was working with steel, but in his mind, it wasn't grey. It was colored by everything around them and he'd get excited by the idea of moving this massive sculpture, we're talking ten feet high, into new spaces, just so he could see how it would take on new colors. And that got me thinking about light and reflectivity in a different way. Over the years, my style has become more and more abstract. Last year, I completed a set of drip paintings [titled Seaward Exit: Brighton Beach] and it really freed me up to do more, I would say, languid work. And I'm getting older. There's only so long that you can do that kind of young, hotheaded stuff.

Q: Any advice for current Roux students?

AP: Don't give up the joy. Once you transition to the real world, the art scene, an office, or something else, there can be a lot of pressure to renounce or forget the wonder that is part of the creative process. Hang on to that. Roux is not a shelter; you can recreate and carry the experience you're having now with you everywhere.

Seaward Exit: Brighton Beach

Arnie Palmer's latest exhibit features a new direction for him into a world of relaxed abstract work. Selected paintings from this series are on display at the Marbielle Roux Museum through April, when they'll return to their permanent home at San Francisco's MOMA.