How to Read Like an Artist with Floyd Tunson

Welcome to Read Like a Reader!

How do we read images? How do images inform text? What is your “lexicon of images” and where does it come from?

This week we hear from Floyd Tunson, one of Colorado’s most important contemporary artists, who’s made a singular contribution in painting, drawing, mixed media, sculpture and installation over the past 50 years. I count myself among the lucky humans who were his students during his 30 years of teaching at Palmer High School and was glad to be able to thank him for his tremendous and life-giving work there.

We talked about what books have informed his work and the Denver library that lent them to him as a child; “Haitian Dreamboats,” and “Let’s Talk About Race,” racial facial recognition software; why he leaves many works untitled; how images inform concepts, and our image-saturated age; the roots of art; the tragic shooting death of one of his brothers and the art of another; how he balanced two careers, teaching and art; Miles Davis in the studio; pursuing an art career outside of New York and rejecting the cliché of the starving artist; ekphrastic poetry and his current collaboration with the poet Yusef Komunyakaa; his meditation practice; the artists he returns to again and again, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Chuck Close and Pablo Picasso; and his magical home studio.

Tunson recommends The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, The Nickel Boys and The Famished Road.

“Endangered 7,” and “Five Lemons,” by Floyd Tunson, above.

Thanks to Jacob Keough-Mishler for his original music, sound design, and editing.