Painting with Gratitude: Joshua Cunningham Revisits a Painting at the CAT Museum

It is a special moment when an artist can see their work on display at a museum. Painter Joshua Cunningham (American, born 1974) recently visited the Cafesjian Art Trust Museum to see his painting, Along the Line, on display in the new Focus Gallery exhibition, Vantage Points: Landscape Paintings from the Collection, open through December 21, 2024. The CAT Museum’s Director of Collections, Ashley Walker, interviewed Cunningham during his visit to learn more about his artistic process, and the painting in the Museum’s collection. Below are excerpts from this conversation that discusses Cunningham’s influences, process, and when he sold this painting to Gerard Cafesjian.

On how he began painting trains:

But [this painting] stood out because…it was a high watermark for me at that time in my life as a painter. To take an idea through several iterations and really continue to flush it out. It’s also a place where my mentor painted…Joe Paquette also painted down and around [Child’s Road in Saint Paul]. He had a real heart for industrial stuff…His dad was a foreman in industrial New Jersey…He taught a workshop in New York….And we’re in this apartment in Soho—someone is hosting us for dinner—and he’s looking out across the Hudson, and he’s like, “That’s where my dad [used to work.} I used to go on Saturdays with my dad to the job sites,” and he starts telling the stories, and this big light goes on in my head: Oh my goodness, he’s not painting industrial stuff to be edgy and cool, that’s actually a part of his childhood. So for me, that opened up parts of my painting life. It opened up a door.

I was such an impressionable student that whatever my mentors were doing, [I was doing]. This is over the top expression—but in the Jewish tradition, when you have a rabbi, you’re doing everything the rabbi does. It’s not just learning what he’s reading. It’s, how is he talking to other people? And so, when I went into my art trainings…I’m trying to learn everything they’re doing because you don’t know which part of it is painting. And then in time…they’re a part of your story. And so then his love of industrial stuff, like for me, the trains….it’s a way of thinking about him, and how grateful I am for what he brought me into. But also, as a kid, my grandpa had a model railroad in his basement that me and my twenty-five other first cousins would get to play with.

On plein air (outdoor) painting:

An average plein air painting for me is like a three-to-six-hour experience depending on—just like an athlete—some days you have it and some days it’s more of a struggle. Some days you’re an artist and some days you’re just practicing the music, you know? You’ve either come up against something in your own attention span, or you’ve come up against something…you haven’t done before…Because I paint primarily what I’m passing by, I don’t normally have a huge intention other than an idea [that] there could be something here, and going and then just being open to what touches me. And then letting the painting be the answer to the question of “why am I there that day?” because they very much are specific. If I’m there on a different morning, it yields a different painting…You’re almost as much a painter of the weather as the stuff…When I set out to paint the trains, it isn’t so much the trains as it is light and shadow and atmosphere. How do the trains express themselves in these conditions?

…I just need to be open to the possibility of what’s happening, and…just trust that I’ll find something. The world is abundant. I just need to be open to it…There are days that are—especially in the fall—they are are stunning. Days where it feels like everywhere you turn the easel, there’s something new to paint. You can’t possibly keep up with all of it. So you feel like a farmer hurrying through his field trying to get it all in before winter. But really, you just slow down and enjoy. Any love requires sacrifice. When I’m painting one thing, that means I’ve given up ten others. And so you just let them go.

On painting with gratitude:

…There’s something to the specificity of that morning and the gift of it. Like the real gift of it. If we’re not here tomorrow, then today became a pretty important day…There’s a poignance to that. Painting not like every day is your last day—that’d be a lot to carry—but you’re painting with a gratitude for it…Especially in navigating a family life…There were mornings when I got out to paint and it felt like I was pulling the rip cord and jumping out of the airplane. I would have these adventures away from everybody—away from all of the tasks that every home has…If you’re by yourself or you have a family of 8, there’s still jobs to do: mail to open, bills to pay, groceries to get, stuff to clean, things to decorate. So going out…there’s nothing there. There’s just whatever you brought. So even my painting gear—my backpack can only fit so much inside. So you don’t bring extra. You don’t bring more because then that’s stuff that your mind is having to keep track of while you’re working. You’re just trying to keep it focused. Like I often think of just trying to do right by this place that I was given that day.

On selling Along the Line to Gerard Cafesjian:

[Selling this painting to Gerard Cafesjian] was bigger than life. I was exhibiting at the Lowertown Commons Art Crawl in Saint Paul [in 2010]….It was a crescendo of activity twice a year—in the fall and in the spring. This was a fall art crawl. If you were on top of it, you would submit an image or two to the poster competition for the art crawl.

If yours was selected as a part of the media kit—they would pick the winner, and then ten other images. Those would all go to the Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly, Minneapolis Saint Paul, and all the magazines and the innumerable little newspapers that regrettably aren’t with us anymore, especially in a physical form. Sometimes those institutions would reach out and want to do an interview. It was this early chance to get a little press and practice talking about your stuff. It made this hope of being an artist seem very real….I always tried to have a new body of work twice a year. It would be between 10 and 30 paintings—depending on what I had available for frames and time and everything else. Then you’d hang them all up, you’d try to light them, you’d try to have a little bit of information about yourself.

That year—I think it was 2010—I won the poster competition. The painting that won is the painting that’s here with you guys. It was on the poster, and the poster went everywhere. That was a very big moment….So when Gerry and Ben [Gerry’s assistant] came through. [Gerry] was so in command of himself, and he had this cane, and he either had an eye patch or a lens on his glasses was dark—I don’t remember which. I was immediately more in awe than intimidated, but those share some common grounds emotionally….As he’s coming through, and he’s looking so carefully at each one, and Ben is so friendly and warm as he’s moving along with him. I have never had anybody like this come through and look at the work. Other artists would come and look but the amount of time he spent, and then he asks, “Where was this one painted?” Or, “What can you tell me about this?” He was so inquisitive, genuinely curious. This wasn’t like I was trying to pass some test. It was engaging and thoughtful.

Then he asks, “Do you have a favorite?” I point to Along the Line and, and he gives me kind of a hard time, and says, “Is that just because it’s the biggest? And that it won the award?” I said, “No. When I painted that, I did several studies, and I thought I was ready to do a larger version of it. In the making of that painting, I became a better painter. To answer the invitation of that painting, I had to be a better painter at the end of it than I was when I started.” To grow through a piece of work and to really see it through the series of studies, you really get a sense of almost gratitude that you picked it.