ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists

Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists
On this week’s episode I’m joined by Bruce Tapola.
Bruce Tapola was born and raised in Ohio and received his BFA from the University of Utah, and his MFA from Montana State University. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received several awards, including the McKnight Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship (1995, 2001, 2017). His work has been written about in Artforum, The New York Times, New American Painting, Art Papers, and New Art Examiner, and is in numerous public and private collections. He taught painting and drawing at St. Cloud State University in MN from 2000 to 2022, and in addition to his studio practice, Bruce is a member of the artist collectives Paintallica, Free Art School, and Artpolice (RIP). Bruce lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota.
I sit down with Bruce back in December in Saint Paul, in his backyard studio with a wood-burning stove. It was a cold day, but the studio was cozy and Bruce, I discovered, as you will shortly, is a talker so we covered a lot of ground. Bruce discusses rejecting cleverness, when something smells like art, humor in art, sameness in imagination, screaming colors, sneaking up on a painting, magic, ceramics,  the price of art, emptying-out content, outsider art, having a family of artists and painting the perfect cloud.
Before we begin, a reminder that ARTMATTERS is entirely listener-supported. If you want to support the show and help make more conversations like this possible, consider joining the ARTMATTERS Patreon. Supporters get video versions of every episode as well as more behind-the-scenes content. 
Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!
If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!
 
If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]
 
host: Isaac Mann
www.isaacmann.com
insta: @isaac.mann

guest: Bruce Tapola
insta: @btapola

Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists
On this week’s episode I’m joined by Hiba Schahbaz.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz trained in traditional Indo-Persian miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Her practice spans oil, wood, paper, black tea, and water-based pigments. Schahbaz received an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute and has exhibited internationally since 2002. Recent exhibitions include the FLAG Art Foundation, Almine Rech Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, and Jeffrey Deitch, as well as a public art commission for Rockefeller Center produced with Art Production Fund. Her current retrospective, Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden, on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, brings together roughly fifteen years of work tracing her evolution from the disciplined traditions of miniature painting to expansive, immersive works.
I sat down with Hiba in her Bushwick loft studio and asked her about the “aha” moment - when a new idea begins to take shape. We also talk about cut-outs and shifting scale, the difference between one-off paintings and a sustained flow state, learning from mistakes, and why she never lets a painting leave the studio before the idea feels fully resolved. We talk materials and process, how Hiba starts a painting, and how she approaches large commissions, museum projects, and multi-panel works differently. Hiba discusses maintaining a daily studio practice and how it shifts with seasonal rhythms, the difficulty and necessity of waiting for ideas to develop, and the importance of physical health in the studio and taking responsibility for one’s body over time. Finally, we talk about avoiding creative burnout through continuous learning, and why Schahbaz believes in committing fully to the path of an artist without a Plan B.
Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!
If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!
  
If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]
 
 host: Isaac Mann
 www.isaacmann.com
 insta: @isaac.mann
 guest: Hiba Schahbaz
 www.hibaschahbaz.com
 insta: @hiba_schahbaz
Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.

Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists
On this week's episode I'm joined by New York artist David Hornung.
David Hornung is a painter and mixed media artist whose work has been exhibited in the US and UK. Over the course of a long career he has served on the faculties of The Rhode Island School of Design, Indiana University, Skidmore College, Pratt Institute, and Adelphi University. He is the author of Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers (Laurence King Pub Ltd.), a color textbook. Translated into six languages it is used in art schools around the world. His work is shown at Cynthia Winings Gallery, Elena Zang Gallery, Pulp Gallery, and J.J. Murphy Gallery in NYC.
We recorded this episode early one morning at the JJ Murphy Gallery during his solo exhibition "Continuum."

On today's episode, David and I explore the nuanced terrain of painting practice and philosophy. We discuss the importance of a painting's surface, how he starts a painting and how one reads a painting. David shares his perspective on scale, arguing that painting is an intimate experience rather than spectacle. We trace his six-decade evolution from observational work through post-painterly abstraction, his collage techniques, and his four recent years of pure abstraction. The conversation touches on Henri Matisse, Ad Reinhardt, Fra Angelico, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and Paul Klee. David also talks his love of shapes, collage, a raw edge, painting slower than he is thinking, factual versus fictional painting, and finally, emphasizes the importance of recognizing one's own temperament and painting both honestly and sincerely from that space; which, he argues, is where great paintings come from.
Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!
If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!
 
If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]
 
host: Isaac Mann
www.isaacmann.com
insta: @isaac.mann

guest: David Hornung
www.davidhornung.com
insta: @davidhornungart
workshops: https://www.artfuelstudio.com/scotland-september-2026-hornung
madelineartschool.com/collections/workshops/products/exploring-improvisation-in-abstract-painting?_pos=7&_fid=5184b59de&_ss=c 
Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.

Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists
On this week’s episode I’m joined by New York artist Fran Shalom. Fran has exhibited widely throughout the United States, including a solo show at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and the Hunterdon Museum in New Jersey. She has been the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Artist Grant, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and an Art Omi Residency. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Rose Art Museum, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. 

Fran and I recorded this episode after hours at her solo exhibition at the Kathryn Markel Gallery in Chelsea, surrounded by her recent paintings. 

In this conversation Fran discusses beginner's mind and call-and-response painting, how she builds trust in improvisation despite recurring doubts, and the many paintings buried beneath each finished surface. She tells me about getting rid of precious moments, loving the fiddly finishing bits, navigating flatness and why not everything in a painting needs to function, Finally we discuss Fran’s early-career transition from photography to self-taught painting, balancing her three practices (art, family, Zen), and why generosity matters more than networking.
Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!
If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! 
If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]
host: Isaac Mann
www.isaacmann.com
insta: @isaac.mann
 
guest: Fran Shalom  
www.franshalom.com
insta: @fshalom64

Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.

Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for Artists.

My guest today is Sarah D’Ambrosio. Sarah is a Brooklyn-based artist who earned her BFA from Brooklyn College and her MFA at University of New Hampshire. She also studied at the Mount Gretna School of Art in Pennsylvania. Most recently Sarah has exhibited at the New York Studio School Projects at DUMBO and NADA Miami and her first solo exhibition was at MARCH Gallery in 2025.

Swimmingly convenient as it turned out, Sarah is my neighbor. So after convincing her to join me for this episode, I packed up my microphones and took a brisk 10 minute walk to her live work space in Greenpoint. It’s nice to be back in New York!

This conversation was a blast. Sarah discusses her love of Yellow Medium, and how color historically comes later in her work - Sarah is a drawer first. She talks about scale, observational painting, painting as a physical act, sincerity, why formula’s are boring, drawing from Titian, the search for quality and the importance of criticism. We also discuss why painting needs life not just more painting, color value and the “harmony of mud,” analysis paralysis, failing on higher and higher levels, when a painting stops buzzing, also Lucian Freud and Donald Duck. And that’s just to get started. Enjoy my conversation with Sarah D’Ambrosio

Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!
If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! 
If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to [email protected]
host: Isaac Mann
www.isaacmann.com
insta: @isaac.mann
 
guest: Sarah D’Ambrosio 
www.sarahdambrosio.com
insta: @sarah_dambrosio_
Thank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.