Nick Stull adopts a quieter approach

The most recent series of paintings from Nick Stull, completed over this last year, adopt a softer color palette compared with his earlier works, steeped in earthy greens and softer washes of purple and orange.

“It’s not quite those dynamic, striking colors, and even the play between different styles isn’t as dramatic as it was,” Stull said in early September at Sarah Gormley Gallery, where his latest collection features in “Interiority,” a duo show with Jana Pryor, whose atmospheric landscape photographs inhabit a similarly understated space. (The exhibition kicks off with an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. today, Friday, Sept. 11.) “And when I started, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do more colors,’ or ‘I’m going to do more my thing,’ but then I kind of wanted to leave it like that. It makes the work maybe a little more muted or introspective.”

Stull acknowledged part of this desire could have extended from currently navigating an era where everything is so loud, right down to the images meant to instantly capture eyeballs even at thumbnail size on social media. There was also, he said, a more deliberate intent to draw people in. “I wanted it to be soft and not something that caught your eye a mile away,” the artist continued. “I kind of wanted to bring people in and have them spend more time with it rather than a punch in the face and move on, which is the way I feel a lot of imagery is digested these days, even in the way I’m scrolling. … I want you to come into it slowly and discover things.”

Witness the monochrome, orange-hued “Greetings From,” which doesn’t immediately overwhelm the senses in spite of its massive size. Closer inspection only heightens the sense of mystery to the canvas, which depicts a woman in a boat in a scene reads as the aftermath of a flood, the water dotted with floating objects that include snow globes and a handful of duck decoys. Over the woman’s eyes, the words “Greetings From” are painted, a nod, Stull said, to the generic murals present in many cities and towns that feature sanitized, anodyne scenes. 

“And there always this idyllic scene or some reproduced concept that’s just very trite and doesn’t explore the specificity or uniqueness of a community,” said Stull, who within that began to see the phrase as a metaphor for covering up certain realities, his painting reflecting on, among other things, the denialism of the climate crisis even as catastrophic floods become more of the norm.

But there also exists within the exhibition a more deeply personal throughline, with paintings of various family members, including his wife and children. “Frontier,” meanwhile, is a portrait of his maternal grandfather, a man who as a child he viewed as “a charming, charismatic guy,” and who later emerged as a more complicated figure when Stull learned more about the elder’s relationship with his daughter, the artist’s mother. Among other details, the portrait includes an outline of the old man set slightly askew from the main image, signifying the aspects of his being that remain unknowable to Stull.

In recent years, Stull has leaned more heavily into public mural work, and he allowed that the more personal turn evident here could be in part a response to this. Indeed, even “Greetings From” is threaded through with family ephemera, the clothes hung to dry on a line modelled directly on a number of outfits his children have since outgrown.

“Doing so much mural work, a lot of it is contracted, and you’re less in control,” the artist said. “So, when you do have the time, you start to ask, where do I want to focus my attention? And it’s the world around you.”

The green-hued “Seismic,” which depicts a men’s soccer team embraced in celebration on the pitch, could be viewed as an interrogation of the artist’s own complex history with the sport, his long-developed love of the game having curdled amid the pressures he felt as he began playing club soccer in his early teenage years. “I was pretty good at a young age, and I felt a lot of responsibility … from coaches, from other parents to kind of carry things,” he said. “I feel like I got really good when I was just at the park playing with my friends. And then it got to a certain point where it wasn’t fun anymore.”

It’s only recently that Stull has started to again warm to the sport, watching MLS and World Cup games and even volunteering as coach for what he thought was going to be his kids’ rec league team. “But they weren’t into it, so I kind of ended up coaching without them there,” he said, and laughed. “And that was okay. And … whatever they get into, my wife and I are going to love. And if they do get into soccer, I just want it to be about play and fun and not about keeping score.”

As with all the work on display at the downtown gallery, there are myriad other complexities at play within “Seismic,” which could also be interpreted as a reminder of the importance of connection in this age of increased isolation, or perhaps a commentary on masculinity and what it can take for men to drop their guard enough to willingly embrace one another in public. Absent the jerseys, the scene could likewise be read as something more somber, as though the figures are comforting one another in the aftermath of tragedy. 

“By the expressions, this could be read as a point of complete joy or a mourning, where they’re all together in this huddle,” said Stull, who named the painting after learning about one stadium celebration so raucous that it registered as a seismic event. “But it’s really an extreme emotion bringing people together.”