An Interview with with M.A.Langenkamp by Heather Anderson

Question: To start at the beginning, what influenced you to abolish "realism" from your work?

MAL: During the '50s I saw exhibits of New York painters and Washington DC Color School painters. There was never any conscious decision to paint like they did. I simply painted the same way they did. I looked hard at Willem de Kooning's tricks of the trade: deliberate pentimento, pallette knife, drips, scratch away, quick application, slurpy paint. And I looked at Jackson Pollock's poured paint and all-over application. I now realize that Pollock worked in an algorhythmic pattern. I'm also influenced by Franz Kline's large amorphous shapes. For dynamics of composition I look at Michelangelo and the "figura serpentinata" - meaning that I arrange the compositional lines on related angles. I'm still putting it all together. For method, I start with the materials in automatic shift. Then I do deliberate revision with additions of paint, glazing and brushwork. I allow chance effects to happen and set up conditions for chance. It's necessary to make clear that I teach realistic drawing and perspective and many of my past prints and paintings contain recognizable imagery. Most practiced artists slide the gamut. I learned to mix grey from William Woodward. And learned extreme ink effects from Arthur Hall Smith.

Q. From the titles of your works, it is clear you take inspiration from sights all over the world. When did you first start traveling overseas?

MAL: In l960, I took the steamship "Flandre" on the Holland-American line from New York to Le Havre and took the train to Paris. I lived at the Hotel de Commerce on the Passage du Commerce off the Place del'Odeon near the Latin Quarter. I took painting classes and did drawings at the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. I also studied political history at the Institute des Sciences Politiques and took language classes at the Sorbonne.

Q: What was the motivation for going there?

MAL: I was 20 years old and had writer friends who were living in Paris which at the time was the post-World War II mecca for American exiles who were artists and writers. My illusion was that I was going to meet Picasso and Henry Miller. I did meet William Burroughs who had just published "Naked Lunch". He lived next door to my friend at the Hotel St.-Gite-le-Coeur, American writer's central at the time. I also saw Jean-Paul Sartre give a speech at the Place Maubert for Algerie Algerienne (Free Algeria). Paris was a place of civil protest then. There were political signs sprayed on every wall. Frequently I passed a protester being handcuffed by the police after a "plastique" had just exploded in the street.

Q: Why were you getting a diploma in Political Science back at George Washington University (GWU) instead of art?

MAL: My motivation was to become a Foreign Service Officer to go to work for the U.S.State Department so that I could live overseas and paint at the same time - like Laurence Durrell had done in the British Foreign Office. Or like Winston Churchill had done painting in Cassis, France. I had lots of illusions. When I finally got a B.A. from the School of International Affairs at GWU in l962 I had already started working for the Smithsonian Institution in the Division of Political History. I met my husband, Attorney Robert D. Langenkamp, at a Watergate concert on the Potomac when Watergate still meant a bank on the river. I then got married and moved to my husband's home state of Oklahoma.

Q: When did you first start painting?

MAL: I remember making suns and flowers with finger paint on shiny white paper when I was about 4 years old. My aunt I lived with was a school teacher who had ample art supplies in the house. When I was twelve I won an art competition in Washington DC sponsored by the National Symphony Orchestra with a tempera painting of the "Person with Long Ears" from Saint-Saens' 'Carnival of Animals". That was my first exhibition. My painting was projected onto a screen on the stage during the concert. Growing up in Washington DC was a moveable feast for an artist. I sometimes did my homework in the garden court of the National Gallery of Art with the Della Robbia blue and white ceramic roundels of lemons on the walls. I memorized the paintings in the Italian, Franch and English collections from seeing them repeatedly.

Q: When did you finally decide to go to graduate school in art?

MAL: Our family had moved back to Washington DC when my husband got an appointment in the Energy Department in the Carter Administration. I had been teaching painting and drawing as an instructor at Philbrook Museum School in Tulsa, Oklahoma where we had been living. There, I realized I wanted to teach in a university and to do that I had to get a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) which I finally received in l985 from George Washington University. I specialized in printmaking and worked in etching, serigraphy, lithography and multimedia monoprint.

Q: When did you start teaching at GWU and what courses have you taught?

MAL: In 1991 i was asked to join the faculty of GWU as an Adjunct professor in the Department of Art. Over numerous years at GWU and other schools I've taught Drawing and Perspective, Anatomy, Painting, Watercolor, Sumi-ink Painting, 2 Dimensional Design, 3 Dimensional Design, and Methods and Materials (historic painting techniques: Italian & Dutch Renaissance to 20h Century techniques).

Q: What are you doing now?

MAL: For the past ten years, I've been restoring a medieval village house in the south of France which I use for a studio. I've designed a restoration of the facade to reveal 400 year old stonework. I've erected a Renaissance entry gate with pilasters. My town is in the rolling hills of the low Alps which are planted in vineyards which produce Cote-de-Rhone wine. Many of my images these days come from the landscape here: the white water falling over the black slate facades of the mountains en route to Torino, the pthalo green and verdigris of the rivers, the nuclear pink sunsets, the mauve and grey winter hills.

Q. Tell me about your family.

MAL: I have four brilliant children, Heather Langenkamp Anderson, Matthew Dobie Langenkamp, Daniel Benjamin Langenkamp, and Lucinda Turner Shelton Langenkamp born of my marriage to Robert Dobie Langenkamp of Tulsa. I also have four charming grandchildren.

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