Editor’s note: With ICON9 The Illustration Conference just a month away—four days of art, discussion, performance, and plenty of talk in Austin, TX—the current roster for the Q&A is peopled with many of the exceptional artists making presentations during this biannual artfest. Gina Triplett and Matt Curtius will give a workshop on Personal Work and Work-Work on Thursday, July 7, 9am-noon. Info

Q: Originally from the East and the Midwest, what are some of your favorite things about living and working in Philly?

[Matt] I’m originally from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania and Gina’s from Delano, Minnesota. We love our home and neighborhood in Philadelphia, where we moved after time in Brooklyn and Baltimore. Everything is nearby, the city’s full of history, and there’s lots of creative folks to vibe off.

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between art you create on paper [or other analog medium] versus in the computer?

[Gina] I keep a sketchbook and it’s become an important part of some of my most recent jobs. In college my sketchbook meant everything to me. After getting into the cycle of freelancing, I did all my drawing for jobs and didn’t feel drawn to the daily ritual of the sketchbook. A couple years back it felt like it was the right time to cycle back to it.

[Matt] I think one of the things people come to us for is something that feels heartfelt and hand done. We’re both pretty adept at creating imagery in Photoshop, but for us, it has to have an element of hand in it. For Gina, this sometimes means working on her Cintiq. For both of us, it means a fair amount of digitally collaging and editing scanned paintings.

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?

[Matt] My palette. The time I spend mixing paint is something I enjoy quite a bit. Most of the time I only paint with primaries, and I like the subtle adjustments of intensity and color. After years of doing it, there’s a good feeling when I sit down in the morning and exactly match a color from the painting I walked away from last night. 

Q: How do you know when the art is finished?

[Gina] Our illustrations are pretty tightly sketched out before we go to finish. So they’re done when the finish is ready to fulfill the promise our sketch made. The paintings we make for exhibition are open to a more intuitive process. We usually start off with a plan, but things can meander and evolve from the initial thought. There’s a lot of discussion between us about each of our parts and how they work within the whole.

Q: What was your favorite book as a child? What is the best book you’ve recently read?

[Gina] As a kid, I loved Goodnight Moon (by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd), and I still do. A couple books back I read M Train by Patti Smith. We think about and draw upon our early experiences together figuring out how to be artists and people, so of course we both really liked her first book. M Train deals with all of the life that comes after that initial push. This is something that’s real to us now, and her example is something I think helps as we navigate the different phases of life.

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

[Matt] Gina’s had a long relationship with ink. She could draw with ink all year or forever.

Q: What elements of daily life exert the most influence on your work practice?

[Gina] Time. We balance a lot of things, family, friends, illustration, paintings, teaching, each other. Time is always on our minds and there’s never enough of it.

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art? 

[Matt] This one’s a toughie. One of the things we bonded over in art school was our love of art history and contemporary painting. We developed a lot of shared loves throughout. Most of that stuff applied to personal work and painting, for example: Motherwell, Polke, Kiefer, Bleckner, Dubuffet, so many others. It all played a collective role that’s still very real to us today. To single out an influence that had a singular impact, I can point to when Gina first turned me on to contemporary illustration. Out of ignorance, illustration wasn’t something I’d looked at seriously. She showed me Henrik Drescher’s work, probably in Utne Reader or something, and it changed everything. Here was something just as vital as the painting that fired me up, but the context was so different in an appealing and fresh way.

Q: Who was the [Thunderbolt] teacher or mentor or visiting artist who most influenced you early in your training or career?

[Gina] I had some key mentors in my early days. Julian Allen was a huge and amazing presence that made the life of an illustrator seem entirely romantic. Dave Plunkertshowed me how it was done, and that allowed my own practice to become real. Whitney Sherman was one of my early teachers at MICA, and is a role model to this day.

Q: What would be your last supper?

[Matt] Wait, what? Why am I on death row? We’re not total sushi heads, but it was the first date we went on. I suppose I’d end as we started, and we’d go out for a sushi dinner together.

Gina Triplett and Matt Curtius met back in art school and have been sharing a studio, their thoughts, and their lives ever since. Somewhere along the line, they put it all under the umbrella of Gina and Matt, and made it into a business creating illustrations for clients that have included Whole Foods Market, Macy’s, Starbucks, and Target. They’ve kept themselves on the ball by focusing their attention on a diverse set of formats and venues that have included textiles, book covers, lettering, branding, murals, and galleries. When Matt’s not in the studio he’s either in the woods or teaching illustration at The University of the Arts near where they live. Gina, she’s always in the studio.
Illustration Website: http://ginaandmatt.com
Painting Website: http://www.ginaandmattstudio.com
https://www.instagram.com/ginatriplett/
https://www.instagram.com/mattcurtius/

Gina and Matt are currently represented in the exhibition, Duality: Collaborative work by Four Couples, at The Delaware Art Museum, which continues through August 14^th. Info Left: The still-life, Cactus, is included in the show.