Inexhaustible of Mystery
An Interview with Jacob Todd Broussard
Jacob Todd Broussard, Forest Rest, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 10 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rivalry Projects.
Jacob Todd Broussard is an artist based in Buffalo, New York. He earned his MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019 and his BFA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2014. I met Jacob as a fellow graduate painter at Yale, where we found fast kinship as friends and collaborators. Last year, Jacob and I mounted a two-person exhibition in his hometown of Lafayette. The title, Fantasy II in Exile, is a knowing nod to one of the region’s beloved long-departed gay bars. Broussard has also shown his work in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Toronto, and he will exhibit a new body of work at Buffalo’s Rivalry Projects May 13 – June 20, 2022. He and his partner, architect Adam Thibodeaux, run KINGFISH, an independent project space in Buffalo.
Jacob Todd Broussard, Tomb of the Unknown Hermit, 2021. Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 48 x 54 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rivalry Projects.
Emile Mausner: Jacob, I’ve always been so captivated by the way your paintings visualize radiant states of solitude. I’m curious to hear you speak on the significance of the hermit as a recurring figure in your work.
Jacob Todd Broussard: It’s funny, I just realized I’ve been painting this hermit figure for almost ten years now. I made the very first one in undergrad; it was really just an investigation into place and landscape. It was the painting question: How does a figure inhabit a ground? Around that time, I went on a trip to New York and saw John Singer Sargent’s The Hermit (Il solitario) (1908) at the Met. The way he handles the light — incredible! And this hermit figure painted in the corner is barely discernible. Everything in the painting is highly abstracted but rooted in clear figuration. I was completely fascinated by how it balances on that edge.
Eventually, I became interested in paintings of saints, particularly Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Jerome, who both sought isolation in pursuit of grace. The whole definition of a hermit is someone secluded, someone out of earshot and eyeshot. So, I keep returning to the idea of witnessing in relation to these paintings.
EM: Who witnesses the hermit?
JB: Right! It’s like the image of Bigfoot — it calls into question authenticity, perception, all of these claims about truth and knowingness. As a painter, to paint a hermit, to paint someone in solitude — Am I bearing witness to a state of consciousness? Can the hermit also witness me? Then there’s the esoteric dimension to this figure: Is seclusion necessary to reach a state of enlightenment? Seclusion requires an element of subtraction from one’s material reality in order to reveal a certain mystery of the self. We can’t fully understand ourselves, you know? Our mystery is inexhaustible. The hermit knows that.
And with solitude comes loneliness! I think you and I both know that, too — coming out of intense sessions of production and interaction at Yale, moving to smaller or more remote places after graduation, and then experiencing the seclusion of a pandemic.
EM: Before your time at Yale, were you already interested in living outside of the bustling art centers of the world?
JB: I knew that I needed distance from a lot of white noise in order to sustain periods of concentration. After grad school, it was important for me to articulate my thoughts without interruption and without having to disclose any ideas before they were ready.
Fantasy II in Exile, 2021, installation view, Acadiana Center for the Arts. Photo: James Billeaudeau.
EM: There’s your element of subtraction. Maybe that also relates in some way to your collage practice.
JB: You know, I go to thrift stores and book sales to build my image library, and then I keep this close as evocative material in the studio. If I’m ever in search of some sort of effect for a painting, I can shuffle through these images and basically hypnotize myself with the visuals. And part of me does think of them as precious objects belonging to an archive, but collage is such an immediate way to create an image. There’s immediacy to the way collage can reproduce the architecture of a painting. Ultimately, I think of collage in the register of folk art, as being about these materials as on-hand for anyone’s use.
EM: What makes particular imagery appealing to you? I know you have a strong foundation in abstraction.
JB: A lot of the imagery I use has a patina. It feels anachronistic, belonging to another time. Lately I’ve been looking at these posters from the 70s and 80s for queer nightlife in the Gulf South, specifically New Orleans and Houston, and what I’m drawn to is this ornate, grotesque framing they all have. So, maybe what I’m incorporating into my practice is a particular design history of the ornamental grotesque. If you pulled the thread, you could trace it all the way back to Nero’s palace. All the way back to the discovery of the grotesque! All the distorted combinations of human, animal, plant — it’s the abstraction of the human body creating a new thing, which then becomes the frame.
Jacob Todd Broussard, Entrance, 2022. Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 8 x 10 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rivalry Projects.
EM: And perhaps a gateway? For me, your paintings evoke portals to unknown interiors.
JB: I like that. I think that corresponds to the act of witnessing. I’m always curious how encountering a painting puts me inside my body. How do I stay with the painting? As the painter, how do I think about encountering a viewer? Can a painting cast a spell on its viewer?
EM: I think you use color and luminosity as an enchantment. The painting becomes like a will-o’-the-wisp.
JB: I also think about fishermen in relation to these hermit paintings. How is the painting like a visual lure, like bait? How can I catch a viewer? There’s something a little ominous there. The-will-o’-the wisp draws the wanderer to their demise, too. In witnessing, there’s an interesting relationship between hazard and desire. And what do we consider normal versus paranormal? It’s a question of perception. I think painting can be a window for viewing that.
“There’s something a little ominous there. The-will-o’-the wisp draws the wanderer to their demise, too. In witnessing, there’s an interesting relationship between hazard and desire.”
EM: There might be some ambiguity between a hermit and a hunter.
JB: You know, the will-o’-the-wisp is so ephemeral it can’t really be documented. What does it mean to paint something I have never observed? Imagination fills the gap and allows painting to engage abstraction and figuration simultaneously.
Since you mention luminosity, Pierre Bonnard is a huge influence — his whole project was about light and memory. He would bear witness to a scene, then later attempt to recreate all its experiential fullness just from his memory. Painting a hermit is like painting an imagined memory, and light is critical in that process.
EM: Do you ever inhabit this subjectivity in your studio? Are you the hermit that you’re witnessing?
JB: I’m very, very secretive when I’m painting. I have to listen closely to what the painting is asking of me — which is really just me asking myself. I think of painting as a way to expand the kinds of questions we can ask about the self. Maybe it’s all part of a process of soul-making, if you want to get esoteric about it.
EM: You know I do.
JB: I know you do! Because getting to that question requires some measure of seclusion and loneliness. Being in the studio is sometimes a very lonely existence. And necessarily so. I’m grateful to live not in complete exile, of course! We all want connection and belonging. But I do think my best work comes from being left alone. I’d rather not engage with outside opinions when I’m trying to be as porous as possible inside my own studio.
Fantasy II in Exile, 2021, installation view, Acadiana Center for the Arts. Photo: James Billeaudeau.
EM: As an artist, what does freedom look like to you?
JB: I think it has to do with imagination — the space to imagine and populate other worlds, other ways of being. And not feeling obligated to limit any project by disclosure or by the limitations of language. Interpretation can be stifling to an expansive idea. Interpretation can be so transactional — what can I get out of this? I don’t want to make that kind of demand of any artwork.
EM: How can we attend to art without interpreting? This philosophy that we should approach artwork as emotionally uninvolved, essentially disinterested spectators is so sticky. I don’t know about it though — there’s no emotionally uninvolved aesthetic experience for me!
“I think of painting as a way to expand the kinds of questions we can ask about the self. Maybe it’s all part of a process of soulmaking, if you want to get esoteric about it.”
JB: Have you ever experienced a work of art that brought tears to your eyes?
EM: Oh, yeah. I sat through many consecutive loops of Camille Henrot’s Grosse Fatigue (2013) once at MoMA — I was really weeping. I didn’t see that coming.
JB: You wanna talk about hypnotizing? I spent more time with that video than I think I have with any other work of video art. What do you think it is about it?
EM: It’s so rhythmical and extraordinarily dense. There’s no chance to become skeptical about the experience. It’s stacked and layered in such a way that you can absorb only a fraction of its “information” consciously. For me, it passed right beyond interpretation and became a very emotional experience.
JB: Speaking of density and rhythm, I’m thinking about how great comedians are able to make light of a situation while very publicly falling apart. They’re really laughing and crying at the same time, you know? As are we, when we watch them. And isn’t that life? The density of the experience can be truly overwhelming.
Emile Mausner is an artist and writer based in Orlando, Florida. She received her MFA from Yale School of Art (2019) and holds degrees in painting from the University of Central Florida and in critical studies from the New College of Florida. She has shown her work in New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Florida, and California.
by Emile Mausner
