Dr. Nell Irvin Painter is a force to be reckoned with: accomplished historian and scholar, fine artist with a piece currently on display at Rutgers, author of eight books (so far)… and she will be our keynote speaker at the NJLA Conference on Thursday, May 30, 2019.
I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Painter, who is fresh off a book tour in France, as the French edition of The History of White People (Histoire Des Blancs) was just released on January 31st.
We will be hearing from Dr. Painter at Conference about Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, her first non scholarly book, in which she narrates her experience going back to school for a Bachelor’s and Master’s in painting in her 60s. Many of us who work in libraries will find her tale relatable, as it is fairly common to approach our field from another background.
When I asked Painter how she knew it was the right time to pursue her BFA, she told me “I wanted to and I could,” going on to elaborate that while it was a bit early for retirement, she had thought that her book The History of White People was done and that her parents were stabilized. After years of teaching graduate students, she was ready for that new challenge.
The process for applying to MFA programs can be intimidating. Dr. Painter said, “You can’t know what is good art. That mystique is kind of set up to be scary.” Art is subjective, a topic which is explored in her memoir quite a bit. Beyond skill, she had to make her work stand out.
While Painter seems to excel at moving outside of her comfort zone, writing this memoir was “hard” and she gives some credit to her very experienced agent. Even though she had authored several historical books, Painter had to move her work into something very personal. Old in Art School “asks the reader to enter into an emotional instead of intellectual relationship” and it took about a year and a half to find the narrative style. Like a true artist, Painter felt using a fountain pen and paper was an expressive way for her to venture into those places.
The next project for Dr. Painter will be a fusion of all of her talents and paths, as she plans to create an artist book which has a working title of The History of White People For Dummies. It will include drawings, digital collages, and text, which will get to the heart of the questions she is frequently asked about the book, without the scholarly backstop. It will be a lighthearted work to contrast the “400 tense pages of scholarship” in the original work, which took her ten years to complete.
Painter is wonderfully engaging to speak with, and I am looking forward to hearing from her at the NJLA Conference. She told me “Librarians are my favorite people” and mentioned that The History of White People is dedicated to the Princeton University Library. Partial credit for her love for librarians can also go to the single award earned by any of her books-- Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol (1996) was the nonfiction winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. However, we can look forward to hearing about how Old in Art School fares, as it is currently a finalist in the autobiography category for the National Book Award.
Dr. Nell Irvin Painter also loves cats and knitting socks and recently enjoyed reading Washington Black: A Novel by Esi Edugyan.
