After the closing of James Hyde's most recent exhibition, Stuart Davis Group, at Pierogi's Boiler in Williamsburg, the painter stopped by AIR to talk to Phong Bui about his life and work. Hyde's earliest paintings--significant elements of which factor into his work to this day--were made on a variety of surfaces and often installed in irregular fashion, frequently at obtuse angles on the wall and, occasionally, on the floor; this was in stark contrast to the neo-Expressionist vein in which so many painters at the time were working. Hyde contextualizes his work in its historical contexts, aligning the foundation of his work with Minimalism and referring to his younger self as an "unreconstructed modernist." His considerations of the essence of painting are evident here, as he questions what painting is and whether it is truly a "medium" as such, preferring its definition along symbolic and allegorical lines. Hyde discusses the origin of much of the thought and happy accidents that have led to his work, speaking to the impacts of error and failure on his art, as well as house painting, construction work and his studies of archeology and anthropology (47 minutes).

A transcript of excerpts from this interview is available online at The Brooklyn Rail's website here.