Mieke Marple

On the occasion of her solo exhibition at Ever Gold Projects, I sat down with San Francisco based painter to speak about her new body of work, and how it pertains to an ever-increasingly tumultuous world.

Mieke Marple (b. 1986) is an artist, writer, and activist living in San Francisco. She received a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2008 and was co-owner of Night Gallery, Los Angeles, from 2011-2016. She is represented by Ever Gold [Projects] in San Francisco and MAYA Arts Management in Los Angeles. Marple has been written about by The New York Times, W Magazine, and The Guardian, among other publications. Through various charity art auctions, she has helped raise over a million and a half dollars for Planned Parenthood LA and nearly a quarter-million for Critical Resistance.

Mieke Marple at her exhibition Tarot Reckoning at Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: Your latest exhibition Tarot Reckoning draws on the traditional practice of reading Tarot cards as a method to gain insight into the journey of life. For those less familiar with the Tarot (myself included) could you explain your understanding of the Tarot, and how it has been important in your life?

MM: Tarot is therapy + spirituality + storytelling. Tarot readings are simply cordoned-off spaces for self-reflection, helped along by some very loaded imagery which functions like an allegorical Rorschach test. I actually don’t get many tarot readings or pull cards. When experiencing great uncertainty, I, instead, make Tarot cards. The ones that resonate most tell me where I am.

Installation View: Tarot Reckoning at Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: While there are numerous Tarot cards and you’ve painted more in the past, the exhibition connects three in particular: the Moon, the Lovers, and Death. Are these cards you’ve repeatedly drawn in readings recently, or do they represent your own reading of the current times, so to speak?

MM: The Moon, The Lovers, and Death reflect my relationship to the current moment, or, really, to the moment when I made them—which was Fall 2020. Last Fall, we were 6 months into the pandemic with over a million dead, the BLM moment was in full swing galvanized by the murder of Breonna Taylor, and California wildfires had made the air quality so toxic that it wasn’t safe to go outside. It sounds dark, but I had this sudden insight: “Oh, the human species will end.” And, oddly, accepting this fact—like accepting one’s own mortality—gave me a feeling of great peace. I realized that whether the world ended in one year or in a million, I would still get up and make art, still recycle, still do my part to battle social injustice and climate change.

Mieke Marple, The Lovers (Sumatran Tigers), 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 54 x 2 inches. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: In the moon card, you paint your own face in profile. Is this your first self-portrait? How does it change your reading of the card to associate your own image and identity within it?

MM: In my two-person 2018 exhibition “Relocation Tarot” with Christine Wang, I actually drew myself as The Fool. It was a full-body, nude portrait, which reflected how I felt about making art for the first time after a 10-year-long hiatus. Around the same time, I drew The Moon with my mother’s profile inside a circular moon symbol. Replacing her profile with my own reflects my graduation from The Fool to someone who is more comfortable inhabiting her creative subconscious and cosmic matriarchal lineage.

Mieke Marple, The Moon (Self-Portrait), 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 54 x 2 inches. & Mieke Marple, The Fool (Self-Portrait), 2018. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: Your exhibitions and paintings often feature cinematic showmanship - painted walls, vivid colors, and even gold leaf. How can this sort of flair in exhibition design draw in an audience? What elements did you use to enhance “Tarot Reckoning”?

MM: The feelings inside me are very loud, so I try to replicate that in my paintings and installations. However, I’ve learned that, just as with communicating with people, if you are too much—if you’re screaming and crying with make-up running all over the place—others will shut down and you won’t get heard. So it’s a balance. Sometimes silence speaks the loudest. I tried to include more spaciousness in this exhibition. Rather than using brightly painted walls, I used lighting and sound to create an immersive environment. For the sound, I asked artist Katie Sinnott to create a meditative sound bath for the exhibition using her gong and singing bowls. I first met Katie in 2012 at UCLA’s MFA open studio. My former gallery partner and I then invited her to do a show in Night Gallery’s project room in 2013, for which she made a beautifully subtle installation. We reconnected in 2018 or 19 when I was living with my parents in Los Altos and she was leading a Ying yoga class at Yoga of Los Altos, which is the last place I ever expected to run into anyone from my Night Gallery days.

Mieke Marple, Death (Rome on Fire), 2020, 24K gold and acrylic on canvas, 70 x 54 x 2 inches. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: Your painting of the Death card is very layered. Within the skull, we see the image of Rome burning, while the background is covered with gold leaf. As the United States loses its hegemonic status in the world, is this image of death your prediction for our future, or a warning?

MM: It’s neither. It’s a certainty. Tarot’s Major Arcana are often likened to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, in which the hero/shero/theyro must travel to his/her/their underworld to experience a dark night of the soul before re-emerging to face old demons as a changed person. The Hero’s Journey is often depicted as a circle because as soon as the Hero finishes one cycle he/she/they start a new one. In the Major Arcana, Death appears in the middle. It is the 13th of 22 cards. In other words, Death occurs is the middle of the Hero’s Journey—at the bottom of the circle—which is why it is the card of mourning, grief, and rebirth. So, yes, the United States is experiencing a Death—and it’s not the first nor last time this will happen.

LS: Your rendition of The Two of Swords is also gold-leafed, how do your implications of inequity and materialism apply to this card?

MM: Because I was an art dealer for so many years, I can never un-see art, esp. paintings, as luxury commodities. It is important to me to acknowledge the high-end art world as a sphere of privilege. I’m not 100% condemning luxury commodities. In fact, I think they have a great power that can be harnessed for good. What Dapper Dan has done for the community with his line of clothing is a great example of this. However, if we pretend like selling paintings to rich white art collectors is some kind of public service rather than a luxury retail exchange then we are in big trouble.

Mieke Marple, Two of Swords (Choices), 2020, 24K gold and acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: Your work can be divided into very distinct series, both visually and conceptually. In what ways do you see them overlapping. 

MM: Most of my artwork and writing relates back to my main interests of spirituality, sexuality, money, and power. There also seems to be an underlying love of nature peeking through it all. I’ve drawn a lot of flowers and am starting to draw more and more animals.

LS: Your process seems to involve quite a bit of planning - from experimentation on small scale to digital renderings in color. How do you balance your intuitive side and your precise side? 

MM: Good question! I actually don’t see my planning and being intuitive as separate. For those who don’t know, my process looks like this. I make a black-and-white drawing on paper. I scan it and make various digital color mock-ups. I print several small black-and-white scans of the drawing onto Epson canvas to make real-life mock-ups—using my favorite digital mock-ups as loose guides. I then choose my favorite IRL mock-up to make a final big painting. This process allows for a lot of big and small experimentation along the way. It also embeds a lot of time between initial drawing and final painting, which, in my experience, is what the subconscious needs to shine through. 

Mieke Marple’s Studio. Courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects] and the Artist

LS: As a practicing artist with a long history as a dealer and curator, you have a unique vision of the contemporary art world and market from both sides of the curtain. What are your predictions, and your hopes in the coming year? Do you foresee a trend away from the commercial gallery model with an increased focus on artists’ financial and bargaining power?

MM: The pandemic has heightened our awareness of the great wealth and life inequality that has existed between various groups for a long time. In fact, the rates at which BIPOC and Latinx people are dying, with the government doing nothing about it, can make it seem like our country is committing genocide via negligence. People are angry and, as the BLM moment has shown us, are starting to recognize and flex their collective people power. And I am sure this will spill over into the art world. In the art world, artists are the most exploited—most disposably-treated—members of that ecosystem. But artists can ban together and demand to be treated with greater equality. I certainly plan to. I am acutely aware of how much more power I had as a dealer than as an artist. And I refuse to accept that that is just how things are.

LS: What’s coming next for you?

MM: I’m working on two new series. One is called Big Money. It features illuminated letters superimposed onto money and is about my belief in the importance of financial transparency. The other is called Erotic Garden. It features flowers and 19th-century aristocrats in perverted sex scenes. I don’t really know what that series is about. Perhaps, it’s about the perversity of privilege—though it sort of revels in it rather than reproaches it, or maybe it does both. And, of course, I’m continuing to work on my semi-autobiographical novel, Love at Night, which I’ve been working on for the past 4+ years.

Mieke Marple’s solo exhibition Tarot Reckoning is on view at Ever Gold [Projects] in San Francisco through February 28. The exhibition is open by appointment at Minnesota Street Project, click here to schedule an appointment. Follow Mieke Marple on Instagram by clicking the links below for a preview of her upcoming series, Erotic Garden and Big Money.

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