The Painter Speaks Series

As part of the Artists Training and Career Project at Columbia University, oral history interviews were conducted in the fields of acting, crafts and painting. In addition to their intellectual value, the interviews were seen as a mechanism to inform people considering careers in the arts about the career paths, and the points of greatest validation and greatest resistance in artists’ careers.

The tapes and transcripts are archived at Columbia University’s Oral History Collection. A dozen oral histories in each area have been published by Greenwood Press, with an extensive introduction on the history of each discipline. In addition to the books The Actor Speaks: Actors Discuss Their Experiences and Careers and The Craftsperson Speaks: Artists in Varied Media Discuss Their Crafts, a book was also published about visual artists: The Painter Speaks: Artists Discuss Their Experiences and Careers. It includes interviews with Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Sam Gilliam, Sally Haley, Al Held, Carl Morris, Joan Nelson, Barbara Noah, Elias Rivera, Dan Smajo-Ramirez, Emmi Whitehorse and Lisa Young.