What is Tandem Painting?
"Tandem Painting is a collaborative studio practice by Suzette McD and James Whitehouse. Working across joint and parallel modes of production, their practice explores shared themes through both co-authored works and independently executed paintings developed in close conceptual dialogue. Individual works retain distinct authorship while contributing to broader collaborative series."
Tandem Paintings started as an exercise in communication and relationship building. But two things happened. The first is that the social justice and community work that has defined most of our lives just naturally came through in everything we painted.
Our work is overwhelmingly defined by uplifting marginalized groups and people to address, confront, and challenge how our society is failing them. More importantly, we strive to get people to realize that our current social system isn’t a mistake – it’s working exactly the way our politicians and their special-interest-group sponsors want it to work. This isn’t an accident. The “failing” in our social programs is not the inability to find programs that serve the public, the “failing” is the fact that our government has deliberately chosen programs which serve special interests and political donors, instead of the people.
The second thing that happened is that we realized that Tandem Painting is more than just the two of us painting on the same canvas. It’s a studio practice defined by collaboration. Collaboration in the technical aspects of painting, but more so a collaboration in the thematic development of the works. Whether we’re working jointly, in parallel, or independently, the work always promotes our shared ideals and themes. Even when the pieces are painted individually, they are always developed in close conceptual dialogue. Even when the individual works retain distinct authorship they still contribute to the broader, jointly-developed themes and visions.
This practice may sound purely intellectual, but it’s become very personal. It reflects obstacles we’ve both had to overcome, which have given us our unshakable belief in the ideals of equality, justice, and inclusion.
To come out of these experiences, not embittered but enlightened as to how the system fails, and with a dedication to remain engaged in confronting these problems has been a long and often difficult struggle.
In alignment with that inner struggle, we have committed ourselves to the parallel challenge of not allowing our art to succumb to the ugliness of some of our current social challenges. We strive to show the beauty we can still aspire to despite all these problems. Our art is meant to be attractive and inviting, while still carrying the significant messages which challenge our current society’s failings.
J. Lee
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James' painting
Suzette's painting
Painted together on the same canvas
