Mikey Yates
Mikey Yates is the youngest of four brothers and remembers struggling to copy their drawings of the Wu-Tang Clan logo when he was five or six. For a while his family lived on a small American Army base in the German countryside, in a home with Filipino decorations and Bavarian beer steins. He can't go back to some of the places he lived because they are on military bases, so he paints them from memory and family photos. He now lives in Kansas City, and his subjects are his family, his friends and scenes from his own life. Asked what is hardest to get right in a portrait of someone he knows, he says, "Their energy." This year he is a Charlotte Street Foundation Fellow.
Q: You started out drawing Gary Payton, Scorpion, and Ryu. How did that turn into painting your family?
A: I grew up drawing everything around me. I'm the youngest of four brothers and I distinctly remember struggling trying to copy my brothers' drawings of the Wu-Tang Clan symbol. I was probably 5 or 6. Eventually it was Pokémon, X-Men, and the tear-out posters in the middle of SLAM magazine. I think drawing my family was just a natural extension of me drawing the world around me and things I cared about.
Q: You were born in Germany and now paint in Kansas City. What does place do to a painting?
A: I grew up moving around every few years, so place is important and sometimes intangible; sometimes the setting in a painting is a collage of different places.
I can't visit certain places where I've spent formative years because they're on military bases, so I have to rely on my memory of the place or collage the backgrounds of family photographs. Different places have a distinct light, color palette, and memories associated with them. For example, I think about my time living in San Antonio versus living in the Seattle area and the contrast in the thickness of the air, the saturation of colors, and the intensity of light. As I spend more time in Kansas City, I find myself painting places I frequent and am beginning to know more intimately. It feels almost like painting someone you have a relationship with versus painting someone you don't know.
Q: You work from memory, family photos, and quick snapshots. What does a painting start from?
A: A painting can start from a variety of places. A recent painting began with me seeing a toddler running around in the park wearing fluorescent clothes at the transition of winter and spring when all the plants were still leafless and dull. He was running past a structure at the park that reminded me of the color of military housing and made me think of resilience and cycles. I was looking at a lot of Sorolla paintings of kids playing and began sketching compositions in my sketchbook, and eventually, almost a year later, it became a painting.
Sometimes it's just painting the person in front of me.
Q: What does hybridity mean in your work?
A: When I think of hybridity in my work, I often think of my living space as a child and how it was a collage of places. I think about living in the countryside of Germany on a small American Army base in a blended Filipino household. I think of eating bratwurst silog, our decorations from the Philippines, NBA Street Vol. 2, our Bavarian steins, my older brothers' Figaro chains, etc. I always thought there was an interesting combination of objects in our interior space that spoke about our identity.
Q: What's the hardest thing to get right in a painting of someone you know?
A: Their energy.
Q: You're a Charlotte Street Fellow this year. Where do you want the work to go?
A: I don't necessarily have a predetermined place I want the work to go. I just want to grow as an artist.
