i can’t express the love in words so i just paint everything that reminds me of you
Jemi Gale interviewed by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle for Suite 7a
Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle: in my open tabs rn i have the poem u sent me, ur twitter account, and a pic of a donut king dinosaur …my prep for this interview
Jemi Gale: omg
ZBM: since u sent the poem earlier, and mentioned the title of the project was ‘donut king (paintings about love)’ i looked up donut king. coz i was like what is that. i have never been ! i just noticed we do have it here but it’s not in auckland
lol
only in palmerston north and wellington and dunedin it seems
JG: cute idk if i knew it was international thing. i think lots of the stores closed recently? it used to be like such a thing when i was a kid (or at least i think so, i didn’t grow up in the city lol)
ZBM: it seems like we have dunkin’ donuts more , from what i looked up . oh yeh, did u only start going as an adult ? (where did u grow up also?)
JG: kind of wish there was dunkin donuts here i love a chain store
ZBM: also in the paintings u sent me, am i right in seeing the pink dinosaur in one of them as symbolizing the infamous dino donut that u mention in ur twitter ha
JG: the donut king memories i have are from 2017 onwards: going to sunshine marketplace donut king and ordering a lime milkshake because i thought it would be yum and it was gross, going to donut king altona north (now closed) and getting cinnamon donuts they made fresh and u get to watch them move on conveyor belt, and then donut king sunshine maybe 3 more times (two of those times were to replicate going there the first of those three times lol)
literally was going there to get the pink dino donut ! lol
ZBM: lol good. it seems cute. omg so exciting on the conveyor belt !
JG: i wanna go to a donut king store where they sell frappes (its like ‘selected stores only’)
ZBM: what flavour/kind would u get. i dont think ive ever had one
do they ever tell u where….
or it is like treasure map, u gotta find the frappes by chance
JG: it’s surprise when U get to the store lol. i’d probably get strawberry frappe because pink milk is the cutest (I like strawberry milk but not sure how it would translate to frappe). my default Starbucks order is matcha frappe with soy milk and whipped cream
ZBM: seems good to get food that u think is cute, feels like it would taste and digest better if it looks pleasant and desirable
JG: im not sure why eating cute things makes sense
the safest place is inside the stomach but also its full of acid
ZBM: maybe it’s like how ppl sometimes think cute things are so sweet (like baby animals) that they want to like attack them or squish them, like to make them apart of u lol….
U mentioned that your paintings are about love , and that u want to change ur artist bio to say u make paintings about love….
the paintings u have done for Suite 7a, would u say they’re about romantic love or friend love, or are they same thing to u ?
or overlapping
JG: the paintings are about romantic love. like /pure love/ i don’t think there’s overlap to friend love but also at the same time i think to love someone for me also being friends with them is important because then it’s more fun to hang out?
i also have v strong feelings for my close friends which feels like so so close to romantic love.
i watched this youtube video recently that was like the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone is that you are obsessed with them. last year i made a deliberate decision to not say im obsessed with anything and instead use the word passionate instead. but maybe the video suggested to me that obsession can be a good thing?
the like tile image for the video is question that says “how does someone know if they are feeling romantic or platonic attraction” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DYgImG1CKo
i guess that’s why i clicked on the video i’ve spent the past few months feeling dumb for not realising i was in love with someone i spent like most days with for a year like we told each other we loved each other all the time but i thought we were just friends
ZBM: i agree that being in love with someone does have that element of obsession, and it’s like, craving, addictive…i do think obsession can be good sometimes coz it helps u focus ha. but can make u crazy too…
when i was looking at ur twitter, there was the line ‘love is an addiction ‘and u also mentioned that in ur poem …
JG: that line [love is an addiction] is literally from the same video lol
ZBM: i did literally google “how do i know if i am in love with someone” the other year when i was 2 months into knowing someone who i’d been talking to everyday
JG: were you in love?
ZBM: i decided i was ! after reading the articles lol
i had intuition i was so just needed to confirm it. we said we loved each other like maybe a few weeks later they said it to me first and i was like oh…i had been thinking the same
JG: also do you think there is a way to tell if you are in love? im like maybe something has to happen to know you’re in love? i didn’t know until we’d spent time apart after spending a year together. idk lol
ZBM: it’s confusing ! some people also seem to fall in love all the time, i think i don’t.. i guess it’s like, if i care about them and want them to be healthy and i feel excited about them as a person and feel like , im glad they are alive
JG: i think i love people quite easily maybe i trust people easily or something but then to actually realise im in love might take me a while and then i might do dumb shit like think the person is just my friend
ZBM: it can be hard to read the signs from other people, and i guess sometimes yourself ! i definitely have been in that position
JG: i think it was confusing for me because i felt more comfortable than i ever had before and maybe i attached that to friendship rather than someone presenting secure energy to me in a romantic way
like oh this feels normal we must be friends lol
ZBM: when i was stalking ur twitter earlier, i saw ur tweet ‘what colour is love”…
(what colour is it for u ?)
sorry im referencing to yr twitter a lot lol
JG: omg i thought about this so much while i was painting. i think the colour of love is yellow obviously (i started thinking about yellow a lot when i made a series of works titled ‘yellow was my mum’s favourite colour’ )
love could also be purple. i dont think love is red
what colour do you think love is? i’m really interested in peoples answer to the question like i tweeted it not as a rhetorical question lol
ZBM: i associate yellow with u , from ur paintings, and also that little duck (?) soft toy u have ha
yeh i agree that red is too cliched and not quite right
i think love is maybe purplish too, or maybe green….i see love as growth /life affirming
JG: red is like bold and rare tho or something? my painter friends were talking about red recently being like “we never paint with red” like can only ever use tiny bit of red
ZBM: hmm true ! whats the most common colour u paint with?
and did u avoid any colours when painting these recent ones?
JG: yellow has like connotations of like generosity and like ‘real care’ or something for me, like guess that’s from thinking about my mum and also kiiroitori (the yellow bird character which i started using as like a character representing myself lol)
i hate painting with green but one of the paintings looks a bit green (it’s mostly yellow paint marker that someone i love gave to me and i drew over blue acrylic paint with it until it ran out…. there also is some green lol)
i definitely paint with yellow the most like don’t think i want to stop it feels too important to me.
maybe symbolic rather than important
ZBM: makes sense for the yellow if it’s connected to feelings about ur mum (did you/do you have a good relationship?)
JG: me and my mum were very close when i was young like until i was a teenager. my friend sarah brasier invited me to be in two art shows in 2019 of art reflecting premature loss of a parent (my mum died in 2017) and i had no idea what to make… growing up the kitchen and living room in my childhood home were yellow, the only way i could memorialise my mum in a way i felt comfortable with was to make yellow paintings… i got the galleries painted yellow at seventh gallery in melbourne and firstdraft in sydney. i think my mum did extraordinary work as a mother and after she died i felt like i knew no one would ever love me that much
ZBM: i’m sorry to hear about ur mum :( seems extremely difficult and sad to lose a parent that early. i’m happy to hear tho that ur mum loved u a lot. it seems nice to be able to use that yellow in ur paintings to remember her love and her love features in all ur paintings.
i do like that kiioroitoi frequently appears in ur work. toys and animals seem to appear a lot in ur work. in ur recent work, there’s hello kitty, a koala, fish, a shorebird , that dino donut…how do animals/ toys relate to ur ideas about love?
JG: in the donut king paintings most of the characters or animals or toys relate to memories that remind me of love Hello Kitty’s cat charmmy kitty, eukykuma (a kind of hybrid of euky bear and rilakkuma), a great egret, donut king donut… are symbols I found myself latching onto to try and preserve my own memories
i guess they also function as dedication like the colour yellow does
i can’t express the love in words so I just paint everything that reminds me of ‘you’ (lots of these symbols actually come from notes I wrote while doing a wall mural titled “everything you have taught me” for exhibition ‘stick head here’ with my friend/collaborator Brayden van Meurs
ZBM: love is so abstract sometimes and hard to communicate, painting seems a good way to try and communicate it when words can’t. bc u can just experience the painting
reminds me of this tweet i came across earlier today about donut king (and also the struggle to communicate )
do u think that people in ur life understand u better thru ur paintings than trying to communicate in other ways ?
JG: i dont think so? im like i dont think paintings are easy to read like… i think of painting as equal parts like sentimental emotional output that feels really important or something lol and then the other part is just being silly and doing a dumb painting
ZBM: haha yeh, and i think that also comes across, like the playfulness in ur paintings, which is fun
JG: i think the silly part is more important than the feelings part like… paintings are just paintings. but having something to do is so vital in surviving (i only realized this recently through a conversation i had with @grant.ionatan think really helped me frame the way i think about art tho being like um its so important / um its so silly
ZBM: yehh i agree that having something to do is important for surviving and staying hopeful. and life is both serious and also very funny/absurd , so seems like it’s good to not take urself too seriously in painting . people are always talking about how much a sense of playfulness and being silly is important for wellbeing , i think it is.
when people ask u about ur paintings , what do u hate being asked (by friends or anyone/strangers/interviewers )
(and what do u like being asked?)
JG: omg
idk lol
ZBM: hehe
JG: i think everyone like being asked questions about themselves lol
ZBM: what star sign are u (am i allowed to ask..)
lol
JG: i tell people i dont have a star sign
ZBM: haha ! so thats a hated Question? Ha
JG: no i love the question because then i get to see how people react to me telling them i dont have a star sign
ZBM: that makes me think ur a taurus lol
or a fixed sign
JG: lol idk because i dont have a star sign
ZBM: hehe. i had another question…re obsession, in ur poem u wrote , “love is just obsession but make it balanced””. i also interpret some of ur recurring themes /motifs in ur paintings and in ur writing as obsessions, but also love — like one could maybe say that u are obsessed with donut king/ love donut king, and gelato, and koalas, i remember u tweeting a about that gelato shop a few months ago, and i see koalas appearing a lot on ur twitter and instagram. it’s like nice tho, to see these things coming up often
that’s not really a question hah, um ,
but i guess im interested to hear more about love and obsession and how that comes out in ur current paintings
JG: yeh like… i think these things just become interests like… im passionate about gelato (i used to eat beku gelato when i lived in brunswick east and now i live in the west and kariton sorbetes opened an irl store in footscray and it’s life changing good gelato), im interested in donut king and koalas lol…
ZBM: it’s good to have passions, because even if they are obsessions or addictions, they are like, life affirming coz give u reason to get up (like i gotta get up and meet my friend for gelato…)
i need to get more passions/hobbies i think…
i do like koalas also lol
they’re so cute
JG: i think i worked out that what i like about people is that they are passionate about things like i struggle to connect with people who arent passionate… like the passion can be anything gelato, birds, trains, specific kind of music, reality tv, maybe even a sport…. like seeing other people passionate about things is exciting and also is a way to know questions to ask people and guess like i said before people like being asked questions about themselves or maybe their interests (i didnt know this for a long time, maybe its assumed people automatically know this but i didnt… really changed the way i engage with people tho but i keep having to remind myself to ask questions)
i think maybe you asked where I grew up before and I deliberately avoid that question but… i was born and lived on wotjobaluk country until I was 18 and moved to the city… bringing this up now because…. this umm big thing is there…
ZBM: lol i love it…ive always wanted to see that big koala thing.
yehh it’s good when someone has a passion and hobby because then there is always something to talk about, some structure . i think i did automatically/ already know this, whenever i meet people i just ask questions about themselves, people will talk for hours , but also can be bad sometimes if they never ask u things back ha
JG: yeh I struggle with the asking things back it’s a very manual thing for me I don’t automatically think to ask people questions hence reminding myself to do so lol
ZBM: also i want to know,, the person u mentioned earlier re ‘feeling dumb for not realizing i was in love with someone i spent most days with last year’…. is it too late for that relationship now to move it into romantic love (again ?)
also is this person who i think it is…
JG: ummm confidential
ZBM: hehe ok
JG: i think it’s still romantic but I’m also… last week I was 100% psycho and now after hanging out im 50% psycho which comparitively (idk how to spell) feels so much more chill
ZBM: that’s good that psycho level has decreased !
JG: i just had to be like “do you know how I feel about you” and they said yes and then that took the edge off even though there might be so much unknown in my head I can just live my life a bit more. I guess when you non stop think about someone for three months even if you try not to think about them … that’s obsession and that’s what being in love with is according to the pop psychology video lol
I guess it’s lots of things, fear and care and… idk uncertainty forgot what I was thinking lol… oh yeah I meant change and adaption to change rather than uncertainty
ZBM: does the adaption to change relate to ur painting title “the only way out is through / and all i want is you (heart practice):”. coz when i think about overcoming fear and change, i feel like u can’t do anything to avoid but u have to just go thru it….somehow
JG: yeh I think idk doing these paintings even tho they feel like they are about that to me it’s also some aspect of just painting and scribbling colours or whatever eases that intensity… like allowing yourself to live your own life. and like being able to hang out with my friends even tho I’m more annoying that usual lol
living your own life is… a skill maybe lol
that painting title is a lyric taken from a song called ‘closer’ by a hardcore band called rolo tomassi… the rest of the titles come from pop songs but this band is my fav and has been for years (i went to see them the first time they toured australia in 2010 lol) its so nice to have a consistent interest i love them so much lol. the singer refuses to explain what her lyrics mean and i live for that maybe thats an appeal for me because i can just apply them to my life 100% i guess the song to me seems like devotion and questioning and maybe a tiny bit of demise? … i think i applied it to myself in like it feels like honest approach to a connection… also thinking about devotion and being willing to do anything for someone… the song lyric is “the only way out is through/ all i want is you” i added heart practice because i guess its literally me painting hearts but also because i want to do the best job i can at loving someone i love. there’s another lyric …
“what’s left to lose / all i want is you” which i also wrote down i guess thats like a mark of deliberate change being like im gonna like idk… project good energy and work to make it work if you’re interested…. and if not then i’ve done what i can… what’s left to lose… like idk there’s so much to lose still but if i can do everything i can then… maybe there’s a tiny bit of comfort in that still
