Born in Virginia, Hope Atherton is based in Harlem, New York where her artistic practice includes deeply atmospheric paintings, most recently made up of charcoal, gesso and oil on linen, alongside sculpture of bronze birds or glazed figurative ceramics. A show of paintings in London at Tramps last October, was wonderfully summarised by art critic David Rimanelli thus: “Hope Atherton paints as if photography had outlived itself and returned as a ghost.” He compared these particular works to “séance tables: spaces of attention where something unseen might briefly materialise.”

Atherton holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, she lives with her husband the gallerist Gavin Brown; the pair regularly host artistic gatherings. In a recent interview with Neptune Papers, Atherton explained the importance of the objects she collects, which might include her parents record collection, a fossilised eardrum of a whale or dresses found in a trunk from her grandmother’s attic, that continually drive her curiosity and work. “I need a lot of those layers of time and of objects and things I’ve collected,” she said. “I love the story that these objects create together.” Atherton’s work has been shown in various solo and group shows, including last spring’s ‘Umbra’ exhibition at Gratin Gallery in New York.

1. How would you explain your rituals, process and practice? 

A ritual that I have come to rely on is my walk home after I take my daughter to school through the top of Central Park with my dog, a fierce little bonsai wolf. By the time I’m back at the studio my mind has become mostly clear. The walk is a transition into focus. I find it helpful to pick up where I left off the day before; this way the work feels continuous, like I’m stepping back into a space that has been quietly breathing on its own. My studio is layered with treasures and junk, piles of xeroxed images, books, incense, matchbooks from travels, teeth, knotted branches, shredded fabric scraps, each thing a relic, an accumulation of inspiration and memory.

2. Do you have an early memory that you think connects to your creative path now?

I remember sensing that found objects possessed meanings beyond their original function—twisted rusty scraps buried in the barn, things that had been held, worn down, repaired, decayed. They are archives of time, repositories of the habitual and the forgotten, reinterpreted to reveal their beauty.

3. Where have you been finding inspiration lately?

Lately I have been immersed in the history of occult photography, early experimental film and later descendants of the surrealists, like Man Ray who found the mystical in found objects and chance exposure. There was a belief that consciousness could impress itself directly onto photographic plates, that spirits could leave visible traces in the material world.  I’m interested in capturing something that exists between the visible and invisible. The way presence lingers in objects and images long after their original context has dissolved.

4. Is there a quote or particular philosophy you live by? 

“The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal.” Joseph Campbell

5. How would you define beauty? 

I am drawn to beauty in decay. There is an alchemy in deterioration. It is a form of magic and history made visible, evidence of time’s passage.