Brooks I recently heard a wonderful conversation between Phong Bui, Publisher and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail and artist Beverly Fishman.

Friedland That sounds interesting.

Brooks It was! They’re both great conversationalists, and his questions were gorgeously discursive; in a matter of moments, his references ranged from Napoleon to Kierkegaard to, I think, Caligula.

Friedland I hope your expectations aren’t super high for my knowledge of Caligula.

Brooks Let’s start with Caligula, actually. {laughs}

Friedland If that's what you want. {laughs} But I don’t think I remember Caligula.

Brooks He was very bad, I think.

Friedland Caligula, very bad. Okay.

Brooks Very bad. He had a lovely villa, though, on Capri. Or maybe that was Tiberius. Yes, I remember it was Tiberius, though Caligula spent time there as a youth. But we don’t have to talk about that.

Friedland Let’s not! {laughs}

Brooks Now I forget what I was going to ask you. Are you painting at this moment?

Friedland I was just cleaning my glass palette.

Brooks Oh, you use glass.

Friedland I have a little glass palette and then I have some disposable palettes. Usually I keep the glass palettes going regularly and use the disposable ones for sort of more daily stuff.

Brooks But you cover it at the end of the day?

Friedland I cover it with Saran Wrap. I'm pretty cheap. I hate to waste paint, so sometimes I think oh, maybe I can use this for this other thing or whatever. I'm a bit frugal.

Brooks It’s your Canadian practicality.

Friedland Is that what it is?

Brooks Yes, I think so.

Friedland If you say so! {laughs}

Brooks What are you working on?

Friedland I just finished working on this tiny—well, it's not tiny in terms of quantity because I think there are fourteen images in total—but it's tiny in terms of scale, the biggest painting is nine by twelve and the smallest one is five by seven for this show in the north of England, which is called A Small Song.

Brooks I love that title.

Friedland Do you know the song it refers to?

Brooks I don't think so.

Friedland Do you know Lhasa de Sela?

Brooks No, I don't.

Friedland Oh my God, I get to introduce John to music! {laughs} This is exciting.

Brooks Tell me about her.

Friedland I don't know a ton about her. She was a Mexican-American singer who was a transplant to Montreal. She died in 2010 of cancer, she was quite young. Thirty-seven, I think. She was part of the Lilith Fair thing that was happening at the time, in the late 1990s. She made a second album called The Living Road {2003} which I've always listened to. There's one song called A Small Song, and it's about a small song. I’ve been wondering how you go about making a small song or small body of work. I keep thinking that I'd get really specific with this project and just do one thing, but I have a hard time with that. I find that my brain isn't very good at just focusing on one thing thematically; I always want to create some kind of narrative.

Brooks I understand.

Friedland Originally, I thought I was going to do animals at night; I’ve done a lot of that over the years, and that is what I originally pitched to the gallery, and then I wasn't feeling it.

Brooks And what is the name of the gallery?

Friedland It is called The Old School Gallery, in Alnmouth, Northumberland.

Brooks Oh, cool.

Friedland I did three of the animals, and then I gave up and started this other project, which is more a grouping of small studies without an overriding theme. But they have a resonance, because they come from my brain.

Brooks What are some of the other images based on?

Friedland There’s an image that seems to be taken from the perspective of looking down on a body of water on someone in a canoe. You can sort of tell that you're looking down because you're kind of looking through trees, so it has a strange perspective. And there's a figure in the canoe, but these are little paintings so you don't get a sense of who that person is. I built out the show from there. There's a car on the road, with headlights.

Brooks That is a recurring theme for you.

Friedland You're always going somewhere, whether it's some kind of vacation or road trip. There’s a painting of Scout, in the grass or in the clover.

Brooks Scout is your dog.

Friedland Yeah, Scout is my dog. There’s an elderly couple wandering off into the woods. There’s a crescent moon and some little cabins at night. There's a couple of deer at night.

Brooks There is distance and tenderness.

Friedland That’s one of my modes; I have a couple of different modes. This one is definitely kind of family album mode.

Brooks Yes.

Friedland I think that's the best way to describe it, but it feels like these are maybe outtakes from the family album because no one's looking at the camera and smiling. But they all could have been part of the family album.

Brooks Do you feel that kind of insular perspective is something that comes up more when you’re working in the winter? Or does the season not make a difference?

Friedland I always have to push myself to not think in that mode. I have three upcoming solo shows in 2026 and 2027…

Brooks That’s amazing! Congratulations.

Friedland Oh thank you, dear. I'm trying to delineate amongst them all. The third one I have no idea what I'm doing, but the first one, which is for Smoke The Moon in Santa Fe is not going to be the family album. I have this other mode of a little bit more of a fantasy, and the fantasy is essentially from the perspective of me as a fifteen year old imagining what being a grown-up is all about, like, smoking, and cars, and making out. As an adult, I mean, there is a part of life that is about those things, but the proportions of those things haven’t really panned out the way I imagined. There are cars, I guess. I really did think that there would be more smoking and making out.

Brooks Making out is dependent upon someone else, but smoking is up to you.

Friedland Yes, I could be smoking. I could definitely be smoking. I don't think that's in the cards for me. I don't think it's a good idea. I think it's a bad idea.

Brooks Yeah.

Friedland I do think it looks cool, though.

Brooks On the right person, yes. But let’s not start you smoking. Just Smoke The Moon.

Friedland Okay! I have a show in Aspen at Hexton Gallery later this year, and that will be back to the family album, in terms of theme.

Brooks Are these paintings based off of your own family photographs, ones you have taken?

Friedland Yes, a lot of the time it is based off my own work, photos I shot a long time ago.

Brooks You studied photography.

Friedland I did. I have two degrees in photography; my undergraduate degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design, and then I have an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, where I went specifically to continue studying the family album, and that's what my thesis was about and. I worked in that mode as a photographer until 2016, which was when I had my last photo show, and I continue to sort of think in that mode now as a painter.

Brooks You’ve been painting now for almost a decade?

Friedland Almost. That photo show in 2016 was sort of the culmination of the idea of the family album and my specific perspective, and I felt like I had kind of finished that photographic project, and then I started something new with painting.

Brooks Has becoming a painter changed your mind’s eye? Has it changed how you look at photography?

Friedland I have zero interest in making photographs anymore. I have the interest in taking them, but really only because I want to paint them. I never think about photography as a finished product for me anymore. I think I was never that interested in photography as a genre. For me, what was really compelling was the idea of the family album, and that was what brought me into the photo world. But I didn't really belong there.

Brooks Really?

Friedland Certainly not technically. I never really learned very much, technically speaking. I was never really grouped in with certain photographers either. I was a painterly photographer, and now I'm a photographic painter.

Brooks You’re still taking photographs but only to use to make paintings?

Friedland Yeah. My son just asked if he could take one of my good cameras for his trip to California, and I actually don't even know where it is because I only use my iPhone now. I don't really think about using a good camera, because why would I lug around a bigger camera when the finished product is never going to be anything other than a painting? I do wonder sometimes what would happen if I slowed down. I feel like some of the best paintings that I've made came from photographs that were taken with a proper camera. It's not because I think that I would take better photographs, but I think it’s more because I would have be slowed down by a bigger camera, a more substantial camera.

Brooks So you're forced to be more considered in what you’re capturing?

Friedland I just think it might put me in that mode of thinking in which I don't find myself very often. Every once in a while I ask my people to model for me. Here and there, if the light is good, I'll ask my parents to sit for me or my kids or, once in a blue moon, my husband. But it's not the focus of the thing that I'm doing very often; it’s a bit of an afterthought, and I wonder if I'd get better source material if I was a little bit more deliberate with it.

Brooks Your focus is now on painting and consciously, but also subconsciously, you want to get to the act of painting. I understand wanting to take certain shortcuts. That's not to say that you're making paintings that are not considered.

Friedland I don't worry too much about it, but I do think that there's a lot of repetition in my source material. I'm going to the same places and I'm photographing the same people a lot of the time, so it makes sense that there's some repetition, but I wonder what happens if I am able to just slow it down a little bit more and, you know, see more. I don't think I'm seeing everything because I feel like I'm a little bit limited in terms of my repertoire right now.

Brooks It's true that there is repetition in your work, but that’s not a criticism and it's not necessarily a bad thing. You have themes that are repeated; one of them is the family, and in your daily life, you are very much living that reality. Your parents are elderly, your children are growing up and moving out into the world. All of that reality will change in the coming years. And your work will change because of it; even if you continue to work with the same source material, how you feel about that source material will be different when your kids aren't at home or when your parents have gone on. That’s something interesting to think about.

Friedland Yeah. We never think to criticize Cezanne for painting the same mountain over and over again.

Brooks He was really, really looking at that thing. To capture it.

Friedland This was something that bothered me about photography; it was hard to go back to the same subjects, like I made that picture of that tree already. You could photograph the same tree over and over again, I guess, but photography sort of has that inherent in it anyway, the sort of repetition. This quality is one of the things that I found not very satisfying with a lot of photography exhibitions; you would walk into the room and, especially if it was that categorical kind of photography where it was a lot of the same thing repeated, and you'd look at it and get it right away, and then you'd move on. You didn't necessarily need to look at the next one to get the idea. It was just a reiteration of the same idea over and over again around, around the room. You could take it in very quickly, and I didn’t like that.

Brooks There are plenty of people who would disagree with that assessment.

Friedland Oh, I’m sure.

Brooks Aside from your feeling of having finished your study of the family album, were there particular painters or paintings that compelled you to move into painting?

Friedland There were a few things. I was forty-seven when I had this idea that I was going to take a few painting classes with my friend Roberta, who was teaching small groups out of her garage studio. Roberta is a painter that I knew who had shown at the same gallery with me, Katharine Mulherin, when I was a photographer. I had had so much arts education, and I didn't feel like I needed color theory or whatever, I just wanted to get busy with painting, get busy with trying it. I did like five sessions with Roberta, and there were a few things that I talked about with her about what inspired me, and one in particular—I think it must have been around 2016—was a grid of paintings by Anthony Cudahy I saw hanging at one of Katharine Mulherin’s spaces. It was a series of heads, arranged in a grid, and it was called Everyone at the Funeral.

Brooks Anthony is one of my favorite painters, as you know.

Friedland Yes, I do. We went together to see his work and we had a little cry, didn’t we?

Brooks Yes, we did.

Friedland Was that on the first day you and I finally met in person?

Brooks Yes, it was. We knew each other fairly well at that point—at least it felt like we did—but we had not actually met or spent time together. And Anthony made us cry together, on our first meeting, so thank you, Anthony.

Friedland Yes, thank you, Anthony! With regard to Everyone at the Funeral, the title of the piece let you know that these were people who were mourning, and this had been also been a bit of a theme in my photographic work. It was also a way of interpreting a moment, and a funeral is such a specific moment. I just felt it was so much a part of him exposing his own heart, but it also seemed so expansive in the way that the work let other people see his perspective of that moment. That work stayed with me for a combination of reasons; it felt like it was doing something that painting could do that photography couldn’t. That was something that I always felt was a shortcoming of mine, as far as my work. I wanted to be able to express myself in that way, and I had never tried, and I realized that I needed to try because at forty-seven, you just have got to try. I felt like I had run out of excuses for trying to learn how to paint at that point.

Brooks As a forty-seven year old, I agree. You’ve got to just get going.

Friedland You do. So Anthony’s body of work was one of the catalysts for me wanting to paint, and then I'd also been to see Peter Doig a few years before at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. I went with my family, and they stuck around for a little bit and then I made my husband take everybody and let me be there by myself. I remember being brought to tears, but not because I thought the show was so spectacular— although I am a huge fan and I do love his work—but I think it was the grandeur of it, and the sort of “genius” of it, which I felt was not something that women were permitted to do. Well, not that they weren't permitted, necessarily, but that it was so the work of a man.

Brooks What makes you say that?

Friedland There are so many big ideas, and a sort of muscular way of painting and a confidence in the language that he created to communicate, and that his mode of communication was established at that point. And we accepted it, which I think is such an interesting thing to think about. There are different things that you can do at different points in your career, right?

Brooks Sure.

Friedland There are paintings that he makes now—or made for that show, because was already so well established at that point—that had he made them earlier in his career, they may have been kind of scoffed at.

Brooks I adore his work, but there are very awkward passages in many of his paintings. Those passages are some of the reasons why the paintings are magic for me, but I understand what you mean. Success, both in terms of the market or with collectors or critics, but also in terms of just making truly great paintings, like he did (and does), can give you a kind of freedom in the studio. It can be a burden, too.

Friedland Yeah. When I was looking at his work in Montreal, I remember wondering what would have happened if had I not gone directly from my MFA thesis and threw myself into motherhood. I had three kids and I did continue to produce a body of work every three or four years, and I showed, and had ideas, and kept a little bit of a studio practice going, but I really threw myself into motherhood for fifteen years. I wondered where I would be if I hadn't done that, and felt like I wanted to try it. I wanted to see who I would be if I was more selfishly focused on creation and my own brain.

Brooks It sounds like you felt, both with regard to Anthony's work and Doig's work, a sense of the infinite possibilities that exist within painting. Obviously, this exists in  photography as well, but perhaps because of the nature of the materials and because your interest in photography was fairly narrow and not necessarily related to the medium itself, you didn’t feel that as much.

Friedland Exactly.

Brooks Something within painting allows for more expansiveness.

Friedland I haven't been painting since I was ten, like some people talk about, but I've been a very crafty person since I was ten, or before that. I've always liked making things, whether it was knitting, or beading, and I painted a little bit here and there; I just liked making things with my hands. A lot of working as a photographer means that you're sitting behind a computer, and the idea, the making, the idea generating, is not a huge part of the process. I didn’t like that. I wanted to move through ideas more quickly in a way that I didn't feel like was possible given the way I had set up my photography practice, which was more like first generating an idea, then writing a grant proposal, which was either accepted or rejected, and then possibly executing the work. The idea always came first, but there was never the spontaneous discovery through the process of making, like in painting where I might have a study that I’m working from and trying to be faithful to, but it’s in the actual making that the painting comes to be. It could be good, or bad; it’s not so determined. I felt like with photography, everything was sort of determined from the outset and that I was just kind of executing a plan. That didn’t work very well with my brain. I wanted to set things up so that I can just discover through making; that’s the good stuff for me. There just wasn't enough of that in photography for me. There wasn't enough making.

Brooks Those sound like the words of a painter.

Friedland Yeah. I really like making.

Brooks Recently, after mostly working with acrylic, you've moved into oil.

Friedland Yeah.

Brooks Are you going back and forth?

Friedland No.

Brooks Are you finished with oil?

Friedland No, I’m finished with acrylic.

Brooks Personally, I think that’s the right choice.

Friedland It's interesting because like I'm about to go into an incubator phase for another body of work, and I do sort of think I should bust out the acrylics again. But then, even when I'm doing little studies and I think I should be working in a different medium, I still think, well, why don't I just do my little studies in oil anyway? Because the truth is that I'm still learning, and the more I do it, the better I’m getting, or I’m not even sure if it's that I’m gettting better, but that I’m getting more adept, getting to know the material, making things easier for myself. I resist the idea that it's that I’m getting much better, because sometimes I think great things happen when you don't know what you're doing.

Brooks I’ve been working with oil paint for twenty years and I am much more adept than I used to be; I know so much more about the material, but I also feel like the more I know, the more questions I have, and the more possibilities I can imagine might be there.

Friedland There are things that I did that first year that I was painting that I still think are great. I don’t look back at the fact that I didn't know anything about painting and think, oh, that sucked. That's the thing about me coming to painting at this stage of life: the ideas were all pretty mature. It's not like I need to go back and think of how to put together a body of work or something. I know how to do that. I didn't make any beginner work. I was already making the work that I wanted to make right away.

Brooks That makes sense.

Friedland I always say that my hands were new at painting, but my brain and my eyeballs were forty-five years old.

Brooks I love that.

Friedland Me, too.

Brooks We love a lot of the same things, and a lot of the same people.

Friedland Yes, we do.

Brooks And a lot of them are Canadian.

Friedland They are? I mean, yes, they are, but which ones do you mean?

Brooks So many, but I was really thinking about Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell.

Friedland Leonard and Joni. I almost made a detour when we were talking about the Peter Doig show I saw in Montreal, because on anothe trip to Montreal I saw a Leonard Cohen exhibition. I adore Leonard Cohen, you know.

Brooks I do know. And I feel the same.

Friedland Sometimes, in my fantasies, I am not sure if I want to have known him, or to have been his lover, or maybe it’s that I want to be him. The ways he was allowed to be in this world are, I feel, often reserved only for men and Joni Mitchell. And she declared herself a genius.

Brooks Yes, but she really had to fight to be able to “act like a man,” to behave with the freedom that a man would have, as a musician, as an artist, as a human being, and as a lover…I don’t know what the female word for Lothario is…

Friedland I was going to call Leonard a Casanova.

Brooks Yes, that’s a better word for him than Lothario.

Friedland As far as the word for women, I believe the word you're looking for is whore.

Brooks Well, no one would ever called Leonard—or any man—a whore.

Friedland No, and I’d never call Joni a whore either, though she was definitely thought of as being restless and independent in ways that were normally reserved for men. I jokingly refer to my younger self as a whore, but I guess there is no other great word for women to be in the world that way.

Brooks We should come up with something. Maybe there is a word for it in another language.

Friedland Do you think so?

Brooks There is a word somewhere. Probably in French. Maybe it’s just the word for woman.

Friedland Maybe so. But what we’re really talking about is just freedom.

Brooks Yes, like Joni says in Cactus Tree: and she’s so busy being free.

Friedland Exactly.

Brooks What are you listening to in the studio?

Friedland I've had a hard time listening to music lately. The easiest thing for me to listen to is comedy.

Brooks Comedy? Really? What are we talking about here, like Mel Brooks and the 2000 Year Old Man? {laughs}

Friedland Sure. {laughs} Or podcasts that are made by comedians, but often it’s someone talking to comedians or whatever. I find comedians to be great to listen to. Their art is so much harder I think than anything that we do, so much more vulnerable. It’s so vulnerable to try and make someone laugh and so much of what they talk about has to do with times when they failed, which I think is useful. I find listening to comedians is always a good place to start when I'm struggling.

Brooks And once you get into a painting, once you get going?

Friedland Then I can basically listen to anything. Often it's music, and there are albums that have been on repeat for years and years and years that I always go back to. A lot of women. Lhasa De Sela, whom I mentioned. I listen to a lot of Martha Wainwright. Do you know Martha Wainwright?

Brooks I do, and I've recently been re-listening to that first album, which has had it’s twentieth anniversay. I only knew a few songs really well from it, but I have found a new love for it.

Friedland Oh, that’s great. {My son} Lev and I went to see her in Toronto. It was a great concert. She’s a beautiful writer as well.

Brooks Such a great writer! The songs Far Away and Don’t Forget have really moved me lately.

Friedland My God. We share our brains, John. We share our brains, but I think we figured that out a while ago. {laughs}

Brooks Yes. {laughs}

Friedland I still will go back and listen to Exile In Guyville.

Brooks Liz Phair. A perfect album.

Friedland I play it at least a couple times a month, and I also like WhipSmart, too. I've recently been thinking about Simon and Garfunkel. Sometimes I listen to The Concert in Central Park.

Brooks Oh God, we do share a brain! I love that album and listen to that a lot. I know all the words to the songs by heart, and even the banter from the stage, like when Paul talks about Mayor Ed Koch…

FriedlandMayor Ed Koch… {laughs}

Brooks “And I hope that we’re blasting”

Friedland “Central Park West and Fifth Avenue pretty much away.”

Brooks Yes! {laughs}

Friedland That’s so funny. {laughs} When I was young I went with my parents to go and see Paul Simon for with the Graceland tour. Did you ever listen to Miracle and Wonder?

Brooks No.

Friedland It’s Malcolm Gladwell interviewing Paul Simon. It's really great. I think that Paul Simon was also that same kind of character as Leonard Cohen in my mind: did I wanna be him, or did I want him to be my boyfriend? It was all about being an adult.

Brooks I see.

Friedland Could I marry Paul Simon? Could I make out with Paul Simon? Could I smoke with Paul Simon?

Brooks I remember having those feelings. Maybe not for Paul Simon.

Friedland I also listen to George Michael, that’s when I need a mood elevator.

Brooks What do you listen to?

Friedland Listen Without Prejudice.

Brooks Oh, my God! We do share a brain. I listen to that album at least once a month. It's so beautiful.

Friedland It’s definitely a mood elevator. Stevie Wonder is a mood elevator. What I listen to in the studio depends on what I need.

Brooks Of course.

Friedland Ok, this is a weird one. OK, so my dad loves music. His hearing is gone a little bit now, so he doesn't listen to it as much as he used to, but he had a huge classical record collection with very, very little of anything else. There was Bob Dylan’s Desire, which is my favorite Dylan album.

Brooks It’s a great one; my favorite or second favorite Dylan album.

Friedland What’s the other one?

BrooksSelf Portrait.

Friedland Really?

Brooks Recently, yes, but that’s whole conversation.

Friedland Yes. Back to my dad!

Brooks Yes.

Friedland There was a record by The Weavers, which I never really listened to, but I listened to the Dylan and to Gordon Lightfoot, because both of them had swearing in them, which I thought was great.

Brooks I see.

Friedland I very much remember when he bought a CD player. And when he bought the CD player, he bought a few more jazz CDs. One of my favorites—and it’s something I still listen to—is an album called Heavy Weather from a band called Weather Report. It’s from 1977. I don't know if it's well respected in the jazz world, but it's stuck deep in my bones as something that takes me back to my dad, to him always working in the living room on the couch in the corner. It's a great album, and I titled my 2024 show in L.A. at La Loma Heavy Weather after the album.

Brooks I will check out the music.

Friedland Do it.

Brooks I will! And I wanted to say that I also love Gordon Lightfoot. He wrote what might be my favorite opening line to any song.

Friedland What song is that?

Brooks It’s from Sundown: I can see her lying back in a satin dress / in a room where you do what you don't confess.

Friedland Oh, wow.

Brooks I think it says so much with just two lines.

Friedland It is a good one, because you don't think of him as such a great writer.

Brooks He really is, though. I think he used to be really very well respected and then he kind of slipped away. He's not entirely forgotten, but I don’t think young people know him, and he was a big star and wrote incredible songs.

Friedland He did.

Brooks It blew my mind as a kid when I learned that The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was written contemporaneously. It sounded like a song written a century before, or at least written about a ship that was that old.

Friedland He’s in a special category. Maybe not with Dylan, but special nonetheless.

Brooks For sure.

Friedland I also listen to Feist. She is also a great writer. I also listen to a little Beyonce from time to time, specifically, Lemonade. There is very good storytelling in there. Not every one is a banger, but it’s a great album. There was a time during the pandemic when I listened a lot to an album called And It's Still Alright by Nathaniel Rateliff. And then, of course, there is Joan Armatrading, an artist I know we share and love.

Brooks I love her so much. Talk about another person who, you know, is not forgotten, but she's so good and is not really in the consciousness.

Friedland No, she isn’t. And there is Sinéad.

Brooks Always.

Friedland And Jeff Buckley, but I have to be in it. It's not something I can listen to casually. It's too heavy.

Brooks You have to need it.

Friedland Yeah, I have to be looking for it.

Brooks If you listen to Leonard Cohen, what Leonard do you go for?

Friedland There's a lot of Leonard Cohen that I like. I guess usually, I’ll go for The Songs of Leonard Cohen and but I also like a lot of later stuff. I love The Future. It was really important to me, that album. And Ten New Songs. I thought it was, like, weirdly good.

Brooks It came out right after 9/11, I remember, and it was his first album in a while, maybe almost a decade, and at the time I remember thinking how corny and old fashioned the production sounded, and I really dismissed it. Now it's absolutely not only one of my favorite Leonard Cohen albums, it's one of my favorite albums period. I listen to it all the time. Maybe every week. I think it is so beautiful and the sound, which then to me seemed overproduced in a way and a little empty but also too slick, now sounds perfect. It’s so stripped down, but not in an acoustic way, but just…

Friedland He's getting old.

Brooks Yeah.

Friedland He only had ten new songs! {laughs}

Brooks Yes. {laughs} My favorite song on the album is…

FriedlandAlexandra Leaving.

Brooks Yes! Or it’s one of two.

Friedland I knew you were going to pick that one. That’s the one I was gonna pick. I have this friend—who I haven't spoken to in a really long time—who used to work in my local coffee shop and probably ten years ago, Alexandra Leaving came on and I said, oh, they're definitely gonna play this song at my funeral. We both made each other funeral playlists to play at our funerals. My kids and I share a Spotify account, so they've come across it and at first they were horrified and then they were like this is really good.

Brooks That's so cool. I love that song. That song and In My Secret Life.

Friedland Oh, yeah. I have a painting called My Secret Life, and it’s one of my wolf paintings. I’ve stolen so many titles from Leonard Cohen.

Brooks So have I.

Friedland He’s got so many good words.

Brooks He does. He's someone who seemed to appreciate and understand and was confounded by so many aspects of life. I saw him in concert in Chicago in 2012 and it was phenomenal. It was like a religious service, but in a good way.

Friedland Was that the tour for The Future? Was he in a suit?

Brooks Yes, he was in a suit, but it was only a few years before he died. It was around the release of Old Ideas. He was so reverent, to the music and to his fellow musicians, and to the audience. It was so beautiful.

Friedland Did he sometimes just say the first lines of a song before he started singing?

Brooks Yes.

Friedland I wonder if he always did that?

Brooks I don't know about earlier in his career, but he definitely did that in later years. I have such respect for him. He was such an artist. He was someone who had such reverence for and was in awe of existence, but also he was someone who enjoyed himself. I think we all know Leonard Cohen liked to fuck. He enjoyed existing.

Friedland Yes.

Brooks It's funny that you mentioned funeral songs. I remember my grandmother, my dad's mom, went to a funeral or a visitation once and she came back and was appalled, or just found it so deeply strange, that they had played Send in the Clowns.

Friedland Which version?

Brooks Sinatra's version, which is not my favorite, but I love that song. I think it's such a beautiful and moving song. I guess she didn’t see it in that way or didn't hear it in that way. When I think about songs for funerals, I always think about that.

Friedland Well, I hope you'll come to my funeral.

Brooks Well, I hope you come to mine.

Friedland OK, great.

Brooks One of us will probably break that promise.

Friedland Yeah, it's true. I told Rylan from Smoke the Moon that he would be responsible for dealing with all my work if I died.

Brooks Well, I'll hold him to that.

Friedland I think he would probably know what to do.

Brooks I don't know who would be responsible for my work. There is so much of it.

Friedland You should think about it.

Brooks Yes.

Friedland Yep. For better or for worse, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Other Swans Conversation No. Twelve

Nancy Friedland (b. 1971, Canada) is a painter investigating narrative, the family album, landscape and light in her work. After moving away from her roots in photography, Friedland began exploring these preoccupations through paint. Sometimes she conjures a romantic fairytale from whole cloth, but mostly she works with her own photographs or family snapshots as source material. She is drawn to the magic that happens in the flawed translation from one medium to the next.

After studying photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Friedland completed her MFA at the Rochester Institute of Technology as a Sir Edmund Walker Scholar. She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, and has exhibited across Canada, the US and internationally. She lives and works in Toronto, Canada.