Jonny Cournoyer
Jonny Cournoyer
is an artist, set photographer and Bedford resident. We caught up with him ahead of his debut exhibition at oHHo.
Where do you draw inspiration?
Two themes for me are “place and time”. With photography I lean more towards capturing a moment than setting one up. I’m a sucker and a disciple of the French Humanist Photographers of the 20th century, such as Willy Ronis. They found the poetry in the humdrum of daily life. In painting I like to focus on locations and landscapes that I feel drawn to, especially ones that look the same as they did 200 years ago. I also thematically gravitate towards the eternal. I’m sucker for trying to capture a sunrise spreading light flares through forest trees, or snapping photos of any full moon for future paintings. It makes me feel connected to people long ago, from Socrates to Sitting Bull, who looked up and saw the same scene.
What does your average day look like?
I wake up to the coffee machine auto-brewed and ready for intake. I then look at my Peloton bike. If I am on a movie, I most likely be gone already and on the road headed into the city for the day. If not then I peruse the internet and pay a few bills. Bring my wife coffee in bed, and help get our son ready and off to school. Then I either head upstairs to my studio and work on paintings, or do domestic projects on our circa 1840 farmhouse which always needs something fixed or updated. I am in the midst of cleaning out our barn (the top floor of which I am hoping will be my future studio), as well as gutting and restoring the potting cottage as a future wood-shop and whiskey-tasting station.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
I was in a quasi-indigenous ceremony with a few friends in Big Sur run by a non-native shaman, who had studied with healers in South America. I was going through a period of great self-doubt about being an artist; not doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and just trying to make ends meet. One thing he said to me that always stuck: “As an artist you are connected to all nature. A wolf doesn’t think about hunting its prey, it just does. Be the same.”
How did you get your career start?
My mother raised my brother and I as artists from the beginning. She used to take us to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota with sketchbooks, and we would run around the grounds painting the birds, gardens and Renaissance sculptures. My earliest memory of “color” is their 17th century “Blue Madonna” painting by Carlo Dolce. The blue literally glows in person.
Who is your biggest supporter/mentor?
There have been a few! The iconic feminist artist, Judy Chicago. In my twenties, I was studio assistant and registrar for her. It was “art bootcamp”, and Judy and her husband photographer, Donald Woodman, literally taught me everything about being a practicing artist. I oversaw her inventory of tens of thousands of works, and helped with the permanent installation of her masterpiece The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum. She used to critique all my drawings and paintings, and kept me up to my neck in art supplies.
Then there’s Raymond Pettibon, an artist I met during my time in Los Angeles. He always promoted me and introduced me to other creative, like Sonic Youth, Mike Watt, Shepard Fairly and Henry Rollins. We actually started a band called The Niche Makers, eventually recording a vinyl album in the gallery I was working in at the time. A few years later one of the pressings of that album ended up in the collection of MOMA. The fact that we made the album in-house from scratch, and it ended up in MOMA was a real eye-opening experience for me. Don’t think about it, just make it, and it will have legs.
The third person that elevated and altered my entire course was actor, director, writer and dear friend, John Krasinski. When burned out from managing an art gallery, and desperate to be a working creative, John suggested I’d be perfect at this job called a “Set Photographer”. Never having been on a movie set, I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew how to work the camera. John had faith in my eye, and my way of “being”, and it proved to be a fruitful path. My approach was to stay in the shadows and “paint with the camera”, capturing the scenes and process from a different perspective and angle. I continued to grow on the job and then A Quiet Place came along. The experience of being in the room with actors like Emily Blunt, and documenting the blossoming of both a very original film and it’s young, innovative director, was an epic adventure on this new career path. I was very blessed to go on to cover its sequel A Quiet Place: Part Two, as well as travel the world working on four seasons of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
What’s your proudest achievement?
Personally I am most proud of the family that I helped make: husband to my wife (and beauty rockstar), Jenn Streicher, and father to our ten-year-old son, Arrow. My father passed away a few weeks ago and, other than the day our son was born, fatherhood has never felt more important or intense.
Professionally, I am still dizzy over the fact that my photographs of the A Quiet Place movies was published by Rizzoli International in A Quiet Place: Making of a Silent World. It’s still dreamy, and something I will always be very proud of.
Who is a visual artist to watch?
I really love the paintings of Salmon Toor. He has created his own visual language for depicting the world around him: painterly, classic but contemporary, and all bathed in absinthe-green, à la Toulouse-Lautrec.
What advice would you give your much-younger self?
Don't put so much weight on other people’s opinions. I’m trying to teach this to my son.
When I was in high school, I was so concerned with what people thought. I petrified to stand out, so stressed, in fact, that I had terrible eczema and my hands peeled so I walked around with them in my pockets for my entire sophomore year. My high school art was crap because I was too shy and scared to express anything. I tell him my son what a waste of time and energy that was, and that I wish I could have just found and been “myself” earlier. I know everybody has their own timetable and path, but I hope he blossoms and has the courage to feel confident in who he is earlier than I did.
How long have you lived in Bedford, and what’s your favorite thing about living here?
We moved from California in the summer of 2020. It was a pandemic-induced migration and life change. We didn't want to raise our son entirely in Los Angeles and Bedford seemed like the perfect place to start a new chapter. My favorite aspect? I am surrounded by stone walls, woods, farms and Revolutionary War sites. It’s a picturesque 300+yr old hamlet where we can walk our son to school, and still be 40 miles to the edge of arguably the greatest city on the planet.
Tell us more about your debut exhibition at oHHo.
I’ve spent the better part of the last few years abroad working on location for the Amazon series Jack Ryan. I was able to travel through Europe and visit interesting and historical spots and snapped plenty of photos along the way. I was gone so much the first few years we lived in Bedford that the neighbors thought I didn’t exist. When I was able to come home for bits of time it only intensified the charm of the hamlets here and the beauty of the landscapes we are lucky to live in.
The paintings in this exhibition are sourced from photographs I took while on these trips as well as back home. The location and date is printed below the paintings to in a way stamp the memory or serve as pin drops for a map of important scenes for me in the blur of the last few years. The pieces are all works on paper using a mixture of mediums from oil pastel, soft pastel, graphite, ink and acrylic.
Quick Fire Round
Last thing you Googled…
What to do after a tick bite
Your most-used app…
Either Adobe Fresco which is an iPad drawing and painting program that has become my travel sketchbook or Picture-This which identifies any plant or flower you snap a picture of which is helping me curate our yard and gardens.
Last book you read…
“Still Life” by Sarah Winman. Absolutely loved and an instant classic in my opinion. I’m halfway thru “Wild, the Life of Peter Beard” by Graham Boynton at the moment.
Life motto…
Leave a good trail.
Favorite oHHo product…
I really like the Repair Balm and the Dream Cream for when my hands literally crack from the east coast cold weather.
Both of these really help to both heal and prevent that and keep my hands holding brushes and not bandaids in the bitter winter months.
Signature style in a sentence…
I try to see all things thru a vintage lens
Favorite daily ritual…
Taking in the morning light
Most over-used phrase…
No ipad time until you brush your teeth.