I Did It Because I Could: Embracing Your Second Act with Nell Irvin Painter

Show Notes

Starting over can be daunting, even terrifying, for many older adults. But for Nell Irvin Painter, an accomplished educator turned artist, it was as simple as placing a brush on a canvas. In this episode, we explore Nell’s fearless leap into the arts after a distinguished 30-year career as a professor and historian. Join us as we discuss her inspiring journey and the joy of embracing a new chapter in life.

Episode Transcript

Matt Thompson:

Hi, and welcome to This Is Growing Old, the podcast all about the common human experience of aging. I’m Matt, your host, and I’m honored to introduce today’s guest, renowned educator, bestselling author, leading historian and prolific artist, Nell Irvin Painter.

Nell Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton University. She authored the New York Times bestseller, the History of White People, as well as Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol. She was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over.

In her newest book, I just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays, explores art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007, Nell has received honorary degrees from Yale, Wesleyan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dartmouth. After an accomplished 30 plus year career in academia, Nell boldly expanded to the arts. At 67, she earned a BFA in painting from the Mason Grove School of the Arts at Rutgers and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Nell has since led an incredible career as a painter, no pun intended. Thank you so much for joining us, Nell. I’m really excited to get into this conversation with you.

Nell Painter:

My pleasure. I love talking about being old.

Matt Thompson:

This is what this podcast is all about.

Nell Painter:

Yes. I’m so glad.

Matt Thompson:

Amazing. Let’s just jump right into it.

Nell Painter:

Sure.

Matt Thompson:

Have you always considered yourself an artist?

It wasn’t the challenge. It was the pleasure. I just enjoyed doing it so much and I thought, “I’m just going to stay over here.”

Nell Painter:

No. I drew as a girl. My father taught me how to draw. For a while, I was an art major at Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, but I come from an academic family. My grandfather was a college professor and my parents are both educated people, so I didn’t have any models as artists, but I did have models as writers and professors. So I went the easy way and I stayed that way for a long, long time. I love history. I still love history. I love doing research. I love writing history, I love history, but Sojourner Truth, who didn’t read and write, gave me a challenge because my usual method of writing history based on text didn’t serve. I had to find another way of coming closer to her and she had her photographs taken where she decided how she wanted to be seen. So I studied the rhetoric of the image and I loved it, so I decided to stay over there.

Matt Thompson:

So it was Sojourner Truth that inspired you to reinterpret your existing passion for history?

Nell Painter:

Exactly.

Matt Thompson:

When did you know it was the right time to take the leap?

Nell Painter:

Let’s see. It would’ve been about 2003, 2004 or so. I did the Drawing and Painting Marathon at the Studio School in New York, and at that time, I lived in North Newark. So every morning, five days a week, I would get up at six o’clock and cross Branch Brook Park and take the light rail to Newark Penn Station, and then take New Jersey Transit to New York Penn Station and the subway up to Eighth Street, or was it Forest Street? And walk a little while. Yeah, it was Eighth Street.

And then I’d stand up in an un-air conditioned studio and draw for eight hours, and then have a little something to eat and sit around for crit and then do the whole thing backwards. I loved it. I said, “Yeah, this is it.”

Matt Thompson:

Coming from academia, was there an element of competition, a challenge that also drew you to the arts?

Nell Painter:

No, it wasn’t the challenge. It was the pleasure. I just enjoyed doing it so much and I thought, “I’m just going to stay over here.”

Matt Thompson:

Moving into your decision to pursue a BFA and MFA. A lot of times, we think of that change in direction after retirement as a second act, but for me, as I read Old in Art School, it seems like that transition was more fluid, which is why I wanted to say expanded rather than transition in the intro. You incorporate a lot of your work as a historian into your pieces. Do you consider this a second act at all?

Nell Painter:

Sure. It’s a second act and I wanted to get degrees because I wanted a professional formation. I didn’t just want to be a little old lady who paints, and I’m a professional artist. I sell my work. At the moment, I am not making art because I can’t do both at the same time. And the last year or so, I’ve been totally consumed with I Just Keep Talking, which is about text. In the summer of ’22, I made some new art for I Just Keep Talking. I was at Iado and actually, I showed the wall of my studio there where I was experimenting with various ways of visualizing themes.

So I can’t do both at the same time, and I haven’t been making much art. I made a few little six-inch by six-inch watercolors in 2023, and I gave my editor one and I’ve shown two of them in a show in Newark. But that’s pretty poultry, and for the next little while, I’m going to be writing, but I’m going to sneak in drawing. In the fall, I’m going to Berlin as a Berlin Prize fellow in the American Academy of Berlin, and I’ll be working on an autobiographical history in which the basic level of this work will be my living outside the United States. In Berlin, in 2001, that’s where I started writing… Or researching, I should say, because I wasn’t ready to write, The History of White People.

And of course, Berlin has changed a lot. I have changed a lot. My years in the 60s overseas in Ghana and in Bordeaux, France were really formative. So all of that will go into what will be basically a work of text, but I will put in some… I don’t know if it’ll be watercolors or drawings or small or big. I don’t know. I don’t have a contract for that book, so I don’t have any deadline for that book.

Matt Thompson:

Does your work as an essayist, writer feed your creative spirit as a painter as well? Is there a symbiotic relationship there? Do you live in two separate spaces independently?

Nell Painter:

Good question. Yes to both. I do live in two spaces, so that’s why I can’t do both at the same time really. But I would say it’s the other way around that the visual feeds the questions I can ask of history because in drawing and painting, I can put things together either manually or digitally that I don’t know are going to together when I start, and sometimes those can lead me to questions that I can try to answer as a historian. So they work together in that sense, but the visual meaning is very good for the historical imagination.

Very little is expected of us actually, and that can be very emancipatory.

Matt Thompson:

Going back to your memoir, Old in Art School, early on, you mentioned how it felt to be confronted about your age by your colleagues, your classmates at Rutgers, which to me is really interesting because I immediately think of artists like Alma Thomas and Betty Saar. Some of their most iconic works were created in older adulthood.

Nell Painter:

Yes. They call it late style.

Matt Thompson:

That’s an infinitely cool name. Why do you think it is that older adults or late style practitioners are still marginalized in art spaces?

Nell Painter:

Well, we live in a country that is obsessed with youth. That’s the first thing. And the art world, art worlds plural, are also doubly obsessed with youth. So it’s doubling down of the prejudices of our society, the prejudices against old people, but at the same time, we old people are freer to do things that are not necessarily expected. Very little is expected of us actually, and that freedom really can be very emancipatory. Well, I’m saying the same thing twice there, but the freedom from the gaze of others, and that’s particularly important for old women.

Matt Thompson:

How do you feel your age has informed your work as an artist?

Nell Painter:

Well, for one thing, I’m old enough to have the money to go to art school, which is very expensive, and to make art that I don’t have to sell to pay my mortgage. So it’s a material freedom that’s at the basis of being old because older people are more likely to be richer people than younger people. Of course, that doesn’t always hold up, but as a rule of thumb, we accumulate if we have good health, which I do, we accumulate money as wealth as we get older. So that’s really important, not to have to worry about money. That’s one of the freedoms of age.

The other, which is probably almost as important, is that you’ve seen and heard enough bullshit to recognize bullshit when you see it and hear it. So I start Old in Art School with a situation in which one of my RISD teachers told me I was dogged and not as a compliment. He wasn’t saying, “Oh, you’re so resilient and you’re making this work and you’re growing.” No, “You’re dogged.” So more than that, he said I would never be an artist. And he said I could sell my work and I could have collectors and my work could be in museums, but I would never be an artist. And I said, “Henry, that’s bullshit.” I knew bullshit when I heard it, and I told him that. Of course, I still felt awful because I was so insecure when I was at RISD. But even so, I knew bullshit when I heard it.

Matt Thompson:

Reading that first passage in your book, the first question I wanted to ask was, do you have anything to say to your haters?

Nell Painter:

Yes, I do. I am carrying around some pissy feelings from a quarter of a century ago. They still piss me off, and I mentioned them in the introduction to I Just Keep Talking. These are old grievances and I still have them.

Matt Thompson:

These experiences as an older adult navigating art school, the wisdom that you’ve gained over the years, your experience as a historian all find their way either intentionally or latently in your work. I wonder if you could make the same work that you’re making now, if you were younger, would you be making the same work earlier in your life?

Nell Painter:

Good question, and I honestly don’t know. Well, I think the answer is no, because I don’t feel like in my art, I have to explain black people or racism or black history. I have done a lot of that. I don’t speak for black people. I never have. I never have tried to be a quintessential black person or black woman, but my writing of history does generalize about the world in a way that my art doesn’t. If anybody wants to know what I think about American politics or race in America or anything like that, they should read my words because my art doesn’t do that.

Matt Thompson:

Also, pulling from a passage in Old in Art School, I think it was one of your professors who said that in order to be an artist, you had to be current.

Nell Painter:

Yeah. Right now.

Matt Thompson:

It needs to be right now.

Nell Painter:

Yeah.

Matt Thompson:

Which I absolutely disagree with. I think as far whether you’re trying intentionally or not, the work that you’re creating expresses where you are in that moment.

Nell Painter:

Yeah, it does.

Really, it is hardcore, especially for women.

Matt Thompson:

The world at large as well. Whether you’re addressing it directly or you are trying to escape it, that piece is still there. So I just want to say that I really admire your fearlessness and continuing on despite those criticisms. I know that in previous interviews when folks ask if you were intimidated about making that leap, going to art school or just leaning into the arts, you say that you did it because you could, is really cool. I personally think that’s super hardcore considering-

Nell Painter:

Really, it is hardcore, especially for women. I did it because I wanted to and I could, and especially for women, especially for black women, especially for black people. You’re supposed to have some overarching contribution to the race or contribution to your times, and that’s not what it was for me.

Matt Thompson:

Where did that come from? Who set that foundation for you?

Nell Painter:

My parents. My parents. My parents were wonderful people. They stayed married for like 74 years until my mother died. As I said, they were educated people, so I never had to explain myself or struggle against them. We were not rich people, but we were not poor people. So I never had to triage between where I would put my money, say on my parents or on my children, whom I don’t have. But I never had to struggle in that way, and I realized much, much later as I was actually writing the introduction to Old in Art School, that freedom from was really a privilege that they gave me. I didn’t understand it because I couldn’t see it as a privilege, but as I see, for instance, my black women colleagues in history, some of whom have to step aside because of ill health or taking care of families or just a panoply of things that can go wrong, especially if you’re a black woman. I never had to deal with those things and I am so grateful.

Matt Thompson:

I think back to people like Alma Thomas who transitioned into becoming the Alma Thomas after retiring from her role as an educator in DC schools. It’s a really jarring reality that marginalized people, black people, black women, don’t have the privilege to take certain risks.

Nell Painter:

But she did. She had the money that she made as a teacher over all those years. She wasn’t married, she didn’t have children. The house she lived in with her sister was the house that her father had bought. And I say this in my essay on Alma Thomas, that the material underpinnings of her work are really important, and she knew that. She bought all the art magazines she wanted to. She paid another artist to give her not so much lessons but crits and she could afford… Making art is expensive.

Matt Thompson:

Right.

Nell Painter:

That is to say you need the support, you need the materials. You also need to schmooze by going to various openings and art events, and you also have to pay storage. So it’s expensive and she could do it.

Matt Thompson:

Thinking about the artists who were fearless enough to take that step, or even the ones who were afraid and just did it afraid, the folks who did it. There are a lot of older adults who are very intimidated by the idea of taking that leap, transitioning into that second act. Do you have any advice for any older adults listening who are feeling wary about taking that step?

Nell Painter:

I do, because people ask me this a lot and I say, if you’re not sure, take advantage of one of the most wonderful institutions in American life, which is community colleges. So you can just try all sorts of things. You can try making pots, you can try printmaking, you can try art history, you can try painting. There are all these things you can try in community college or in your local museum sometimes. So the Newark Museum of Art has classes for people where you can try all… You can try fashion even, at the museum. So try things out, try things out.

Matt Thompson:

For sure. We have two questions that we like to ask all of our guests, but before we do, I know I spoiled this before we started our conversation. You’ve lived two full lives already, incredibly accomplished careers. Do you have a third act in you?

Nell Painter:

Well, first, I have to finish the books. So one book that I’m finishing as we speak is a new book on Sojourner Truth called Sojourner Truth was a New Yorker, and she didn’t say that. And then I have the German book that I just told you about, which is autobiographical. So that’s the end of this particular phase.

Matt Thompson:

Okay.

Nell Painter:

The next phase, I am going to put my laptop aside and just make art.

Matt Thompson:

You’re really delving deeper into this practice of making art for pleasure, right?

Nell Painter:

Yes, yes.

Matt Thompson:

In this next phase, do you have any plans to show anywhere?

Nell Painter:

That will come, that will come. I don’t make enough art now to have a gallery. Maybe when I’m doing it full time, I will. I know artists who are interested in my works, but I don’t worry about that because I don’t have to show. I already have people collecting my art, and that feels very good. That’s a real ego booster. It’s an ego booster to know that my art is in various museums and public repositories, so that’s gratifying. But I don’t need anything from my art. Just the pleasure of doing it.

Matt Thompson:

I love that. So moving on to our final questions.

Nell Painter:

Yes.

Matt Thompson:

When you were younger, what did you imagine growing older would be like?

Nell Painter:

Well, my parents were always 25 years older than me, so I saw it. I saw it. My mother was a little older than my father. She died well before my father, of congestive heart failure.

Matt Thompson:

Okay.

Nell Painter:

Unfortunately. My father died of old age. He died just before the first election of Donald… The only election of Donald Trump in 2016, and he was almost 98. My mother was 91. So I see for instance that we in our mid-80s, our late 80s, we may have to give up where we lived. So for instance, I’m speaking to you here in the Adirondacks, in the screen porch. This is a single family home. And we may not be able to stay here when we are in our mid to late 80s and early 90s, but since I don’t have… I was going to say I don’t have responsibilities, maybe I don’t have responsibilities, so I can just do what I want as long as my health holds up. And so far, I have been blessed with very good health.

Matt Thompson:

Well, that answers my second question.

Nell Painter:

Okay.

Matt Thompson:

What do you enjoy most about growing older now?

Nell Painter:

Oh, golly. I think just the freedom. Princeton professors work very, very hard, and I’m glad I don’t have to work that hard, and I’m glad I also don’t have to be in public in this time. This is a very vexing time. I just wrote a piece for The New Republic. The assignment was about liberalism and the battles of our time, which there are many, but I’ll just mention one, which is Israel, which is so hard. I’m so grateful that I don’t have to speak in public about this excruciating situation. I don’t have to write history anymore in the sense of doing the hard work, the hard archival work and so forth. So I write creative non-fiction, which means that I create rather than research and synthesize, and that’s a freedom too.

Matt Thompson:

It’s funny with everything going on in the world right now, I’m seeing on the internet, people are saying that they’re tired of living in unprecedented times.

Nell Painter:

This is what we’ve got.

Matt Thompson:

Right, exactly. So before we go, I understand you’re in the middle of a book tour for your latest work, I Just Keep Talking. Is there anything you would like to share with our audience about your latest book?

Nell Painter:

Oh gosh, there’s so much. I guess the end is where I come out as a knitter, and that has shaped my new book on Sojourner Truth, which will have a big section on Sojourner Truth’s knitting and knitting and women’s work and black women’s knitting, and just investigating knitting, fiber arts, crafts, women crafts, art, and so forth. And that has come through the freedom to be an old lady who knits. I’ve always knitted in public, but I’ve never labeled myself a knitter, which I do now. And I think that’s part of the freedom of being an old lady.

Matt Thompson:

It’s wonderful. I would like to thank you again for joining us for this episode of This Is Growing Old.

Nell Painter:

My pleasure, really.

Matt Thompson:

For those out there listening and watching, I’d like to thank you again for tuning into another episode of our podcast. If you’re interested in hearing more episodes of This Is Growing Old, you can find us wherever you find your podcasts. Again, thank you and I’ll catch you next time.