| // Mar 18, 2008 |
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| Artist Feature by Todd Brooks / Pendu Magazine and Gallery |
1. - Q: When did you first start making artwork? Is there a particular artist or group of artists that really sparked your interest in making art?
A: I got a late start in art. I became an artist when I was a 4th year engineering student at university. I took a beginning drawing class and the teacher as well as the other students encouraged me to pursue art further.
2. - Q: Did you go to art school? If so, what effect did art school have on your art? In what ways did they make you better? Do you feel you were taught things that you now have to “unlearn”?
A: I did attend art school but it was a few years later when I was 29. I attended the Art Institute in Chicago for two years and earned my undergraduate degree. I specifically chose a school that was only an art school as opposed to a school that happened to have an art department. My experiences at art school helped me technically as well as conceptually. It was an extremely well rounded education. I learned things that I probably would not have been able to figure out on my own and I was able to address some of the bad habits I had developed from being primarily self-taught up to that point. Being critically engaged with my work in school helped me to find out what kind of work I’m really interested in making. Figuring that out isn’t as simple as it sounds.
3. - Q: What keeps you inspired to continue making new work?
A: I’m always looking for the doorway to that zone where creative discovery flows gracefully. It’s elusive and seemingly hidden by a trickster who doesn’t like to be visited very often.
4. - Q: What themes do you find yourself most attracted to and returning to in your work?
A: The main themes in my work right now are childhood emotions and memories, specifically traumatic ones.
5. - Q: How much of each piece of your artwork would you consider comes from an intuitive or spontaneous sense of creating and how much is analytical and planned out?
A: The core of my work is intuitive. Ideas and motifs that hatch fully formed from my irrational unconscious tend to have the integrity and robustness needed to carry them through to a finished piece, as opposed to ideas that are contrived from my intellectual brain. In the later stages of making a piece, there is a bit more intellectual planning and analysis happening as I’m working out the formal painting issues. But at that stage it’s more about trying not to mess up the original impulse during the process of finishing the piece.
6. - Q: How important is music to your art? Do you listen to certain music when working? Any particular musicians?
A: Like anyone else, music helps me get into the right mental zone when I’m working.
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7. - Q: Do you have a favorite cultural critic, philosopher, or psychoanalyst that you enjoy reading/learning from? Has their work directly or indirectly influenced you and if so, in what ways?
A: That’s interesting that you mentioned psychoanalyst in the list of influences, since for some reason that topic doesn’t come up very often in art critical discourse. The writings of the Swiss psychotherapist Alice Miller have had a profound influence on both my life and art. She stresses that the unconscious feelings and memories from childhood shape everything about the human condition. Why individuals behave as they do and why societies behave as they do. We come up with very complicated intellectual explanations for why we are the way we are, but all the answers are buried in the haze of our childhood feelings and personal histories. Admitting to this kind of vulnerability is very difficult thing to confront though.
8. - Q: Who is your favorite young author right now?
A: Right now my favorite author is Haruki Murakami. The quirky, unaffected reality where his stories reside is something I relate to deeply.
9. - Q: Is there a young visual artist right now whose work particularly has your attention?
A: It’s a challenge to keep up with the art scene since there’s so much happening. I pay more attention to the larger currents and trends than particular young artists since things move so quickly.
10. - Q: Do you make a living as an artist? If not, and you don't mind sharing, what is your day/night job?
A: I have a day job working in the graphic design industry.
11. - Q: What are your future plans?
A: I’d like to continue developing my body of work and building an audience for it.
12. - Q: Any cryptic messages that you would like to send out to the readers?
A: ...
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