Looking
at the Inside - Class of 2015 Interviews (part two)
How is it already March?! It’s amazing to
think how quickly this first year is going at the Academy. We’ve got lots of exciting things happening
in the next few months as we wrap up our first year. But before it’s over, I wanted to introduce
you to a few more of my classmates – to share their oeuvre and the interesting
background that each of them come from.
I asked them a few simple questions:
What inspires your work?
And who are you inspired by?
Washington, DC
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Painting has
been away for me to rescue my experience from the flow of time. To hold it out,
so it can be revisited. Not necessarily to be revisited by me, but for someone
else to have an opportunity to see or feel something the way I do. I think
painting, particularly in the west, was almost intuitively invented to delay
the fleeting reality of sensual experience. Lately, my paintings have been fueled
by my fascination with mystery and wonder. I am amazed to be located on this
planet, a ball of rock rotating around a spherical fire. It is a very odd, but
common situation, and the more I look at things I can’t shake the feeling that
my existence is quite weird. When I paint, I don’t think of subject matter or
content, I try to let the meaning of the painting reveal itself to me through
the process. I don’t know what question to ask when I set out to paint. But
it’s not exactly a question that I’m wondering about, it’s a feeling that I
have. I cannot formulate the question that is my wonder. When I open my mouth
to talk about it, I suddenly find I’m babbling non-sense. But that should not
prevent wonder from being the foundation of painting.
An artist
that has constantly been on my mind since first seeing his paintings is
Caravaggio. Before seeing his work I
had my mind set out to become an abstract painter. Caravaggio’s compositions
pulled me in, the way the shapes fit together and activate each other. I have always been fascinated with the slight
ambiguity that is in his paintings, which is hardly noticeable at first. When
looking at his paintings one is never quite sure what is happening, it is
always on the edge. As art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon noted, Caravaggio’s paintings “border between the sacred and profane.”
Maryland Institute College of Art
I talk about
existence by painting the figure. Before
I came to the Academy I was layering the figure over itself as a way to discuss
the various levels on which we experience our lives and ourselves. Now that I'm here, I've decided to pursue
that same topic by other means.
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| Work by Shaina Craft (MFA 2015) |
Veneers of
painted flesh mingle on my canvases, blending the borders between figurative
and landscape, portrait and abstract. My
deepest desire is to create provocative artwork that challenges the foundations
of figure painting by continuing to blur the boundaries between digital and
traditional work, pushing color, and recontextualizing traditional subject
matter. I wield my palette as another
means of pushing limits, experimenting with extreme and unfamiliar hues for the
human form, creating something recognizable and yet entirely alien, like
landscapes comprised of bodies or fluorescent faces fading in and out of
existence.
I don’t like
the word ‘inspiration.’ To me that word
conjures images of artists sitting around waiting to be struck by lightning so
they can have a great idea and make work.
The body of work I made before starting at the Academy came by looking
hard at the work of other painters, figuring out what I wanted, and
experimenting with my medium and process until I came up with something that
worked for me. Starting in 2011, it was
a year of research and trials before I made a decent painting. I suppose that’s why these pieces are titled
as ‘Experiments.’
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| Work by Shaina Craft (MFA 2015) |
I use myself
as a model frequently. People mention it
less with that past body of work, maybe because it’s difficult to recognize any
one face or person in them. But, I
wouldn’t say I use myself as a subject.
I’m not painting me. I’m painting
the human experience; the faces and bodies are just stand-ins. I work from photo-references most of the
time. I took a bunch of photography
classes in high school and college so now I can very carefully stage and light
my shots. I've even shown some of that
work in exhibitions. For me, there isn't
much of a boundary between what I consider reference material and what I
consider the finished piece. If an image
seems to need a painted surface, I give it one; if it needs pastel, I use
that. I grew up with a metal sculptor as
a mother so some of my earliest memories are of her explaining to me that form
follows function.
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| Shaina Craft (MFA 2015) |
I read
constantly. All kinds of things – poetry,
philosophy, memoir, fiction. I'm pretty
obsessed with Sci-fi and urban fantasy.
My favorite contemporary fiction writer is Charles De Lint.
He combines myths and folk tales from
cultures all over the world into these beautiful stories that take place in
present-day cities. The thing about
science fiction is when it’s done well it’s always a reflection of modern
culture, like looking in a distorted mirror.
An artist
I’m currently looking at a lot is Justin Bower. Bower is
painting about all of the things I'm interested in; The state of human beings
in this age of technological evolution and pop culture overload and what a
slippery subject that can be. It’s a new
phenomenology, not what is being, but what have we become? I love his loaded
brush strokes and crazy bright colors. My favorite painting by Justin Bower (it
was really hard to pick just one) – “Architecture of Infection,” 2010.
Istanbul, Turkey
Ringling College of Art and
Design
 |
| Work by Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015) |
I was born
in London and raised in Istanbul. I am the only child of an Opera director and
a pharmacist.
When I
paint, either in the studio or during classes, I always try to design a general
atmosphere for that painting. Now, that plan rarely succeeds - very often the
result I get is something different than the initial feel I design before the
painting. But usually those kinds of paintings of mine were turned out to be
the most successful ones. And whenever I don't have that initial plan-they
usually fail. So for me, having an idea in the beginning is the key, whether
that idea later will be shown in the painting or not, does not matter. I like
how after watching a horror movie, usually a creepy scene gets stuck in your
head. I think that is sometimes the feeling I want to get.
 |
| Work by Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015) |
I'm inspired
by pretty much everything, and they constantly change. But mainly, I draw
inspiration from the negativity. They don't have to be personal negative
matters. I draw inspiration from the music I listen to, the neighborhood I live
in, the other art I look at, what is going on in the world, being far from the
country where I am from, all these kinds of things. I try not to listen to music
much when I paint. I always put on a political talk program from a tube channel
or a discussion about existence of UFO's or something like that.
 |
| Work by Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015) |
If I have to
think of one name in the history of painting that had the biggest inspiration
to me, without thinking twice I would say Hammershoi.
I was introduced to his work by a teacher of mine when I was in my junior year
in college. I was very influenced by how one can paint such simple subjects and
invoke unsettling feelings on the viewer, and repeat this and never be
repetitive. That is a very hard thing to achieve. His paintings are anything
but epic. They don't beg for your attention, they just say “this is me. Like it
or not, I don't care.” I think this is a statement that only the bravest
artists can have. Maybe his influence on my work doesn't show directly, but it
certainly made me much more mature in terms of how I approach to picture
making.
Houston, Texas
Maryland Institute College of Art
 |
| Work by Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015) |
I’ve always
been drawn to the elegance of the human form and its ability to reflect our
personal history. Bodies and faces typically reflect our lifestyle and I like
the idea of being able to understand aspects of a person’s personality based on
a sensitive observation of their physical features and gestures. The face
especially reveals more and more of our temperament as we age, and it’s in the
process of trying to duplicate the nuanced features of a face through elements
of line and value that I find my most consistent inspiration. In devoting
myself to recreating someone else’s attributes I feel that I’m able to meditate
on their personality as a reflection of mine. Hopefully, through both
consistent observation and introspection, I can make both our vulnerabilities
evident on the surface of their figure. In this world of unceasing flux I
want to convey the steadfast brilliance and uniqueness of a person’s
personality, and how against time and tribulation their individuality is their
protective armor.
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| Work by Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015) |
As of late,
I’ve been trying to integrate moments that are rendered monochromatically into
my paintings, as a means of magnifying the symbolic power of a single color (in
the context of a figure), and also in an attempt to simplify my images and give
them an iconic quality.
An artist
I’ve been interested in for a while is James Jean.
Originally an illustrator, he transitioned into fine art several years ago and
his work has since walked a line between an illustrative and fine art aesthetic.
While his style can vary a lot, I admire his way of combining wonderful
draftsmanship with very expressively and boldly applied chromatic colors. His
use of color effectively imbues a sense of madness over the controlled elegance
of his line work. One of my favorite paintings of his is entitled Lovers,
2011. It aptly combines an overwhelming
superficial beauty with clear themes of anxiety, chaos, and violence. The four
round panels and overall circular composition evoke the idea of beauty and
suffering being components of a circular process.
##
Camila Rocha (MFA 2015) will be blogging here throughout the year
about her first year at the Academy and moving to New York City. Check
the label "First Year Experience" or "Camila Rocha" for more
posts about her first year at the Academy.
If you have any questions for Camila or her classmates, please
leave them in the comments section of the blog.
All images are courtesy of
the artists.
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