New work – Page 2 – Sour Harvest

Interview with Joram Roukes for ‘American Ornithology’

Sourharvest (SH) interviewed Joram Roukes (JR) for his upcoming exhibition in Thinkspace Gallery’s main room, American Ornithology. The opening reception for this new body of work will with be Saturday, October 10 from 6-9pm. The exhibition will be on view till October 31st. Please visit the Thinkspace Gallery website for any additional information.

SH: What was your inspiration or creative thought process while developing the work for your upcoming exhibition, American Ornithology?
JR: My inspiration generally comes from everyday situations that I reassemble in a collage like way. I want to create fragmented situations and figures that are inspired by personal matters, social media and contemporary culture as a whole. For this body of work I wanted to implement a bird angle.

SH: Why the title American Ornithology for your new exhibition. Can you elaborate upon?
JR: As a kid I used to go bird-watching relentlessly. My granddad and my parents would take me out to this national park by our house or we’d go on hikes in France when we were out there camping during summer vacations. I learned a lot about birds. everything basically. And as I started drawing, I mostly drew birds. For this show, I wanted to bring those three things together: My fascination for birds, American popular culture, and painting as it has evolved in this stage of my life. The series in a way is a result of watching my current environment through an ornithologists view

SH: Can you walk us through what an average day in your studio would look like?
JR: I wake up, make coffee, Walk my dog Vincent and get some breakfast, get back in and then clean the brushes I left out to dry the night before. If I’m working on a painting, I continue working on that. Adding layers, finishing others. Either that or I’m preparing collages, finding new compositions, stretching canvasses. Then some more coffee, another walk with Vincent and the same cycle.

SH: What is your spirit animal and why?
JR: Any bird. If you’d ask someone what kind of animal they’d want to be and they say ‘cat’ or ‘elephant’, there’s something wrong with you. You’re telling me you don’t want to fly?? I’ve done the walking on land thing. Either gills or wings. But I’ll take wings. I can relate.

SH: You’ve expressed your work is a commentary on western issues, what are a few of those issues you address and what do you do in your own life to help remedy those problems?
JR: My paintings have touched on subjects like consumerism and the banalities of America’s popular culture. In this series, I did a painting that is based on a press photo of the Baltimore riots. I add irony and absurdity to the piece to throw off the viewer a little bit but still remains that sense of violence. I think addressing it and maybe even joking about it is what I do to bring certain things under the attention. I wouldn’t say I remedy anything. I think about these issues just as much as the next person. Painting them is also a way for me to figure them out.

SH: How do you know when a piece is finished?
JR: When it tells me it is.

SH: Do you have a favorite brush or brand of paint?
JR: I love kolinsky martyr and Old Holland oil paint

SH: Where was the first place you exhibited your work and how did the show come about?
JR: Not including my grad show exhibition, the first show I participated in in a professional setting was in Amsterdam, for de Jong Talent 2006 exhibition, showcasing the 30 most promising art school graduates from the Netherlands. I was very proud to be part of this.

SH: If time and money were not an issue, what is your dream project?
JR: I’d still do what I do. I love the studio practice. But I’d love to work on something very large. I’d want to recreate Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa in a contemporary way. Same size. Similar composition.

Joram Roukes Sourharvest

SH: In an interview you shared David Lynch is an artist you’d like to meet, what is your favorite work by him?
JR: Mullholland Drive. This cohesive oddness is beautiful. It makes all the sense in the world without making any at the same time. That’s a balance every artist looks for.

SH: What is the best piece of advice you have been given about life? About art?
JR: If you want to be stupid, be smart about it.
Don’t paint for money or instagram likes. If you’re not happy with what you make, it’s not good enough.

SH: What is a piece of advice you would give to another artist who looks up to you?
JR: The key to success is to stand out. Do something that stands out. Make something big. If you don’t have resources, find resources. Table top illustration don’t get you on gallery’s radars. And don’t fucking quit because its ‘tough’.

New Works by Nosego for ‘Along Infinite River’ opening July 18th

Nosego – Along Infinite River
On View July 18th – August 8th

Thinkspace (Los Angeles) – is pleased to present Along Infinite River, featuring new works by Philadelphia based artist Yis Goodwin. An imaginative painter, illustrator and urban muralist known for his work’s unrestrained creativity, Goodwin, or “Nosego”, brings detailed totemic pieces to life. Rich with symbolic suggestion, personal excavation and uninhibited play, his character driven works host countless creature composites, their parts assembled from the fluid intermingling of imaginary worlds. A process inspired by his childhood memory of recombining elements from the characters in his toy box, Nosego creates new forms from borrowed individual parts. Weaving in and out of multiple worlds and references, he combines surreal cartoonish mutations with elements of detailed realism. The resulting bionic universe is made up of anthropomorphic animals, fractured and reassembled figures and spaces, and a child-like nostalgia offset by something darker lurking in adult shadows.

When not creating huge architecturally scaled murals with spray paint, Nosego is working primarily in acrylic on wood panel. Uniting reality with fiction through an intuitive stream of consciousness, he captures his free associations, in defiance of plausible relationships, and playfully allows the works to come to life. A floating wolf head emerges from an orb of flowers, a mountainous expanse is glimpsed through the open mouth of a duck head, a cartoon-like cat emerges high above a forest as a waterfall cascades from its mouth…There are no limits in Nosego’s world and everything is connected. The animals become relatable symbolic vehicles for human impulses and expressions, while the landscapes combine everything from forests to galactic skies.

Nosego’s work conveys something far more profound than inventive “Frankensteining”. It’s personal and explosively emotive. His wonderfully offbeat hybrids of animals, objects and environments are always dynamically evolving; sloughing off and building up new parts and skins before our eyes, revealing a simultaneity of multiple, actively changing, selves. Though an artist who encourages his work to be freely interpreted by the viewer, the idea of capturing a feeling of psychological interconnectedness and continuity is apparent in the work. Movement is literal and figurative, and nothing is static or remains still. Nosego’s work is always shedding layers and pushing new propositions through its newly opened spaces, puzzling together a legion of disparate pieces, places, bodies and selves. Along Infinite River is inspired by this fluidity of consciousness, so integral to Nosego’s process, and by the deeply interconnected nature of life as a journey coming in and out of present and introspective focus.

There is a childlike joy in the way Nosego creates his work; the kind of honest enthusiasm for creation that is so quickly consumed by the cynicism of adulthood. He captures this indiscriminate creative impulse, commingling play with the dark, ridiculous and uncanny….the end result is nothing short of spellbinding.

New Works by Brian Mashburn for ‘Witness’

Brian Mashburn – Witness
On View July 18th – August 8th

Concurrently on view in the Thinkspace project room are new works by North Carolina based artist Brian Mashburn. In Witness, Mashburn creates suggestive landscapes that invoke industrial degradation and the consumptive trappings of wealth and leisure. In the midst of these compromised human worlds, looming just off in the hazy distance, resilient wildlife manages to prevail in the foregrounds. Mashburn’s meticulously rendered paintings allude to the consequences of unchecked industry and to the problematic nature of exploitative ideologies. His beautifully detailed oil paintings are gothic in sensibility, but timely in their social and political preoccupations. Though dark and ruminating with romantic disillusionment, the works, nonetheless, suggest the possibility of redemption in a world largely burdened by its own self-inflicted ruins.

Mashburn inserts realistically detailed animals into the foregrounds of these desolate forest landscapes. They provide a stark contrast and counterpoint to the shadowy and ambiguous scenes unfolding in the backgrounds. These animals, both wild and domestic, bare witness to the world around them, like allegorical figures in a cautionary tale. The narratives in Mashburn’s works remain open to conjecture, offering the viewer incomplete and contemplative moments. Whether viewed as dystopian nightmare or contemporary political commentary, the works are at once aesthetically striking and emotionally resonant.

Interview with artist Ariel DeAndrea for ‘Chasing the Current’

An interview with artist Ariel DeAndrea for her upcoming show ‘Chasing the Current’ at Thinkspace Gallery. The opening reception for the show is Saturday, May 23, and run through June 13.

SH: What is your creative process?
AD: I love to travel and I never go anywhere without my camera, rolls of hand picked paper, scissors and fishing line. Anytime I see a body of water that inspires me, be it a puddle, a fountain, the ocean or a river, I stop, pull out the paper that fits the mood, start cutting and folding cranes and then I throw them in the water with some fishing line, so I can manipulate their angle and let the current of the water and the reflection of the environment off the water do the rest. After I take hundreds of photos, the editing process begins. I pick my favorite photos, build my canvases and begin the oil paintings, using the reference material.

SH: How long can it take you to finish a single piece?
AD: It really depends on the size, but I would say that my smallest paintings get at least 100 hours of effort at 10 inches by 10 inches, not including the time it takes to build the canvases.For those not already familiar, please explain the significance of the paper crane to you and how you first came to work with them.

SH: For those not already familiar, please explain the significance of the paper crane to you and how you first came to work with them.
AD: I recently found a drawing that I did in 4th grade (age 9) of little origami cranes flying around an old Japanese saying, “O flock of heavenly cranes, cover my child with your wings”. It gave me shivers down my spine when I found it. It crystallized for me how long my obsession with cranes has really been going on and I felt like everything in my life has been working towards this moment, as I have honed my own personal understanding of the crane to pay homage to it through my art.

It resonated with me as a child, that if you folded 1,000 cranes, you could make a wish. Raised atheist, prayer did not come naturally to me, in fact, it was balked at in my household. I believe folding cranes became a sort of covert form of prayer for me. I turned to folding during trying times to soothe myself , for the wishes of good health and safety for my loved ones, when I knew not what else to do. It was, is and always will be the most purest, calming and comforting single object in the world to me, that can be made 1,000 times over and yet always have an individuality and unique beauty. This has been true, as I have folded over 4,000 cranes so far in my lifetime and still counting…

This form prayer became a real solace to me, when I was 13 and my mother, our best friend and I went to Indonesia. Our friend was hit by a car and in critical condition for 18 hours before we finally could evacuate her to Singapore. It was a harrowing experience fighting for her life all those hours and it left me scared, changed and feeling helpless once the immediate danger was over. I turned to folding cranes at her bedside in the hospital and found great comfort in it, as though I was actively helping when I could no longer help and it was now in the capable hands of the doctors. Next came my father’s life threatening brain injury, and then my mother’s battle with cancer. Each time, folding cranes was a way to cope and to find hope in dark days. This is how the fascination at age 9 turned to spiritual obsession in my adulthood.

SH: How do you select the color and patterns the cranes will have?
AD: I have collected papers from my trips to Japan and hunted for paper stores in the US and Europe that carry unique paper. Mostly I look for large sheets of hand printed Japanese washi papers. I want colorful paper with strong unique and careful design. I then carry many different sheets of paper with me at all times and pick the paper that fits the mood or color scheme of the place that has captured my attention.

SH: While painting do you feel like each crane takes on a different story?
AD: I absolutely feel the personality of each crane. My art practice with cranes originally was folding. I felt that each crane deserved to be carefully selected in size and color, folded, and loved. The point of folding 1,000 cranes is not to get to the end, but the meditative practice, the process, the conscious thought of your purpose for folding, repeated again and again, 1,000 times. This is what inspired me to paint them individually, to revere the singular. When they hit the water they take on so much life. Some dance about, others seem to glide with more serious purpose, some carefree, some reflective and contemplative and some almost sinister, like they are out on a hunt.

SH: What inspired your upcoming show, Chasing The Current?
AD: I am always chasing that next current to bring a crane to life in a new inspiring way and to bring attention to the movement and reflection in life all around us. Water possesses a unique spirit, ever moving and reflecting the world around it, it is powerful and never the same after even just a milliseconds passing. Once I started looking for it, I saw it everywhere. I try to capture it as best I can, but the photos are one stagnant moment that cannot hold the experience and journey of actually being with the crane, the sun, the water. It is in the process of painting that I feel I am able to better infuse and reinterpret that feeling of movement, complexity and beauty that the real world presents to me. I simply want to share the quiet turbulence of this one birds fight not to get pulled down and drown. They are resilient in the water as though they want to splash in the sun, like a child would. Each body of water has its own current, pull in different directions, some violent, some still, all like magic to me.

SH: Your bio states that Japanese Shinto inspires your work, explain what Shinto is and how does it play a part in your day to day life?
AD: Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan. It focuses on the spiritual essence of all natural things, that a river or ocean might contain its own godlike divine spirit, making it animistic in more anthropological terms. I believe the cranes help bring out the spirit of the water they are in. They transform from a paper toy to vessel for the soul of the current, the spirit, the moment of the river or lake and so on. I have always felt that almost painful feeling of beauty and mystery that nature and especially water can hold, an energy that is unique to each place, that feeling that “god” is every rock, every stone, every river. I can almost hear the whisper of their soul if I can still myself enough. The cranes help me to find that stillness and hear that soul.

SH: What are your favorite paints and colors to use? What’s your favorite brushes?
AD: I absolutely love Old Holland paint, hands down. They never have too much medium in them, so you can thin them yourself. Cobalt Blue, Cadmium Red Light, and Scheveningen Purple Brown are my greatest “out of the tube” obsessions. Cadmium mixed with Naples Yellow and Cremnitz white, can create one of the most beautiful, electric glowing colors of all time. I love mixing paint to see how they play together. It is forever fascinating and exciting to me.

Brushes, I use synthetic brushes of assorted sizes in filberts and rounds (mostly Robert Simmons Expressions or something similar) and squirrel hair wash brushes. All my brushes are quite small, so I am often buying relatively cheap rounds that have as fine a point as possible, so I can toss them once the point goes. Expensive brushes in size 000 don’t seem to keep their point any longer than the cheaper ones. I do spend my money on expensive wash brushes, so they don’t shed and good quality paint because the integrity of the color and body is worth it.

SH: When did you feel you had found your creative voice and style?
AD: Art for me has a strong relationship to discovery and experiment. I think the artist is always learning and yet I have found some truth to hold onto in my own art practice.

Most poignantly, when I found that fourth grade drawing…I was questioning the meaning of it all…you know, the artist dilemma in its largest most vast scape and was feeling overwhelmed. Then I found that drawing and snapped out of the macro of art and artists and all its history and into the micro, me as an artist as one piece in a larger puzzle. The best I can do is be true to myself. I thought, “the child in me would be delighted by the paintings and installation work I do with cranes today”, and that made me feel like I had arrived at something I have been searching for since childhood, something of sincere integrity. That’s when I knew, but the process of discovery has been ongoing. I revere and contemplate the master artist’s of old and still everyday strive to better honor their legacy and to affect in at least some small way the heart strings of the viewer.

SH: As nature plays a part in your work, where is your favorite place to observe or be in nature?
AD: I have a special place in San Francisco, off the trail in Point Lobos. It is atop a cliff overlooking the ocean and the golden gate bridge. It is quiet and private and a little scary to climb over there, but I have been going there since my early teens and I think about that place often. I still go there when I am in town.

SH: Can you share with us something that scares you and something that makes you really happy?
AD: Crocodiles scare me. They are often in my nightmares. I feel like they are one of my spirit animals, alerting me of danger and playing off my fears. They are archaic, resilient and strong predators, built to adapt, survive and kill. Cranes make me happy, real ones and the paper ones. I have big white paper cranes hanging in my bedroom. Every morning I look at them dancing in the breeze from the window and feel a moment of weightlessness and delight. They are gentle, playful and vulnerable, the opposite of the crocodiles.

SH: What is something you know now, that you wish you would have known when first embarking on your artistic career?
AD: I remember hearing the famous illustrator Marshall Arisman give a talk after I had finished art school and he said something to the effect of, “paint what you know and love and you will never bore of the subject matter.” I think that as a young artist sometimes I tried to force ideas that were good ideas for someone else, but not so sincere to myself. I feel grateful to have arrived at content that resonates with me. This protects me from being too swayed by trends within the art world, allowing me to be comfortable with my work.

SH: If money were not an issue, what might your dream project entail?
AD: I know exactly what it would entail and once I get a lot of money, you shall see…

SH: Star Wars or Star Trek?
AD: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Bec Winnel Interview for Beautanica

‘Beautanica‘ opening reception Saturday April 25th from 6 -9pm.

Warm-Up Questions:
Coffee or Tea?
Coffee

Spirit Animal?
Moth

What was your background noise when creating this show?
The radio (Triple J) for most of it and then a new born baby girl!

Main Interview:

SH: Are the women in your work based on people you know or an imagined reference?
BW: They aren’t based on anyone I know in particular. Although I use shots of models backstage for reference, the women in my art are meant to capture and represent the soulfulness of women in general.

SH: What inspired the direction of this latest body of work?
BW: I was pregnant when I started and had a baby by the time I finished. I’m sure she, Bridget, inspired my work strongly along with the subject matter I always use, feminine beauty, mixed with elements of nature. A lot of the reference for the nature elements in my work come from plants around my house.

SH: If you had only 5 minutes to go shopping at your favorite art supply store and buy whatever you wanted, money is no object, what would you throw in your basket? (or cart)
BW: Ooo, can I have the whole shop? I would probably head to the watercolour section and pick out the most beautiful and expensive full set of watercolours, packaged in a beautiful wooden box.

SH: How did you develop and find your artistic voice?
BW: While I always stayed with females as my subject, I experimented with a lot of different styles and mediums. Eventually I stuck with realism using pencils as I felt this area was where my strengths were. Around the same time I discovered the work of Sara Moon who influenced my style also. Sara Moon created vintage style images of women in a smokey and dreamy world. From there my style has developed to include areas of 2D abstract imagery and patterns of mixed media such as watercolour and metallic inks. Also incorporating pan pastels into the realism of the ladies. Always experimenting and trying new things helps you to find your voice.

SH: What do you do when you’re filled with self-doubt or stuck in a creative rut?
BW: Sometimes I’ll walk away from my art (go outside, have a hot shower, go for a drive, go visit a friend) until I feel inspired to create again or if there is a deadline and I have no choice but to produce work, I’ll start several artworks until finally one feels like it is working. Most important and almost impossible sometimes, is not to over think what I’m doing but to let it just happen, almost on a subconscious level.

SH: When do you get the most work done; morning, noon, or night?
BW: Either early morning or late at night. I’m useless during the middle of the day.

SH: How do you know a piece is finished?
BW: I once read that a piece is finished when your eye can move freely around a piece and all areas of the artwork feel resolved. I pretty much try to follow that idea. I usually check with partner or family too and ask them if they think it looks ‘finished’. A fresh eye never goes astray.

SH: What other artists work are you a fan of right now?
BW: There are so many artist work that I love, I think I’m following around 300 of them on Instagram! An artist my friend just introduced me to is Lorraine Loots. She creates mind blowing little realistic artworks the size of your thumbnail!

SH: What do you know now, that you wish you’d known when you were first embarking on your artistic career?
BW: When I was starting out, it did take a long time to find my artistic ‘voice’ and at times it was really hard and frustrating. I still feel like I’m finding it with every piece I create, however, one artist said to me a couple of years ago, finding your voice simply takes time. Knowing that, I could have accepted the journey is an ever-growing one and to be more patient!

SH: If you could live in any movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be a specific character or yourself?
BW: It would have to be a Drew Barrymore movie. Either ever after or 50 first dates. I would just be myself and watch Drew. She seems so nice and funny.

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