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Bau-Xi Gallery is excited to present Dreams and Journeys, a new series by acclaimed photographer, Joshua Jensen-Nagle. We sat down with the artist to ask him about his latest series and learn about his ever-evolving process.

Bau-Xi Gallery: Ten years later, you are returning to photograph sites from your first architectural series. Tell us about your interest in revisiting these locations.

Joshua Jensen-Nagle: My work has evolved over the years. I wanted to bring a new life to the subject and add a fresh look and feel to the work. Originally, I photographed most of these locations in SX-70 Polaroid. The imagery was soft, blurry--all veiled by a dream-like haze. In revisiting the sites, I used the latest in digital cameras and have created crisp imagery, so that the viewer is able to walk right into the photographs as if they were there themselves. 

BX: Past European images were “smokey” in their finish, as though we viewed the scenes through a fog—what has changed about your interpretation of these places that demands this new, “sharper” image?

JJN: In revisiting my early polaroid series, which evoked a distinctly nostalgic feeling, I wanted to approach this new body of work with a more modern perspective, to parallel working with a digital format camera. Everything is brighter, crisper and fresher. I intentionally over exposed most of the images to give a euphoric feel.

BX: What are the conditions of your ideal shots? 

JJN: The ideal condition for these shoots are midday, when the shadows are minimal. 

BX: This series features iconic sites of worship such as the Pantheon, the Western Wall and the Notre-Dame Cathedral. What do you find inspiring about these sites?

JJN: Each and every site has its own history and attracts people for different reasons. Whether it be to pray, to marvel at its architecture, or even its existence. The human interaction is what interests and inspires me to photograph these sites. 

BX: Which aspects of your practice do you feel have evolved the most noticeably over the last 10 years?

JJN: I would say almost every aspect has evolved in the work that I make today. For me, the most noticeable shift is that I used to be able to travel with a backpack, carrying a few Polaroid cameras and film. I could walk around easily, taking photographs in any location at my own will. Now I have a 14ft tripod, and heavy digital camera gear. I need to secure permits for each location, months in advance. The whole production has become much more intricate. 

Dreams and Journeys will be on view at Bau-Xi Photo (350 Dundas St West, Toronto) from April 14-28. Join us to celebrate the opening of the exhibition on Saturday, April 14 form 2-4pm. 

VIEW THE COLLECTION

 

 

 

1) Your practice is primarily focused on floral painting, what about this subject matter, if anything, draws you to it and continues to inspire abstraction and formal experimentation?

Their variety of shape and colour, fragility and emphemerality.

2) What prompted the introduction of negative space and white ground in your paintings? How does it inform your work and what is its significance?

My brushwork tends to be impulsive and full of energy and which can lead to overcrowded paintings with nowhere for the eye to rest so space can be a place for the viewer to rest and to exercise one's own imagination. I love to look at Chinese landscape paintings where brush marks often hang suspended in white. A slightly under painted piece can be better than one which has been “finished off".

3) Could you enlighten us about how your compositions start, how many iterations they go through before they’re considered ‘finished’ (i.e. flipping the canvas, erasing, painting over, overpainting etc.)?

My compositions start in all kinds of ways, I don’t have a set method. Some paintings, the lucky ones, come right away and are finished in a couple of sessions. But this is rare. Often I paint right over a previous painting which is kind of like some sort of seeking revenge. A painting I’m not satisfied with will sit in my studio until I feel sufficiently removed from it to attack it again, often upside down which is especially freeing. Destruction, which is both satisfying and frightening, can play as big a part in a painting as creation. Many paintings never see the light of day.

4) Over the course of your career, you’ve transitioned from painting from still life arrangements to painting from photographs, how do you find these two approaches differ?

When I work from photos I don’t have to hurry up and get the thing done before the petals fall off and I have all the time I want I can take more liberties with the composition. The one step remove that a photo gives means I can better see the shapes and colours as an abstraction. I can also meld subject matter from several photos into one canvas.

5) Along the lines of the previous question: you often paint multiple paintings from the same photograph, could you describe how each piece and the experience of painting each piece is related or distinct from one another?

Each time I paint another piece from the same photo I need to find something new in it and to explore the possibilities for abstraction more and more. Since I am seldom if ever perfectly satisfied with a painting I often want to have another go. Riffing off the same subject again and again and getting to know its possibilities better is satisfying.

6) What kind of material properties have you observed through the act of painting? How does your handling of paint or your perception of form change as you paint? 

Material properties…..hmmm. Gravity and drips, gloopiness, butteriness?  A comforting smell.  The more I paint the more I am possessed by the qualities of the paint.  

7) This new work demonstrates some new palettes for you—are there particular pigments   or contrasts that are exciting you these days?

The Unforeseeable Fuschia which I always thought was a cheap trick.  I love the aubergine colour that the shrieky pthalo green can create with Alizarin Crimson. 

8) How would you say your work has developed in the past ten years and how do you see it evolving in the future?

The gesture is getting more and more important in the work and I seem to be getting up closer and closer to the flowers. Also I like to paint bigger and bigger. Like most artists I have no clue as to where I am going. Painting is a leap into the unknown.

 

VIEW NEW WORKS BY JAMIE EVRARD

 

 

1) What intangible or immaterial moments are you most interested in representing through your work?

I am interested in painting a visual and materially formed record of time. This record of time is created by way of a visual methodology of paint application and reactive decision making. 

Meditation and contemplation are part of my toolkit. I seek to evoke an internal state where a passage of time is experienced, and physically recorded by a calendar of sorts - the grid created by painted layered impasto lines. 

I like the analogy of duplicity and what it reveals: what we first see and know, and what light and shade reveal to us from different vantage points and at different times.  I find that transitory passage inspiring and poetic, like watching the day`s light fade into evening.  Those are the moments that I want to integrate into my work.

 

 

2) What kind of material properties have you observed through the act of painting? How does colour or your perception of colour change as you apply paint layer upon layer? 

The invisible painting layer is the shadow cast by light reflecting off the depth and accumulation of paint.  This is often more apparent in the white grid paintings but the coloured grids also have a directional quality and optical play between the colored impasto lines which have a similar intent.

Within the White Shade grids, the relationship between the form and shadow is depicted in a subtle way.  There is often two works in simultaneous production, one at times invisible. 

3) Your work uncovers the fundamental properties of paint and is often read as drawing, painting and sculpture all in one. Do you see it this way? Do you consider it more like one than the other(s)?

This current body of work has become bas-relief sculptures made by accumulated lines drawn with paint.  Paint, and its properties as a medium, historical references and traditions from different cultures inspire me as do handiwork and textiles. I consider myself a painter who is exploring the visual vocabulary of painting within in a personal experiential framework.

4) Your work appears to be very process-driven. Could you lend a little insight into your process? How does chance play a role in your work, if at all?

The grid for me is a point of departure.  I like its simplicity and perfection when I begin, but it`s the curious imperfection of my mark-making that moves me forward.  Each painting is, although often only subtly different, solved by a visual and emotive reaction unique to each piece.

5) You have spoken of the many skilled artisans in your life, most of whom are women who have worked in textile (knitting, weaving, sewing, embroidering) who have inspired you and your work through the years. What role does craft, and/or these women play in your work?

Generations of women in my family have been skilled in these traditions.  Often out of necessity, they sewed and wove their cloths and linens.

There's always been a skilled beauty to their designs which I've long admired. At first I did not even notice how it was influencing me and my work.  I was always consciously making and seeing patterns in nature and in architecture.  I think the dedication and pride of their skilled production was imprinted on me at a young age.

I have never acknowledged the elitist distinction between so-called “women’s work” and high art. Content and intention of the craft form is what makes it art. I like how both traditions have a voice in my work and together create an equilibrium – I appreciate them both.

6) Looking at your work, one is reminded of the minimalist artist Agnes Martin whose work also had a lot to do with line and repetition. Your work, like Martin’s, demands intimate viewing and quiet contemplation. Martin has remarked about her work: “My paintings are about merging, about formlessness ... A world without objects, without interruption.”  Does this statement resonate with you? If so, how?

Agnes Martin’s work resonates with me in the same way Mondrian does.  When you see how both artists have abstracted reality down to an elemental purity such as line, it’s really quite incredible.  Finding the inner bones, the essence of an object was both their intent and their spiritual experience.  I have a lot to learn from these artists as they continue to inspire me.

VIEW NEW WORK BY VICKY CHRISTOU

1) Could you lend some insight into the tongue-in-cheek title of your exhibition 'Girls Gone Wild'?

With this body of work, I found I had the chance to really show my own experience. I'm out in nature doing all the same wilderness activities that are still thought of as a male pursuit. All the female figures in my work are participating in their surroundings, they don't stand outside of them. They’re not merely passive still-life objects like in other landscape paintings, they're building fires, climbing fences, hiking, paddling, etc. 

2) How long have you been developing this body of work?

I think this body of work has been coming together for a while. I've always been interested in landscape and the history of Canadian painting. To gather my research and find inspiration, I trek into the woods during the summer on backcountry adventures, lugging canoes through swamps crawling with leeches, collecting and chopping wood for campfires and fighting off blackflies, horseflies and every other type of biting critter out there; because of this I've always felt a little at odds with the traditions of landscape painting. It's dominated by male painters and often women are still used as part of the scenery.

 

 

3) From which artistic sources do you find inspiration?

Social media platforms, especially Instagram have influenced my work through their set colour schemes and filters. I also find myself often drawing colour inspiration from current fashion trends. I think that love of colour is the biggest factor in every painting that I do. I tend to get obsessive about colour. My canoe is this really lovely shade of soft robins-egg blue and I've used that shade for the under-paintings in at least half of this body of work. Emerald green also really got under my skin over the past couple months and came out in a lot of these paintings.

I think Kim Dorland’s work has brought new life to landscape and brought it into the contemporary art realm. He's a major source of inspiration along with Peter Doig (perhaps my favourite artist of all), Wanda Koop. I find Christopher Pratt’s use of physical space as its own subject really interesting. I also think that Thrush Holmes neon lines may be subconsciously influencing elements of my work. 

4) How long does it take to complete a painting from conception to final execution?

My process tends to be a fairly long one. I work from photos most often, but what most people don't know is that I rarely use photos that aren't at least a year or two old. Any photos I take from research trips or vacations, I will put away. I will usually forget about them, and wait until those photos aren't photos to me anymore, but instead they've become reminders of specific memories. I need to have an emotional response to an image to make it interesting enough for me to paint. It normally takes a year or two for that to happen. I remember a moment or a feeling that held significance for me and then I go back through my files to try and find the photo that matches that moment. 

After I've decided on an idea, I do a couple sketches in watercolour/pastel/ink/pencil before reverse-engineering that composition with oil paint. In watercolour I work from lightest to darkest, and in oil paint I work from darkest to lightest. This process gives me enough space from the representational image to enjoy the more meditative and intuitive aspects of painting. 

5) Your paintings appear to be highly pre-planned. What kind of techniques are you experimenting with?

In terms of technique, I've been really enjoying the physicality of pushing paint around on canvas and working with oil paint in all sorts of different forms. From working with it almost like watercolour and diluting it to let it drip and mix and flow to sculpting the paint up in different areas to drawing with it on the canvas; mark-making has become a huge part of my process.  

6) Tell us something we wouldn’t guess from your work.

I often add in little objects, almost like Easter eggs. I think that people miss these, so it's always worth taking a second look just in case. There’s a little portage sign in the distance in Forest Through the Trees, and a couple of crushed empty beer cans in Rainy Daze and Delays. The cans are actually a representation of my favourite beer, Wellington SPA from my hometown of Guelph.

VIEW NEW WORK BY MEL GAUSDEN

1) The Bau-Xi Gallery feels a great sense of pride and gratitude in having the privilege of representing your work for forty years. Are there any touchstones in your practice or philosophy that have remained a constant theme or preoccupation over this period of time ?

Because the camera can reproduce almost any subject, place or incident in exquisite detail, it leaves the painter free to invent and insinuate oneself into a world of one’s own. This is both an advantage and a problem. People still insist the artist should try to become the camera. The inventor-painter can open other aspects of reality. That is challenging and one has to newly invent the world each time when starting a new work.

 

2) Double Entendres is an intriguing and heavily weighted title for your solo exhibition. Please explain the genesis behind it. 

Double Entendres have different interpretations or meanings which allow for poetics and insights, plus in this particular situation, my two exhibitions ( at Bau-Xi Vancouver and my retrospective at the Burnaby Art Gallery ) are running simultaneously but with different approaches and media and time sequences.

 

3) One immediately equates the word COLOUR in bold letters to your work in general. What role does colour play in your work ? 

 

Colour: That is hard because colour use is such a personal expression, possibly even cultural with those choices of values that become recognizable in place and context.

Emotions and deep or fragile feelings can be remembered through colour as well as the other prime senses. A coloured stroke put beside another hue or tone evokes a dialogue of its own for me.

Colour is love. 

 

4) The sense of sound is often strongly evoked in many of your titles such as Arpeggios, Diminuendo, Mumbo Jumbo, Clashes and Bangs, Sun Song with either their musical references, use of sound poetry, or references to human speech or sounds from the natural world.
How does music or sound inform or inspire your work ? Do you have any favourite composers or musicians or genres of music or a radio program or station that you often listen to while you paint or do you paint in silence ?

Music and soundscape is vital to me. In a time of great grief and trauma, I feel it was music that saved me from total despair. The abstract language of music speaks to the visual artist in the same way. The approach to the form and vitality of expression and feeling is similar. There is enormous happiness, excitement and humility in recognizing that unique understanding that is humanity at its best. 

I am from another era in today’s mass media hype. Classical music in most of its forms as well as contemporary composers and performers keep my CDs flourishing as well as the CBC ( when it behaves itself.)

Today I prefer chamber music, more intimate noting, although opera excites and thrills me with the marvellous voices that flourish today all over the world. The combination of theatre, sound and drama can’t be beat !

5) Another consistent theme in your titles seem to be about the journey or the transcending of boundaries or the reference to this particular place or geography that you call home for example: Coming from Away, Out of Bounds, Crossing-Ways, Pathways and Partings , Vancouver Sound-scape , West Coast Suite . 

Titles are a way of adding poetry, linking the message/subject and giving some insight to the art, with the necessity for naming. Often it can be more difficult than painting . 

The “Journey“ is a metaphor for a traveler in time and idea space. Every experience brings new questions and revelations not always digested at the same time , so pathways just lead the way as boundaries eventually get fragmented and blown away.

6) Please explain the difference and/or similarity between painting on paper and painting on canvas in your works as you typically include both media in your solo exhibitions.

Painting on canvas or wood or paper is quite different. Each surface has different qualities and different pigments seem to require special techniques. I love the sensuality and depth of colour of painting with oils for the canvases, but the racy fast drying acrylics work best for me on paper.

7) Congratulations on your upcoming solo retrospective at the Burnaby Art Gallery opening Nov 16th, 2017. What can we look forward to there that would be different from this upcoming exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver ?

A few years ago art critic, writer, and art historian Robin Laurence suggested a “look back” for a possible retrospective of my work. So I revisited old drawings and paintings from the very beginning. Things stored away not seen for years brought back new feelings that I could enlarge upon and add new vigour to my palette and confidence. The retrospective that the Burnaby Art Gallery has most generously offered to mount will consist of multiple paperworks done almost from the beginning of my Art Journey up to the present day.  I understand there will be a published catalogue as well.  

The upcoming Vancouver Bau-Xi exhibition consists primarily of new works on canvas as well as some new large mixed media paperworks. I am grateful for the tenderness and generosity of both galleries and curators.

8) And do you have any advice for young artists just beginning their artistic journey ?

Words for young artists …. .. keep the passion alive and trust your instincts.

VIEW MORE WORK BY SYLVIA TAIT

1) What meaning does the title of the exhibition Shift hold for you?

I think about the purpose of painting. Is it to record a place? A moment? A feeling? Or is it to communicate ideas and tell stories with marks and strokes and colour? If the painting is at all representational, there is a subject, a scene, an illusion. And there is always process. I like to disrupt the illusion with reminders of the process. And so, this exhibition focuses on the shift, as my current practice oscillates between the story and the storytelling.

2) There is a real sense of movement and an exploratory quality of mark-making in this body of work. Are there new concepts, techniques, or new sites/locations that have inspired you?

I am endlessly questing for inspiration and so many different things find their way into my work. It could be the negative space in another artist’s work, a stage set at a theatre or the medium. I am always searching new ways to mix and apply it.

3) It’s interesting to think that not so long ago, you were so strongly linked with the arbutus tree as your dominant subject matter, yet not a single one appears in this show. Is this a conscious decision?

Not really. I am a bit blown by winds of obsession! Currently, I’m captivated by the abstraction that oceanscapes offer, the graphic nature of birch trees, or light patterning afforded by forest.

4) Do you approach the oceanscapes differently from the landscapes?

Oceanscapes are so much about movement, and there is freedom found in painting a scene with no fixed element. Even the horizon becomes blurred with light and weather. The focus can be placed heavily on the language of the paint.


5) This is the first time we have seen the introduction of the smaller 10 x 10 inch oil studies. Could you tell us a little about them?

Sometimes I do sketches to plan a painting. Sometimes I feel that planning hampers the unconscious influences that I feel can be crucial. For this body of work, as I try to move toward the essential elements of a scene or time, I found it helpful to create small pieces. The studies helped me to maintain a sense of space when to a larger canvas.

6) What are your plans in the studio after this show ?

I experimented with a couple pieces in this show by shooting references at night. The references were illuminated by an artificial light source and being able to control my lighting helped to set the stage. I would like to look into this further.

 

Photography courtesy of Sarah Jane Photography

 

VIEW COLLECTION ONLINE

 

 

1) Is painting a deeply personal process for you? What does painting mean to you?

I think painting for me is a way to process things deeply. To connect to and align with the miracle.  Frederick Franck describes this best in speaking about drawing: 

"It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle”. – Frederick Franck

2) You’ve mentioned before that you often work from photographs because it helps ground and stabilize your compositions. From this place you described how you can create movement from “a more intuitive place”. Could you describe in more detail what it is that you attempt to capture?

Capture is an interesting word. At the base of all of my work, from the beginning, is wind: Ruwach - Spirit, breath, wind - which are impossible to capture. I think that's the challenge: how to really express this quality in a painting. Being impossible to capture without ending its life, the trick is to somehow become it and express what that feels like. Seemingly impossible, but fun to try. 

 

3) We’re excited to hear that Darlene Cole’s work served as an inspiration for these new paintings. What other artists have informed your recent body of work?

Honestly, Darlene is completely blowing my mind with her work. She's the only one I really follow on Instagram and she's it as far as I'm concerned. She paints with such a great mix of confident vulnerability and in such a masterful loose and free way. Her style is so foreign to me and I'm completely in awe of her skills, intuition and heart. 

4) Could you describe your own relationship to gardening, or more broadly, to nature and how it informs your art practice?

When I was a child I spent hours every day in my parents’ gardens. Especially the food garden. When I was young our garden was huge. Peach, pear, plum and cherry trees, raspberries, rhubarb, strawberries and a lot of vegetables. I haven't had my own garden for many years and am looking forward to having one again next year. As far as nature goes, I feel best when I'm outside. I always have. As a kid I slept outside as much as I possibly could. This show was all made while painting outside. I feel disconnected when I'm not outside. When I can't experience shifts in light through the day, changes in barometric pressure, birds singing ...

My work needs to stem from a place of alignment (as opposed to competing or being out of tune) with nature so it informs the work a lot. Nature is the tuning fork. It keeps everything in tune. 

 Sheri Bakes, Feeding Bees, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40 in.


5) Could you speak more about your plein air painting practice? Do you have specific rituals or routines that help ground you?

My dogs actually ground me the most. On breaks from painting we go for walks, hikes or do some training. Their non-verbal companionship grounds me.

In the studio I sometimes listen to the CBC and sometimes music but often it’s just silent. I do find silence grounding, as are the natural sounds of birds, frogs or crickets. While painting for this show, I was surrounded by mourning doves every morning. I found their sounds very soothing and sympathetic to the process of painting.

6) How important is spontaneity in your art?

I’m drawn to the freedom of spontaneity after conceptualizing an idea. It’s a process of letting go and learning as you go. In my first poetry class in university, the instructor introduced us to Theodore Roethke's poem, 'The Waking'. This poem, and his reading of it, completely transformed my mind with respect to process and taught me to "learn by going where I have to go."

7) You seem to have a great interest in the physical world’s process of transformation and renewal - how would you say you respond to the cyclical nature of seasons through your work?

I appreciate the structure that natural cycles provide, kind of like growth rings in a tree. In the larger picture, natural cycles are stabilizing and grounding.

8) How has your work developed in the past few years and how do you see it evolving in the future?

The work has become increasingly abstract and the movement is now often contained within the piece instead of veering out of the top right of the canvas. I seem to be making less small work now and using photos less and less.

I'm interested in the physicality of the paint, and also in saying more with less and moving into a painting practice that is very minimal. I'd like my paintings to become better listeners. I really need the vastness of space and silence. It seems a bit like the world could use more of that, too.

 Sheri Bakes, Rain Oil on Canvas, 52 x 52 in.

Wind Songs opens at Bau-Xi Vancouver on September 9
VIEW MORE ARTWORK FROM SHERI BAKES

1) Poetry is a major influence for you, how did it inspire the title ‘Of Tristia, Forlorn!’ and in what ways do the two mediums intersect in your practice?

One of my favourite poems, Rodney Koeneke’s “Tristia” is my inspiration for the title. When asked about its influence, I give the example of the line, “one minute you burn, the next/you’re gelatinous as cold spaghetti.” Koeneke has the ability to seamlessly flit between these two vernaculars, one of extreme intensity and passion, and one of light jovial nonsense. This contrast is the perfect precedent for how I want people to receive my work.

Poetry is something that I learned to love before I started painting, and in those regards, I will say that my love for poetry is greater. Furthermore, I believe the two forms of expression to be quite similar in that they are both obscured forms communicative mark making.

 Michelle Nguyen, Brides, Oil & Pastel on Canvas, 48 x 59 in.

2) How does your identity and personal history inform your work?

Both of my parents are Vietnamese refugees, and as a second generation Canadian, there is this unsettling feeling of inhabiting an ecotone, torn between the clashing of two sets of values and morals. There is this transgenerational transmission of trauma that I don’t quite understand, and this otherness that exists in both the cultures I occupy. I have accepted that I will never fully be able to articulate and understand the weight of these things. Sometimes, my paintings feel like strange Freudian dreams that capture those conflicts of identity.

3) The majority of your paintings are figurative, what sources are your figures drawn from and are there specific narratives, cultures or figures real or fictional, historical or contemporary that guide your work?

I have a great deal of reference photos stocked up on my phone that I am constantly referring to when I compose a painting. It’s like one big Pinterest board. I pull inspiration from a lot of different worlds of lore and theory. At this moment in time, I am really driven by spatial theory as well as Grecian mythology and the Victorian aesthetic. Honestly, it really depends on what I have been reading that week.

4) You’ve mentioned that you’re greatly influenced by artists like Cy Twombly, Cecily Brown, Egon Schiele and Andy Dixon, could you explain the specific ways in which your practice has shifted as a result of your exposure to their work? 

They have all had a hand in defining the way I paint. I can recall each painting I made after learning about their work. Cecily Brown and Egon Schiele have kept figurative painting exciting for me (a subject I previously had venomously opposed). Andy Dixon has done the same but has also introduced me to the use of oil pastel. Cy Twombly, who is ultimately my favourite painter of all time, has shaped my practice the most. There is just so much confidence and vigour present in his mark marking. You can practically feel the vitality from his brushstrokes. His dynamism is something I am constantly trying to emulate.  

Michelle Nguyen, Jelly Jamboree, Oil & Pastel on Canvas, 48.25 x 59 in.

5) Can you explain a little about your process? Do you paint with a sketch or with a composition in mind or is it more spontaneous? How do your canvases evolve into its final form?

I don’t usually do any sketches to prepare. I’ve taken this approach a few times, and it seems more limiting to me than productive. I have a handful of loose and disjointed ideas going in and I feel like I can only figure it out on the canvas itself. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle or a collage. Additionally, I try to treat my canvas as a palimpsest. If something doesn’t work out mid-way I just paint over it with an understanding that no brushstroke is squandered and that they just add to the intricacies of the painting.

6) What does the body represent in your work and in what ways does the figure or the crowd interact with the viewer?

I am largely interested in aesthetic theory and was mostly painting abstracts up until I read Ways of Seeing by John Berger. I specifically was interested in his essay on the naked versus the nude, and the distribution of power amongst the audience and the subject. I thought it would be fun to attempt to invert this dynamic, so I began to experiment with these images of overwhelming mass crowds and alien bodies.

7) Humour plays a significant role in your work, why is it important to you to inject an element of the absurd and comedic into your paintings?

The elements of play and bricolage are very important to my process, and I want that lightheartedness to come through in my paintings.

 

Michelle Nguyen, Carnivory, Oil & Pastel on Canvas, 56.25 x 41 in., 2017

8) You work primarily in oil paint and oil pastel, which qualities in these mediums draws you to them?

I consider oil to be way more forgiving than most painting mediums. I love the texture of oil paints and its ability to capture the subtle gestures of ones brush. As for oil pastels, I think they just aid in emphasizing my existing illustrative style.