Forgotten, from ANGELS WITH NO WINGS collection
artists worldwide, and keep up with their artworks and artistic processes, a fact that can accelerate the growth and advancement of art. For instance, in the past, if Impressionism was founded somewhere, it would take years for it to be recognized elsewhere, or if a renaissance occurred in someplace, it would take a long time for it to cross into some other place. Nowadays, however, both the artists and the audience are not affected by such boundaries. On the other hand, seeing artworks online can sometimes lessen the incentive to see them in person. To better understand artworks, I believe that one should face them directly and connect with them up close. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Donya. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Donya Fazelnia: I am currently working on several projects. One of them is a sculpture titled “Lack of Motivation” which is still in production stage. I am also in the process of making scale models for other versions of “Alternative Reality”, which involves the audience in new ways. Moreover, these days I am in the early stages of making a new sculpture titled “Fragile” in which I will touch upon human feelings. It is still in the prototype and design stage but hopefully will enter the production stage in the near future. Thank you very much for your precious time, and I am truly grateful that you are striving to help mankind attain a deeper understanding of nature through the creation of art. Donya Fazelnia scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Forest, from ANGELS WITH NO WINGS collection
Hello Gill and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.gillbustamante.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have been painting Whilst my paintings are mostly inspired by the Sussex landscapes I see around me, I reflect any landscape or seascape I have ever visited. My painting style fuses magical, colourful and ethereal elements along with Impressionist, semi-abstract, Art Nouveau and something I term ‘Memory Impressionism’. This is where I go walking somewhere rural, look at and absorb the things I see and experience, and then come home and try to capture an 'echo' of the place from memory, including any wildlife I may have seen. My paintings reflect, for me, the spiritual echoes of beautiful places such as those in Sussex and the English countryside generally and it always fascinates me what emerges on to a canvas from a simple memory. All of them have a story attached and are named once I have completed the painting and can see more clearly what the story is! I completed a fine art degree in Brighton in 1983 and I have painted since I was three. I love what I do and consider myself very fortunate to have found a way to ‘work’ for a living that is actually really playing. Painting always makes me happy along with cake, bunnies, driving erratically, BBC 6 music and totally irreverent comedy. See me in Episode 12, Season 2 of Home Is Where The Art Is on BBC iPlayer: HERE - (Or HERE if not currently showing on BBC iPlayer) Follow me on Instagram to see regular posts and updates and work in progress: gill.bustamante.artist. See my YouTube Channel for demos and insights into some of these paintings. The first gallery above shows original paintings currently for sale, the second shows landscape, seascape and fish prints for sale and the third shows nature and animals landscape prints for sale. Click on the picture or title to see the range. You are very welcome to visit me and view some of my current paintings, please contact me to make an appointment. (Forest Row, East Sussex).Although I sell my artwork on a few selected online galleries I offer a 20% discount on all original art purchased from me directly. Contact [email protected]. You can also see my large original oil paintings shop and a smaller selection of prints for sale on my ETSY store SussexPaintings. And finally you can see a large selection of my affordable watercolour paintings for sale in my ETSY shop WatercoloursForSale . The proceeds from sales of my watercolours go to support causes such as Drug Free World and other humanitarian causes (see My Causes page) An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Gill Bustamante @gill.bustamante.artist
since you were three and you later have had the chance to nurture your education with a Fine Art degree, that you received from the University of Brighton: how do these formative experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum address the direction of your current artistic research? I was influenced very early on by the fact that I lived in a London suburb which I hated. I just wanted to be in the countryside. I wanted animals but was allergic to them. I wanted fields and trees and flowers (and was allergic to those too!) and did not have access to them so I learnt to paint those things instead as I could at least have paintings of them as a substitute (you should see the massive horse painting I still have in my living room which does not make me sneeze like real horses do!). Meanwhile at art college, I enjoyed the freedom of trying new skills and mediums. However, I disliked that, in the early 80’s when I was there, conceptual art was the thing being encouraged which did suit me at all. In the end though, that helped me too as it made independent of thought as I learnt that artists should develop, as much as they can, by themselves as that is truly what will make them original as opposed to trying fit in with another’s idea of what art should be. I like to work alone and I like to make all my own decisions whether right or wrong. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape — and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article — has at once captured our attention for the way it unveils mystical qualities from real places: when walking our readers through the genesis of your works, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Gill Bustamante: I am someone who loves landscapes and nature and animals and find these things make me very happy. Whenever I start a walk in the countryside, which I do a lot, I feel as though I was holding my breath since the last time I was walking and I let it go and drift off into the sensations that nature performs for me. The sights, sounds, touch and scents all add to the experience but I especially I love seeing animals and birds and the views into other universes through trees and into hedgerows and rivers and the nooks and crannies of English country lanes. In ancient landscapes such as in the UK and Europe I often get glimpses of past cultures and things left behind by earlier peoples and this does have an influence on what I later paint. There is magic in the world and I try to tune into it. This is a reason I often paint from memory as this way my mind distils the things I experienced into a form that often surprises me. I find it very exciting to see what emerges onto a canvas as I remember a place when painting. I do often sketch as I walk and take photos but Gill Bustamante scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
the capturing of the essence of a place is best done by memory. The tones of your works — be they intense and bright as in the works from your Wild Souls, be they marked out with such thoughtful, almost meditative ambience, as in A Kind of Magic and in Flexing Universe — create delicate tension and dynamics: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in your works? Gill Bustamante: I am an optimist by nature and this, of course, influences my love of colour. I find mucky colours boring to use and never use browns or blacks. I may like artworks by others that use duller tones but just don’t like to use them myself. I think the main reason I use the high colours though is that my purpose as an artist is to help people to dream and be curious and to aspire to looking at new things. I want people to wonder about other universes and about other possibilities and nurture the same love of nature that I have. I want them go and walk and look at the things around them so that they will get the same thrill from simply walking that I do. This is especially important as a purpose to me at the moment as life has become a harder for many in the last few years and I feel people need to be uplifted rather than depressed. We highly appreciate the way The Jewel of the River addresses your audience to dive into the dreamlike dimension, helping them to question the nature of human perception. Scottish painter Peter scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Doig once remarked that even the most realistic paintings are derived more from within the head than from what's out there in front of us, how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination, playing within your artistic production? Gill Bustamante: Good question. I love Gill Bustamante scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Peter Doig’s mysterious landscapes. I think when you paint a landscape you can either go traditional and paint it as accurately as you can observe it or you can add something else to it and make something new. I long ago decided that I could not complete with nature. I could spend three days painting a leaf and it still would not be as stunning and intricate as an actual leaf. I therefore try to create a
new universe that is not in competition with nature but that hints at other times and places. I find nature magical. I have only ever seen two kingfishers in my whole life and they were magical. The Jewel of the River is a tribute to how I feel about the glimpse I got of one them and reflects the actual place I saw her (by the river Medway, Tunbridge Wells area). Gill Bustamante scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
With their unique aesthetic quality on the visual aspect, your works seem to be laboriously structured to capture the spiritual echoes of English countryside, pursuing such effective and at the same time thoughtful visual impact: how important is direct experience for you? In particular, how do you consider the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
role of memory playing within your artistic process? Gill Bustamante: As anyone who has ever tried to paint or draw knows, there is an awful lot of detail even in a simple tiny object. Painting a landscape can be totally overwhelming when you contemplate the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Gill Bustamante Land
sheer amount of information in a landscape. You could not, for instance, paint every single leaf on a tree so you have to find ways to show what you want to say or else spend the rest of your life trying to paint that tree. By painting from memory, I paint what was most impressed on my mind when I went scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
somewhere. I rarely know what that was until I start to paint. I also find that by focusing less on the material world details I capture more of the actual energies and the spiritual and magical nature of what is around me. I have always known I am a spirit in a body and that the body lives in a material world but that it is not my scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Gill Bustamante Land
essence. I therefore try to paint the spiritual as well as the material worlds. You are a versatile artist and your artworks — as Nature Unleashed and The Thin Place — encompasses both abstract and figurative feelings. Still, each of them conveys such stimulating visual ambivalence, able to walk the viewers to develop personal visual grammars. In this sense, we daresay that your artistic production aims to urge the spectatorship to a participative effort, to realize their own interpretation. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Gill Bustamante: I feel that the best art forms, including music, books, paintings etc should allow the viewer to contribute something to the life that emanates from that item. The author L.Ron Hubbard once said “The division between fine arts and illustrations is that fine arts permit the viewer to contribute his own interpretations or originations to the scene, whereas illustrations are ‘too literal’ and give him the whole works. To evoke an emotion in fine arts, the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Gill Bustamante scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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spectator must be invited to contribute to the meaning.” I agree with this observation and it is another reason I tend to balance semi-abstract with traditional. I avoid pure abstract because it will often lose the viewer totally. Art is what elevates us as a species and makes us aspire to bigger and better things and so the more you can encourage people to look and to dream the better you can help them. I sometimes have people write to me and tell me what they see in one of my paintings and though they usually see what I was trying to put into the painting, they often see something I had no clue about myself. This makes me happy. As you have remarked once, your works have a story attached and are named once you have completed the painting and can see more clearly what the story is: how do you go about naming your work? In particular, is it important for you to tell something that might walk the viewers through their visual experience? Gill Bustamante: Yes, it is a funny thing but once I have finished a painting I run through names and words in my head and then the right name just fits almost as if the painting itself is telling me what it wants me to call it. It is sometimes what I was thinking about when I was in that place, sometimes an emotion, sometimes a state but I know when it is correct. I do believe that the act of making something scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Gill Bustamante Land
involves the person creating it putting ‘life’ into the thing. That is why the title can be important as it gives people an opening stance when looking at the painting. However, a painting can mean whatever they want it to but it is sometimes easier to have this viewpoint initially. You are also a trained adult education art scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
teacher: how important is teaching for you, in order to develop your artistic ideas? Gill Bustamante: Teaching is really important to me as it gives me the necessity to learn things beyond the skills I normally use and that makes me a better artist generally. One example was when I first gave a drawing course. I have Gill Bustamante scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
been drawing since I was born but had never analysed how exactly I was doing it. Needing to teach it made me realise how I looked at things and made me figure out my methods for measuring proportions. Making sense of perspective was quite a revelation too. Another thing I like about teaching is that you learn from others. People are amazing. They all have totally different viewpoints and considerations about what their art should be like and it fascinates me. The best thing though, is that helping someone become more confident in their ability to create things is one of the best things you can do for them. Life itself is forever dictating to us where we should be, what we should be doing, how we should look and behave etc. It is therefore a great relief to people doing something creative to set their own rules and do things to their own times and standards. It is priceless. You are an awarded and established artist, and over the years your artworks have been used in TV ads and you also were in a BBC episode of ‘Home is where the art is’: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? As the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Instagram — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Gill Bustamante: The promotion of art has changed completely since I left art college in 1983. The only real chance you had as an artist then, was to find a gallery to sell for you. Nowadays there is opportunity everywhere for artists. I love the fact that scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
a person living in a shanty town in India can potentially sell their art online from a mobile and have as much chance of selling as an artist in a more privileged part of the world. We are not held back by the opinions of gallery owners or needing to be endorsed by ‘experts’ before we can sell or art anymore. On the downside the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Gill Bustamante Land
competition online and on social media is fierce and a lot of the art found online is not very good. It makes it harder for more competent artists to be seen. I think the answer to the original question therefore is that any form of communication that gets people to look at your art is a good thing but you have to find what suits you. There is definitely a leaning currently for artists to also be entertainers as you see on Instagram and TikTok but that is not the only way to become known. The best way for an artist to become known is to learn some technical skills and keep producing hight quality art. An artist has to BE an artist and then do what is needed to scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
produce some art, find some channels on which to promote, and only then will they have sales or recognition. I am fortunate in that I am not shy, as I was as a child, so I am happy to interact with people and do demos etc. and, in fact, really enjoy it when it is on my own terms. It is not however, the only way to promote art. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Gill. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Gill Bustamante: Thank you for giving me the opportunity! I do appreciate it. At the moment I am still happily trying to capture the essences of the landscapes around where I live, but in the future, I am planning to spend more time in other areas doing the same thing. France, Spain, Italy and even New Zealand have landscapes that fascinate me and also have history which is part of their allure for me. I will be exploring more of those in the future and am also looking at starting an artist collective/teaching practice at some point as I do like to meet other artists and I do think art is the best therapy there is and the Earth needs some of that right now! Thank you, Gill Gill Bustamante scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Hello Gongsan and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.gongsankim.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a B.F.A. Corcoran School of Art & Design, that you received from the George Washington University: how do these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? For a long time I sought for some means to respond to the turmoil and tragedies of my nation, a way for me to ease the grief in my heart. And my art has allowed me to channel my anger and sorrow into the arduous yet cathartic process of healing. My art is done in a ritualistic manner meant to speak healing to the wounded spirits, praying for eradication of the roots of their sorrow. I know there is no way I could possibly understand their hardship. But even so, with their cries of anguish ringing in my heart, I just burn and burn, because I can imagine no other method that could do justice to the depth of their suffering. And through my arrangements of scorched burlaps I express my sympathy, especially for those who either died during attempted escapes across the border or were captured and met their unjust end in the concentration camps. I roll up the fabric and gather them up to burn as if I have collected the tragic tales of the victims, the coarse material symbolizing their tumultuous life and death. I quietly offer to the people of North Korea these half-burnt ashes, knowing that one day the blood they’ve shed will become sparks that will make bloom the flowers of freedom. My art deals with political issues, but I have simplified my forms and colors as much as possible in an effort to show my emotions in both immense and minimal manner. Of course, there is also the strong desire to inform North Korea of the repression of human rights through my works. It is my hope that the history of past 70 years is known, remembered, and declared. Through this process, I hope to demarcate each loss, woven together by the collective experiences of the people of North Korea. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Gongsan Kim
Gongsan Kim: Thank you for taking interest in my artworks and giving me this opportunity to share about my artworks. It is an honor. I've loved to draw ever since I was a child, and even after immigrating to United States at age 40 I could not forget my passion. That's why after sending my two children off to college I worked up my courage and went to college at age 50. At the art school I was trained in the ways of expressing my concept through various medium instead of traditional canvas and brush. And in order to produce artworks that are relevant to the times, we were taught how to approach and convey it conceptually with critical mindset. It was a beneficial education. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape —and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article — has at once captured our attention for the way you draw inspiration from the history of North Korea to create works of art able to connect the spiritual and the political sphere. When walking our readers through the genesis of your works, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Gongsan Kim: Though the subject is political in nature, I found that there was a limit to how much I could depict tragic deaths so I decided to take a more spiritual approach. How would I display tragic death on a canvas? How would I interpret suffering? Even if I could capture a portion of the stories of concentration camps scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Gongsan Kim scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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that I've heard, I would've eventually given up. I certainly would've reached the limit in my capacity to illustrate them. That's why I needed to choose minimalistic and symbolic approaches. And I believe I was actually able to utilize them more powerfully through burning and scorching techniques. Usually when I begin my process of envisioning and creating my piece, my heart becomes as serious and solemn as a person making an offering before an altar. Rolling up the burlaps and scorching them, cutting canvas into shapes in order to alight and place them over raw linen or burlap so as to create burnt shapes, enduring the smoke and dust for hours, these things make for a difficult labor for me. But I do not complain because in my mind the entire process is a meaningful ritual. Not only that, but because of the physically demanding nature of the work and the focus needed to control the flames lest they ruin the piece, I cannot afford to relax until the work is complete. But once the ritual is complete I feel satisfied that the spirits of the dead may have been comforted. Rather, I feel that the spirits within the piece are comforting me instead. Through the artwork my heart becomes purified and old knotted emotions are loosened. That is because the ritual of creating the piece demands that I and the artwork become one. We definitely love the way your works draw inspiration from the tragic tales of the victim that you collected over the years, to develop such unique combination between Gongsan Kim scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
minimalistic aesthetics and universal language; how does your cultural substratum and your memories fuel your creative process? Gongsan Kim: Thank you for understanding my pieces so well. Our country has been through much in our five thousand years long history. Among them was the Japanese Occupation of scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Gongsan Kim scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land 1910-1945 which was the darkest period in our history. It was then followed by the Korea War which split our nation in half under the influence of more powerful nations. I myself grew up in the ruins of that war, going to school and working and getting married until I later immigrated to America. And growing up hearing my father's sighs and seeing the
sorrows of those who have lost their homes and families to the war, these experiences form the basis of my works. And after hearing about the countless tragedy that North Koreans experienced, from deaths of hunger of 3 million lives to the ongoing present day atrocities, I knew what I had to do through my art. The countless testimonies told by over 30,000 North Korean defectors, stories of concentration camps and public executions scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
and lives lost or stolen and trafficked in their attempts to escape to China, inspired me to create my artworks as a mission. My deep affection and sorrow towards my countrymen continue to fuel my drive as an artist. Reflecting your strong desire to inform North Korea of the repression of human rights, your works gently drive the viewers to such immersive emotional experience. Artists from different art movement and eras — Gongsan Kim scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
from pioneer Richard Morris, passing through Thomas Light and Andy Goldsworthy, to more recently Kelly Richardson— use to communicate more or less explicit messages in their artworks: do you think that artists can raise awareness to an evergrowing audience on topical issues that affect our everchanging society? In particular, as an how do you consider the role of artists in our globalized and unstable society? Gongsan Kim: I believe that artists should not scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
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ignore the numerous social issues present in our world today. Do we not live in midst of so much corruption, hypocrisy, injustice and vanity? If artists put their resistant and critical spirit into their works they will have a positive impact on society. Nowadays, never has it been easier for artists to communicate with their audience. It would be good for us to employ many methods to reach out to and inspire our viewers. Some artists already participate in social and political discourse and some even risk their safety in creating their works. I truly respect them. The way you create your works is particularly interesting: you roll up the fabric and gather them up to burn and , the coarse material symbolizing their tumultuous life and death. How would you consider the role of symbols playing within your artistic process, in order to create such powerful allegories? Gongsan Kim: I believe that finding the material that best reflects the subject is the most basic step. I had to find something that represents corpses and sorrow, and it was not difficult to find. I've always liked natural materials. And burlap was, by the virtue of its texture and characteristics, perfect for representing dead bodies when used in conjunction with fire. And its easily decomposing nature also served to represent the dead who are quickly returned to the soil. Sometimes I employ manila rope or cotton twines to represent certain stories. The burning itself also embodies numerous symbolisms. We definitely love the unique materic, almost tactile feeling of your artworks. We sometimes tend to forget that a work of art is a physical artefact with tactile qualities, and we really appreciate the way your artistic production reflects this aspect: how important is for you to highlight the physical aspect of your artworks? And why did you choose such unconventional mediums and techniques? Gongsan Kim: Thank you for appreciating my work. I did not operate with a specific physical aspect in mind. I simply used the materials that I liked, and I've always appreciated the tactile qualities of burlap and linen. In order to represent the tragic stories each corpse would possess I shaped the fabrics into rolls. Big rolls, small rolls, I wanted to instill in each one the value of life. And I burned them wishing that I could comfort the souls of the departed in a ritualistic manner. The artwork may not last but preservation is not my aim. The process is what's important in the burning and what the audience sees are its result. I began employing my burning method as something of a declaration as I entered the art scene. I drew a self-portrait on a raw canvas and then burned it onto a wooden panel. The resulting piece was “Cremation Myself”, expressing my wish to leave my past behind and start over. That ritual gave me a great sense of rebirth and of a new beginning. That's how I began my burning work, and Gongsan Kim scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
gradually came to employ it in historical pieces such as “1910-1945” which depicted the Japanese occupation, the darkest moment in Korean history. Then there was the piece which commemorated my mother in-law who became a war widow during the Korea scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
War. And finally the burning method came to become a part of my works on North Korea as well. We have particularly appreciated the way your works achieve to connect intellectual aspects related to North Korean history with such unique scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Gongsan Kim Land
materic, tactile dimension, developing such universal language: how important is for you to create work of art able to convey unambiguous messages and sensations? Do you prefer that the viewers could be free to elaborate personal interpretations? scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition