LandEscape Anniversary Edition C o n t e m p o r a r y ART A r t R e v i e w Barbara Krupp ADRIENNE LA FAYE JELENA MINIC MRDJEN GHAKU OKAZAKI JOSH ALVIES CAPRI LANDI ALICE GRENDON NEWSHA EMAMISHAHRI BARBARA KRUPP CHRIS HOLLEY
SUMMARY Josh Alvies USA C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t R e v i e w USA Barbara Krupp From that time on, as T.S. Eliot wrote in his “Whispers of Immortality,” I have seen “the skull beneath the skin.”The structure of the painting is very important to her, and in her most recent series she has, in a manner of speaking, allowed the bones of the painting—both compositionally and metaphorically, become the painting’s’ subject matter. Georgia O’Keeffe, whose early 1940s series of pelvic bones enclosed spaces that later in the decade became forms themselves, she found the areas of interest in her own landscape and floral abstractions to be the atmospheric spaces between forms. She came to realize that the significance in her paintings was not in the forms, but in the spaces in between them.In her “Abstract Stories” series, those atmospheric spaces became increasing bounded by spontaneously drawn shapes. Special Issue Chris Holley United Kingdom USA Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Adrienne La Faye USA Born and raised in Seattle, WA., Adrienne La Faye is a Painter, an Author, and filmmaker, a Community Social Justice Art Educator focused on chronicling the African American diaspora. Adrienne La Faye is a painter, author, filmmaker, and a community social justice art educator focused on chronicling the African American diaspora. A narrator compelled artistichistorian, an African American woman, an activist, same-gender married, and. She's a defender of the disenfranchised, the marginalized from systemic racist judicial systems. "All People are born into the world with a purpose. However, family, society, gender bias, socioeconomics, etc., have dissuaded us from utilizing and following our passions. Daily we must persevere to reclaim our True-Selves."~Adrienne La Faye~ Growing up in Chicago, winters last for what seems like an eternity, and it’s gray for months. After years of constant gloomy weather, including the Blizzard of 1999, I was drawn to the warmth of the desert southwest. The organic shapes and subtle colors of the Sonoran Desert backdrop continue to inspire me. The open skies, astronomy, and cycles of the moon are elements I work with in my compositions. One of my favorite places to visit is Papago Park in Phoenix, a popular hiking spot. The curved lines, earth tones, and unique rock formations inform the visual components of the work. Painting is a meditative practice where I’m able to process emotions and quiet my mind. Through color, form, and texture my paintings represent interior states of consciousness and being. My aim is to create a sense a calm and serenity for the viewer. Acrylic and watercolor paints are my medium of choice, and I enjoy working large scale to experiment with different color and shape combinations. Capri Landi Serbia I create a foundation on which she applies new layers of pictorial materials occasionally resembling the experiences of informel, yet complex, dynamic and frequently tumultuous processes, inspired by some inner reasons of my nature, a feeling of absolute domination of visual is born. At first sight it might seem that I give priority to a typically modernistic presentation based on the collage technique. However, if that process is present here it is understood in quite a different sense. My college is a different visual game: it is a combination (synthesis?) of practically all known disciplines of visual art. My paintings are some kind of art labyrinths, which we are conquering with the sense of great concern for our own future, for what is waiting for us in the next century – but through those same labyrinths we’re going with the sense of joy, for living in age so rich with different events and experiences that there was something for us to leave in the mud behind us! Jorge Rojas Naima Karim Cécile Filipe Due to DNA and choreographic background, my visual art practice is always trying to squeeze into the space between dance and music, many of my paintings comprising both abstract and figurative elements and packing an emotional or expressive punch. This characterises my constant mental and emotional landscape and also explains the key role i now play in ongoing project Feeling the Beat at a major UK arts centre plus other offshoot arts fusion events. These exciting, all embracing events bring all the arts – too long separated - together to explore the similarities and synergies between them. Unsurprisingly, my specialist subject is the interdisciplinary impact of Ballets Russes on the direction of the visual arts, my writings on the subject now held in the National Library of Art at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and in archives of major arts bodies in the UK as well as overseas. Jelena Minic Mrdjen While I’ve spent years with a camera in hand, it’s only recently that I have begun to publish my art for a wide audience. As part of that, I have focused on the art of the world around us that we can't quite see. In the past, this has taken the forms of long exposure, wide angle, time-lapse and high-key photography in various combinations and with various subjects. More recently, I have combined these features with faux-color photography in the infrared spectrum. My desire is to use filtered near-infrared light in my photography in an effort to show others that what we are able to see as humans is not the limit of what exists in the world around us. There are many different ways to perceive everything we see, but our brains are mostly set in their ways and primarily see what they have been trained to see through our experience as people. Recognizing the differences in what is real to us and what is just outside the real can transform the mundane into something a little more special and I'm excited to share these subtle differences with a wider audience so that they might see things a little differently as well.
Special Issue Special thanks to Miya Ando, Juerg Luedi, Urte Beyer, Beth Krensky, Rudiger Fischer, Lisa Birke, Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman, Ariane Littman, Max Epstein, Nicolas Vionnet, Sapir Kesem Leary, Greg Condon, Jasper Van Loon, Alexandre Dang, Christian Gastaldi, Larry Cwik, Michael Nelson, Dana Taylor, Michael Sweeney, Colette Hosmer, Melissa Moffat, Marinda Scaramanga and Artemis Herber. SUMMARY Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Alice Grendon USA Day Dreamin’, is a screendance created by movement and performance artist Alice Grendon of Growing Wildhearted. The film is a product of the time in which it was created, during the heart of the corona virus pandemic lockdown. Day Dreamin', explores the Ground Hog Day nature of containment and isolation, contrasted with the escape offered through dream space. The film tells the story of a person struggling to get out of bed, preferring the excitement of the semi-lucid morning dreamscape to the presumed monotony awaiting in the day ahead. Filmed along the shorelines and forests of the Salish Sea the film invites the viewer to connect with the landscape and the more-thanhuman world as place of wonder and imagination. In their body of work with Growing Wildhearted, Grendon consistently works with the natural world as collaborator(s) in the process of making. 4 28 Chris Holley lives and works in the United Kingdom Barbara Krupp lives and works in Florida, United States Josh Alvies lives and works in Louisiana, United States Alice Grendon lives and works in Olympia, WA, United States Capri Landi lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona, USA Newsha Emamishahri lives and works in Iran Adrienne La Faye lives and works in Seattle, WA, USA Jelena Minic Mrdjen lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia Ghaku Okazaki lives and works in Germany 58 80 104 126 142 168 200 I try to look for new phenomena, buildings that I have not seen before, phenomena that I am observing for the first time. The truth is that the phenomena that I have seen many times lose their initial shocking effect and no longer inspire that pure feeling that I'd had when I first encountered them.The only way I have found to separate the phenomena from everyday life is to look at their pictures. The photo revives that hidden power in the phenomena. Even when my studio seems boring to me, I turn on my mobile camera and without taking pictures, I just look at the mobile screen and let the camera lens look at the environment instead of my eyes. Immediately, I realize the great blessing I have. I have to establish a warm and sincere relationship with the audience and give them the right not to understand everything that I decided to share with them at the first glance. I have to answer all the questions that arise in their mind. I am sure that after viewing a few works and talking about them, they will establish a good connection with other works and we can fly together in the world of the mind and talk for hours without even saying a word and enjoy this conversation to the fullest. Newsha Emamishahri Iran Joe O’Brien Japan / Germany Ghaku Okazaki I create artworks that embody hybrid forms of humans, animals, plants and mythological fantasy beings with vivid colours and organic forms. Through creating them, I visualise and affirm the diversity in which the different living beings, the diverse cultures, genders and sexuality, humans and nature live connected to one another.When we explore the society in which we currently live, we recognise that being different is unfortunately not always positively perceived. In Western Countries today, division and confrontation between people with different identities are a constant conflict. Especially in North America, we can find the great diversity through immigration and transmigration. But nevertheless, the whole liberality of the society is yet to be realised.If we could simply affirm and appreciate the differences between us and create the amicable connection to each other, the society would become more harmonious, in my opinion. Art is for me the magical technique that enables the visualisation / materialisation of this futuristic visions of the connection between us in which the diversity is not denied or oppressed, but affirmed and celebrated.
Hello Chris and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.chrisholleyart.com 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 BA of Fine Art (Hons) that you received from Farnham UCA: how do these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Chris Holley: I did a 5-year Fine Art degree course as a mature student, coming to it fully formed with existing passions and the thing I lapped up at art college was the rigour of it – the need to look outside one’s own areas of interest at art one would otherwise never glance sideways at. This Due to DNA and choreographic background, my visual art practice is always trying to squeeze into the space between dance and music, many of my paintings comprising both abstract and figurative elements and packing an emotional or expressive punch. This characterises my constant mental and emotional landscape and also explains the key role i now play in ongoing project Feeling the Beat at a major UK arts centre plus other offshoot arts fusion events. These exciting, all embracing events bring all the arts – too long separated - together to explore the similarities and synergies between them. Unsurprisingly, my specialist subject is the interdisciplinary impact of Ballets Russes on the direction of the visual arts, my writings on the subject now held in the National Library of Art at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and in archives of major arts bodies in the UK as well as overseas. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Chris Holley @chrisholleyart chris.holley940 chrisholley15
Feeling the Beat exhibition May 2022 South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell, Berkshire artists Chris Holley foreground and Aurelie Freoua to left Photo: Chris Freeman
Scherzo I 167x 121cm acrylic on canvas
mind-broadening process certainly equipped me with a wider and better informed perspective of the art world. Another lasting influence on me is the totally absorbing subject of research I discovered for my dissertation which earned me a 1��and is now held in the archives of the National Library of Art at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. I wrote about the huge impact of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on visual arts in the western world of the 20�� century, which still impacts even now. Check them out and you’ll see what major players they were across all the arts – an ethos that of course totally chimes with and feeds into my own outlook and working method to this day. 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 invites viewers to explore the relationship between music and visual arts, and we truly appreciate the way your works blends the real with the imagined. When walking our readers through the genesis of your works, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Chris Holley: I work mainly from memory and imagination and, as probably true of most visual Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Scherzo II 67x121cm acrylic on canvas Scherzo III 67x121cm acrylic on canvas
artists, it’s that emotional connection with a subject that inspires new work. If it’s music I’m expressing in an abstract painting I listen time and time again to it, internalising it, deciding over a period of time, its colours, textures, structure, composition and ‘feel’ of it before I ever start to paint. You can well imagine for instance the stark contrast between a piece by Ravel and one by Beethoven: typically, the one seamless and scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Beethoven Miniatures I, 30x30 oil and pigment on canvas
gentle, flowing like water, the other strongly driven, deliberate, insistent. Well, these are the elements I work with. There is much synergy between music and painting. Legendary trumpeter Miles Davis said: “Music is painting you can hear and painting is music you can see.” That to me says it all. If it’s a figurative/dance subject I’m expressing, again I work - with the exception of the painting Katie and James Dance Faun - on memory and Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Beethoven Miniatures II 30x30 oil and pigment on canvas
imagination rather than on what’s in front of me. It’s been said, and is probably true, that I capture how it feels for the dancer to execute that move. Again, there’s that strong emotional input. Working from my home studio in good light and total control of temperature and music/silence, I have canvas on the roll, tearing off and priming it to approximate size to paint on. This allows me to create the image on loose canvas, only on scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Beethoven Miniatures III 30x30 oil and pigment on canvas
Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land completion of the painting finally deciding the exact size and area of the finished painting – and only then cutting it to its actual size before eventually committing it to stretcher bar. I like the freedom of this approach. To my surprise I recently learned that this is how abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock worked. Technique-wise, I’m continually moving the canvas from a board on my easel, to the floor and then back again because painting in both Crazy Dance Fauve, after André Derain 76 x76 oil on torn and stitched canvas
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition the vertical and horizontal makes for a wide variety of differing marks. If I want texture, I use acrylic household emulsion, scratching into it. I also use acrylic paint, oil paint and increasingly oil sticks and pastels, there are times when I abandon paintbrushes for cloths, other tools I find around me and of course my hands and fingers. This is my usual painting practice but of course, now cutting across that in a very radical way is the very different approach associated with Feeling the Beat project and the offshoot events and collaborations to which it’s leading me. Yes we highly appreciate your multi-disciplinary approach as illustrated in your project Feeling the Beat which encourages artists from different backgrounds to converge in their creative expression. There’s no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields meet and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about the collaborative nature of your work? Chris Holley: Indeed. And I agree - it’s really exciting to see the many and varied interdisciplinary collaborations that abound since Covid – and it was Covid that started me off! After the imposed silencing of artists of all disciplines I sensed a reflowering and coalescing of the arts and wanted to help make that happen – and that’s how Feeling the Beat, with its arts fusion seminars, workshops and performances, was born at major arts centre South Hill Park, Bracknell aided by curator Loucia Manopoulou. We started by bringing visual artists and musicians together (later incorporating poetry and potentially dance) in ‘performance painting’; live-painting live music which involves visual artists painting in-the-moment the improvised musical sounds made by the musicians – as the notes hit the air and the painter’s ear. Working this way means I don’t have the luxury of slow decision making on loose, hand primed canvas. Forget that! It’s ready-made canvases and the painting happens with immediacy! No time to ponder, paint - NOW! This method captures the spontaneity, immediacy and randomness that can so easily be lost in the more ‘measured’ studio approach. And hey - it’s only what Renoir and Monet did, painting plein aire to capture the energy of ocean waves c. 100 years ago. Katie and James dance Faun oil on canvas, 91x50cm (36x20")
Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Feeling the Beat students' workshop South Hill Park Arts Centre Bracknell, Berkshire, Oct 2021 photo: Chris Freeman
Music the Muse exhibition at Menuhin Concert Hall, Cobham, Surrey until 26 August with Chris Holley, fellow artists Aurelie Freoua and Gwendolyn Kassenaar
The experience becomes mesmeric when the musicians start responding to what they see and hear the artists painting, creating a circular response in the multi-arts space. At these times I seem to be in a different part of my brain and in an almost trance-like state, improvising with paint the way the players are doinf on their instruments. Now I’m starting to meld the thought and diligence of the studio approach with the seat-ofthe-pants random spontaneity and immediacy of live painting. I believe there are many benefits in bringing the arts together involving artists of differing Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Exit Stage Left With Manton oil on canvas,100x50cm (39x20 inches) Shawl oil on canvas 127x76cm (50x30 inches)
disciplines. The experience is very stimulating and rewarding to artists of all disciplines. The tones of your works — be they intense and bright, be they marked out with such thoughtful, almost meditative ambiance — 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? In particular, what role does play intuition in the composition of your pallette? Chris Holley: Obviously colour tones and palette choice are a mix of intuition, what seems right for the subject matter and what you’re trying to express and it’s subjective based on one’s own individual inner eye. I would say I am quite thoughtful and meditative – which sometimes shines through on the canvas. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your painting practice is always trying to squeeze into the space between dance and music. Would you tell us how does your artistic journey in the field of visual arts is fuelled by music and dance? Chris Holley: My visual art is fuelled by music due to early life in a very musical household where I now realise I was getting a musical education before I was old enough to know the meaning of the term - and across widely divergent genres of music too. The dance seems to be instinctive in me – from a very early age drawing dancers when I hadn’t even attended dance classes - and all to a family backdrop of music. So later I became heavily involved in choreography and dance of varying genres – and still am. Music, dance and visual art are different sides of the same coin for me. We highly appreciate the way your works — as the stimulating Katie and James dance Faun and Crazy Dance Fauve — address your audience to explore the point of convergence between scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Chris Holley Land She Moved Through the Fair (after trad. Irish ballad) 63x71cm oil on canvas
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Swingin' Not Prayin' (after Blues song) 63x71 oil on canvas
reality and the dreamlike dimension, helping them to discover its connections with ordinary life. Scottish painter Peter 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? Chris Holley: It’s all about the human element isn’t it - emotion and expressiveness. I also go along with Henry Moore who said: “art is the expression of imagination, not the duplication of reality.” It’s that quintessential way we as humans derive or invest meaning from and in what we see and feel to help us make sense of our world. You are a versatile artist and your works features both figurative elements and abstract sensitiveness. 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? Chris Holley: It’s a fact that no one’s art resonates with everyone and of course it’s the job of art to illicit a response in people – be it positive or negative. People don’t necessarily see a work of art in the context the artist intended but put their own very individual interpretation on it, which is just as valid. All an artist can do is to put that bit of Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
In the Light of Ravel III 50x60cm oil and gold and silver leaf on canvas
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Music the Muse exhibition at Menuhin Concert Hall, Cobham, Surrey, with Chris Holley, fellow artists Aurelie
themself out there and know it will connect with some and not others. Rather like with music, the audience is the ‘fourth wall’, while in visual art, the painting is completed by the viewer. And remember, each individual has a unique ‘take’ on experiencing art of any kind and we can’t second guess it. I like to think my art is a thing of beauty, uplifting and reaching out to the human spirit, which I know is what many people recognise in it. But, as I say, you can’t legislate for individual interpretation. Meticulously refinished in their details, your artworks — more specifically Shawl and She Moved Through The Fair — have struck us for the way you sapiently conveyed rigorous sense of geometry with such unique refined aesthetics: how do you consider the role of details within your artistic practice? Chris Holley: Thank you. A great compliment! I had to look up sapiently! I don’t see myself as a detail person and don’t identify with geometry but count dynamic line as very central to my art. I have a love affair with the Flamenco shawl as it’s so visual and expressive to dance with. So if Shawl looks detailed it’s because I’m getting lost expressing in paint the long fringing that has a life and energy all its own - one that moves with you when you dance with the shawl. She Moved Through the Fair is based on a mysterious and haunting Irish ballad about lost love. The isolation of the white figure is juxtaposed with the brash colour and cacophony of ‘all the fun of the fair.’ At a less dramatic level I think we can all identify too with being at a raucous event and feeling divorced and aloof from it; almost absently floating past the action. You are an established artist: your artworks are in many private collections in Spain and in the USA, as well as in the United Kingdom: how do Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Freoua and Gwendolyn Kassenaar from left
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 https://www.instagram.com/chrisholleyart — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Chris Holley: Wow – a loaded question! The changing scene of online platforms and performance art - which opens so many opportunities for artists - grows a different and widened audience who exist in tandem with that of the ‘white cube’ gallery space. To me, audiences for my art street art to date - the dancing mural I created for Graniti Murales Artist Residency in Sicily - are as valid as those audiences gazing at my wall art in a gallery. Also, fingers crossed people will still want to look up and see the art of their choice in their very own surroundings. Surely a human desire dating back to cave walls at the dawn of time – and as strong as the human compulsion to scratch out and paint those early primitive images. 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, Chris. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Chris Holley: Thank you. It’s been great! Rather recklessly I now aim to move forward on all elements of my practice. In the studio I want to progress in development of my abstract visual language and also feel the need to create figurative art too. All this sees me taking stock of my creative output so far, looking back anew at great art, researching new concepts and visiting the many wonderful London galleries and exhibitions just a train journey away from me. I also aim to find new avenues for my inspirational, illustrated art talks both for adults and children. These are very well received by audiences and – so far online due to Covid – I hope to be able to deliver them in person in the coming months. I always make the sessions fun, topical and informative and, in the process, get totally absorbed and learn a lot myself. Exhibition-wise, art and music lovers can view my art, together with that of artists Aurelie Freoua scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Cantus in Memoriam II 91x61, oil and silvery bits on canvas
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Chris Holley Land Cantus In Memoriam I 91x61 oil and silvery bits on canvas
Cantus in Memoriam II hi 91x61xm oil and silvery bits on canvas
and Gwendolyn Kassenaar in our joint exhibition Music the Muse in the iconic Menuhin Concert Hall, Cobham, Surrey, Monday-Friday,10.00-3.00, until Friday 26 August. It’s also probable there will be more Feeling the Beat and other offshoot events. I have just been invited to live-paint dance and music at Battersea Spanish (Spanish and Latin Cultural Centre) Student Flamenco show 31 July at the Cockpit Theatre, London which will be right up my ‘calle.’ Remind me not to break into a dance mid-painting! Now, with expanded contacts across all the arts, I look forward to more arts fusion opportunities because, just like players who strut their stuff on any stage (apologies to Shakespeare) we artists are only ever as good as our last gig. Chris Holley scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Glissando I, 80x60cm oil on canvas Glissando II 80x60cm oil on canvas An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Hello Barbara and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://barbarakrupp.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 are an entirely self-taught artist, still you have had the chance to nurture your Barbara trained to be an x-ray technician. From that time on, as T.S. Eliot wrote in his “Whispers of Immortality,” I have seen “the skull beneath the skin.” The structure of the painting is very important to her, and in her most recent series she has, in a manner of speaking, allowed the bones of the painting—both compositionally and metaphorically, become the painting’s’ subject matter. Georgia O’Keeffe, whose early 1940s series of pelvic bones enclosed spaces that later in the decade became forms themselves, she found the areas of interest in her own landscape and floral abstractions to be the atmospheric spaces between forms. She came to realize that the significance in her paintings was not in the forms, but in the spaces in between them. In her “Abstract Stories” series, those atmospheric spaces became increasing bounded by spontaneously drawn shapes. Painted in shades of ochre-tinted white –the color of bone-- the enclosed spaces began to take on shapes that suggested something as intimate and normally hidden as bone; organic shapes that suggest body parts unveiled here and there as though to tease a lover. T.S. Eliot ends his poem with, ”Our lot crawls between dry bones to keep our metaphysics warm.” She explores the interface between passion and the intellect, pulsing tissue and desiccated bone. Our lot may be to crawl through our mortal span but, like the poet, we also sing. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Barbara Krupp @barbarakrupp
Emphasis On Circles, 48x36, Acrylic Painting
education studying with Graham Nickson, Christopher Schink, Lowell Ellsworth Smith and Fred Leach: how do these formative experinces influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum address the direction of your current artistic research? Barbara Krupp: I would like to say thank Barbara Krupp scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Mr Toad Goes To Work, 48x48 Acrylic Painting
you for this interview. I am truly honored to be chosen. I was born in Elyria, Ohio, USA. At that time it was a small middle-class working town. I lived in a neighborhood of houses that were a block from where my father worked at the plant. The church and grade school that I attended were a block in the other direction and the grocery store one more block to the south. Some evenings after dad came home from work, we packed a dinner and ate at Cascade Park, a beautiful rolling hill park on the Black River. We would hike along the river and the experiences added beauty to my life. My life was lived in a small space and we lived close to the land. My world was the trees, ground, and sky. Each year I was given a box of crayons and I treasured them and colored with them until they were broken and used and the next year, I would get a new box of 8 more crayons. My art world began with humble beginnings. I studied and became an x-ray technician and worked at Elyria, Memorial Hospital for 15 years. At the age of nineteen, I took my first art class at a small frame shop. My teacher was Wilhelm Kuhn. During my first class, he told me I had guts and I would make it in the art world. I have never quit painting. When I was thirty-three, I quit my X-ray job and never turned around and looked back. It was at this time that I studied with Fred Leach AWS. He taught me how to hold a brush, how to loosen up, and the difference between a wet brush and a dry brush. Small things but necessary in the art I was doing. Fred Leach and Lowell Ellsworth Smith AWS both had previously worked at American Greeting Card Company in Cleveland, Ohio. Lowell taught the opposite of Fred. His philosophy was “tighten” up and paint what you see. I learned many scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Magic Holds the World Together, 42x64, Acrylic Paintin
techniques from Lowell but went on with my own journey to deliver my own painting style. The next influence on the rest of my life was Graham Nickson, Dean of the New York Studio of Drawing and Painting, New York, New York. Barbara Krupp scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land g
I was a student at a painting marathon at the Armory in West Palm Beach, FL for 10 hours a day for one week. This was a major turning point in my art career. I had the stamina and guts to tackle any and every issue in the art world. Graham gently urged us to our scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition From Here To There, 18x18 Acrylic Painting
Barbara Krupp scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land potential and beyond. I am forever grateful for his wisdom. I have never stopped learning about art. I have continued my education with travel,going to museums and reading art books. Music and Magic, 18x18, Acrylic Painting
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition 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 the interstitial point where intellect and passion find their point of convergence, highlighting at the same time the uniqueness of the viewers' response to the work of art. When walking our readers through the genesis of your works, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Barbara Krupp: I could not have said that better because it is exactly how I paint. I enter my studio excited for the day and anticipate the color that will happen at any given time. I usually have no idea of what I will paint that day. I am always thinking of the possibilities of the many different technics I have learned. Each day I strive to push the limits. If my painting yesterday was acceptable yesterday, I want todays’ work to go beyond my previous capabilities and expectations. I want my viewer to be in awe of every stroke and feel their own feelings at the same time. Marked out with balanced sense of geometry, your works — more specifically Here To Here and Music and Magic — feature recurrent smooth contours and shapes that we dare say essential on the visual aspect. Would you tell us something about such refined geometric feeling? Barbara Krupp: When I studied geometry, it was a love/ hate situation. geometry is the branch of mathematics concerned with the
Barbara Krupp scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Collecting Wisdom, 48x60, AcrylicPainting
Sunrise At Calders Boat Dock
properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, and solids. and higher dimensional analogs. Knowing and studying this was the beginning. Now I added my passion and feelings into the subject matter and what results are what you are feeling when you scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Tweeting For The Sun, 36x36, Acrylic Painting
are looking at the above two paintings. The tones of your works — be they intense and bright as in the works from your Colorful Color series, be they marked out with such thoughtful, almost meditative scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Barbara Krupp Land The Flowers Arrived, 18x18, Acrylic Painting
ambiance, as in Tweeting For the Sun and in Ode to the Trees — 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? Barbara Krupp: I feel I cannot take much credit for my psychological make-up. Whatever happened when I was born is not understood even by myself. I was born happy and with a sense of peace that has never changed over the years. I think having grown up with a loving family helped the continuation of that. I wake up almost every morning with the feeling of peace and tranquility. I do not understand the world with all it’s hatred and anger. Therefore, when I do a painting in the genre of “Tweeting for the Sun” the happiness shows in all parts of the painting including the nuances of the tones. The “Ode to the Trees” on the other hand was painted when my beloved one hundred year old maple trees were being removed due to old age. I was in my studio painting this painting and the saws were buzzing. It was a very emotional moment and I think that is what is felt in this painting. It is the gentle acceptance of that moment. We highly appreciate the way the works from your "Abstract Stories” series address your audience to dive into the dreamlike dimension, helping them to question the nature of human perception. Scottish painter Peter 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 scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Barbara Krupp scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination, playing within your artistic production? Barbara Krupp: I have to agree with Peter on this point. The dream like stages of an artist is essential to the outcome. The scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Ode To the Trees, 59x59, Acrylic Painting
period from when I wake up from a sound sleep to my getting up, is the most important time of my day. My days do not consist of words. My thoughts are predominantly visually. I think and see and feel visual. I have a hard time describing scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Barbara Krupp Land Geometry Class, 12x12, Acrylic Painting
Through A Door, 30x40, Acrylic Painting
anything, a movie, a book or a thought in words. I do it in my painting. I garden, feed my birds and listen to beautiful calm music and hope that the viewers of my paintings can receive these feelings also. I do my part, is it too much to ask of them to do the same? You are a versatile artist and your artworks — as The Flowers Arrived and There Is Gold On the Moon — 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? Barbara Krupp: I have watched people view my paintings for years. I was an artist who did the art fairs around the United States for 37 years. During this time, I visited all 48 mainland states. My education went beyond school learning. I was a child of the world who saw the world on a daily basis. I have seen motorcyclists in the 70’s cry when they saw my paintings. I have seen corporate executives of the 80’s cry and I have seen street people moved to tears by my work. My years on the street gave me the feedback every artist dream of. I have also heard negative remarks. “My kindergartener could do this.” “Why would you spend your life like this?” Well, I have spent my life doing this and I would not trade it for anyone’s life. I have had the best life anyone could imagine. You have travelled a lot, both in the United States and in Europe, more specifically in Italy: how do your everyday life's experience and your memories fuel your creative process? Barbara Krupp: Traveling has been my life. I did not travel by plane until I was thirtythree years old. I cannot count the times I have traveled since in the USA, Canada, Mexico, and Europe since. My last trip before the pandemic was San Miquel Allende, Mexico. Changing cultures is always an event in itself. The growth is nothing you can imagine until you return home and sort it out in the mind and in the art. The last major journey previously was to Vienna, Austria and to Croatia. Three weeks of exploration of cities that showed me what “old” was. Those last trips started my examinations of old and ancient vessels. The trip to Ireland excitedly started a new series titled, “Ireland Without the Green”. I have traveled to Italy the most times. Something keeps calling me back. I think it is the old next to the new. I came back from one trip and started painting “Layers of Thoughts” No foreign land has ever been a disappointment. My next trip is for a collector who will let me use his summer home for two weeks in Santa Fe and I will paint the country side of New Mexico. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Barbara Krupp Land There Is Gold On the Moon, Acrylic Painting With their unique aesthetic quality on the visual espect, your works seem to be laboriously structured to pursue such effective and at the same time thoughtful visual impact: how important is intuition for you? In particular, how do you consider the
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Internal Reflection, 44x58, Acrylic Painting