Nat Creole: What immediately jumps out at you regarding your work is the level of detail and mastery of craft. How does your approach to painting account for these characteristics?
Annika Connor: Well my paintings are very labor intensive. Mostly I use small brushes and long hours to create the intricate marks and details. On a material level, I work to allow the medium to express a sense of mystery in the image while simultaneously revealing answers about process.
I enjoy the way that watercolors puddle and rest one on top of each other. Showing this in the painting gives insight into how the painting was made, how the paint was poured on, and how my hand moved to create a mark.
When it comes to selecting subject matter, I have a very intuitive process. I work from photos that I find or take myself, and I blend imagination and memories to collage the images together. I select my images to paint instinctually. My gut often acts as my guide informing or deciding what I want to paint, and the meaning of the selected images often only comes clear to me after the painting is finished.
NC: How do you see colors? You have this rich feel for color. Do you get to these colors largely through memory?
AC: That’s an interesting question. Color is really important to me. My palette is always very dense with jewel-like tones. These colors create a feeling of richness in the image, which helps to emphasize a sense of opulence and decadence in the paintings. Because I want the paintings to have these luscious associations, the paint is often very saturated.
Having been an oil painter, I’m used to building up my colors in glazes so the light travels through each layer and reflects against the backdrop before returning to the eye.
On top of that I’m just a colorful person (laughter), and that always comes into the palette that I paint with. I also like patterns so that comes into the work as well.
NC: Earlier you were talking about the sheer amount of time that you invest into your paintings and how this was somewhat outside of your personality, but is this really true?
AC: It’s odd really. I don’t view myself as a patient or particularly organized person at all, yet the way that I paint requires extreme patience and a highly organized mark-making system. My process for painting is very deliberate and focused. With watercolor, I have to work from the background to the foreground, so I need to think many steps ahead. There is something very meditative about making detailed art. It’s very tranquil and I like the entertainment of the challenge.
NC: But once you get it are you on to the next thing?
AC: In each painting I try to add something I don’t know how to paint. This can be hard, but it’s the struggle in trying to make it right that creates an interesting tension in the painting. Once I get it right, then that once difficult aspect just becomes part of a language that I incorporate into the next painting.
NC: I want to go back for a second and ask how you came into creating, the journey, so to speak. If you can take us back to how this need to create developed.
AC: Without sounding too cliché, I’ve always been a painter. I started painting in oils when I was about 9 years old. Maybe when I was 10 or 11 I started going to the studio of my dad’s friend and I would paint with her.
I’ve always been surrounded by art. My dad doesn’t do it professionally, but he is a sculptor, and my grandfather and uncles are collectors, so art has always been a big part of my world. Also, my mother is (again not by profession) a seamstress, so I suppose I gained from her a sense for putting patterns and colors together.
NC: So having grown up in the arts, there wasn’t that tension around your becoming an artist?
AC: No my family has been very supportive. I’ve been very fortunate in that respect. My mother is really an amazing lady and an inspiration. My father knows his art history so we can have a back and forth about the art world which is great. I am also lucky because I’m very close with an older cousin who is an excellent painter and a big influence.
NC: I have the feeling that you are very conversive in all of the areas that surround art in terms of the commerce aspect as well as the creative portion. Is this a function of personal study or something you came into as the need arose?
AC: Well as much as I loved attending The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, they don’t teach you much about the practical aspects of being an artist. All of the elements surrounding establishing a career as an artist, I’ve had to figure out as I’ve gone along. I find living in New York, there are so many artists who are really open to sharing information, and it’s been very helpful for me to get advice from artists who are a couple of steps ahead of me.
As far as Commerce is concerned, I could always learn more, but I come from a family of businessmen so I’ve gotten some influence from that. However, I still think I have a lot to learn (laughs), and I’m so terrible at selling my paintings that it’s a wonder that they sell at all.
NC: But you have collectors from Shang Hai and Moscow just to name a few
AC: Yeah, I’m not sure how that happens even if I’m thankful that it does (laughter). It’s difficult for me to think in terms of selling when I am regarding my art. I don’t mind though, as it’s not really a skill that I want to acquire. In the end, I think I’m better off letting a gallery take care of sales.
For me a normal sale goes something like this: Someone sees my art and says they want to buy one of my paintings and my typical response is “Are you sure?” The paintings that take many many months to make, I hate parting with the most. Usually I don’t want to sell any of my favorite paintings, but then the electric bill arrives and it becomes “Well Okay.”
NC: Do you spend a lot of time outdoors. What is your feeling about choosing to paint nature? How do you choose your subjects?
AC: I never paint what is right in front of me. I’ve been painting nature lately because I live in Midtown and there isn’t a tree in sight, so I’ve been longing for the color green in my life. I imagine that if I lived in the country I would paint architecture, black and gray. Also, I view the imagination as an otherworldly kind of a thing, and nature often reflects this very directly. I like that landscapes are not specific in their location so they tap into a universal sense of “maybe I’ve been there.”
In talking about specific pieces, I try not to reveal too much directly about the content of the art. I want all my paintings to act as triggers for the audience’s imagination, and maybe start off the viewer’s own narrative. If I could achieve one thing with my paintings it would be to provide a springboard for the imagination.
People think so rationally these days, that they don’t engage their imagination enough anymore. As a painter I like to give the audience what Hemmingway says is “the tip of the iceberg” but keep the substance below. My paintings are like that, I’ll give you something to see, but you can’t get to the weight of it until you’ve worked it out for yourself. |
