Slovenian art student Andreja Repnik brings a unique vision to the figure.
Seethingly torn and ripped limbs are reconstructed with fibre, wood and what could be coral. Her drawings arrest your attention and make you question the mutilation. At only 24 it’s clear what a promising future Andreja has ahead of her. Read on and you’ll learn how coherently her work exerts the way she sees the world.
b-Loud!
b-uncut: What was your very first artwork? Women in luxurious clothes (marker on paper).
b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why?
One element, female body embraced with wire, her back is so fragile and at the same time so strong, you can never know what she sees or what she thinks.
It represents me, my thinking about this world, life and how it is so empty some times and I also use themes of nature, wood, life. Elements which never die and have a thousand uniqe shadows. Nature is always telling us how to survive in the long term. It seems some people see and some don’t.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
Just sit down and start… let’s go… I take what I have, shadows leads me at every step and the paper opens a new dimension. I have no fear, ther is just me, paper, ‘tool’ and shadows. I am inspired by nature, people, tone, smell, taste and sight.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
Not much,… just life without compulsion … I started on canvas eight years ago and ended up drawing. So I seriously deal with drawing the last two years… in the other hand I draw from early age.
b-uncut: Do you make a living from your artwork?
No.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
Hm, very little help from others. The last three years has helped me find the art I want to express.
b-uncut: What 5 artists (dead or alive) would you invite for the ultimate dinner party?
Salvador Dali, Albrecht Dürer, Kazuhiko Nakamura, Jeff Bartels, Leonardo da Vinci.
b-Quick!
b-uncut: Qualities a man needs to seduce you?
Artist, a man with a special view on the world, academic, longterm creator, or just a stranger from the street or farmer.
b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?
‘I told you what to do.’
b-uncut: The power you wish you had?
Freedom… is that a power?
b-uncut: Who would you chose to rule the world?
You, me, my mother, father, brother, sister,…
b-uncut: Favourite ice-cream?
Hm, yogurt with cherry sauce.
.
b-Honest!
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..
One month?
studying.
One year?
studying.
One decade?
uh…. in rural France. Small rural house, canvas, oil, paper, pencil, …and a lot of colors.
Hands, glue and scissors are the three things which make this artist so fabulous.
Daniele Villa, 36 years old, is an Italian collages’ artist based in Rome and member, such as founder, of the “Citrullo International”. This independent film production company, focused on documentaries, animations, books and cinema allows him to experience several forms of art. Creativity and technical skills are the main ingredient of his works, mixed with an accurate use of colours, forms and different materials. As Max Ernst, one of his favourite artists, said: “Si ce sont les plumes qui font le plumage ce n’est pas la colle qui fait le collage”, If it’s not the feather that makes a plumage, then it’s not the glue that makes a collage.
Read on to find out more about this amazing artist!
b-Loud:
b-uncut: What was your first artwork? DV: I used to send funny postcards to friends using photomontage and collage. I loved the fact of sending a unique work that could not be repeated, and, of course, I loved the effect of displacement that the collage technique allows.
b-uncut: The artists you like the most and why? DV: I love Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell, two real poets. Their approach toward the materials they used was deep and touching. I love the Schwitters’ motto: ‘one can use waste material to shout out loud’. They were in a way two outsiders which worked by themselves, obsessed by their dreams and with an imaginary universe of their own.
b-uncut: The one you hate the most and why? DV: I (almost) learned not to hate anybody. I simply don’t like pretentious artists which don’t have enough talent to justify their vanity.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it where you are now? DV: I don’t know where I am, but anyway I believe that it’s always like this: you have to feed your love for something with your true passion and work on it. Sometimes, if your love is true, you succeed to reach a certain degree of sincerity in what you do. And that is important for your true happiness.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way? DV: Friends which encouraged me to show my works around.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspiration? DV: I don’t work so much, in terms of time. I can work for one day and make several collages which really make me satisfied, and then stop for a month. The execution is quick. It seems that I reach a certain point and then my subconscious is ready to ‘read’ the materials and make a synthesis in few minutes.
b-uncut: If I ask you to describe your art, would it be redundant to describe yourself? DV: Of course the art objects and the artist that makes it are related. The only thing I can say is that I chose collage because with this technique you find more than searching for something specific. And I love that sense of surprise. Moreover I’m a bad painter.
b-quick:
b-uncut: The swear word you like the most? DV: I love all them.
b-uncut: The flaws a woman should have to seduce you? DV: She has to be funny.
b-uncut: Your parents’ advice you haven’t followed? DV: Wash your hands.
b-uncut: The talent you wouldn’t want to have? DV: To be so funny.
b-uncut: The person you’d like to be hated by? DV: Nobody.
b-uncut: The question I should never ask you? DV: The one before.
Here’s our pick of the work submitted for our valentine’s competition. Thanks to all that took part. I’m glad to see so many people getting involved. Enjoy and until next time…..
Turkish painter Turgay Denizel works on canvas and glass. His work ripples with fantasy and texture. Turgay has reached a point where his work is blossoming. He is committed to his art and has his direction. For now at least!
b-uncut: What was your very first artwork? TD: One hundred little squares in different colours. I was impressed by a Paul Klee painting.
b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why? TD: ‘Case of Forest’, seems to be the most coherent among eight abstract oils I painted in a year. It reminds me of a familiar hide away. I like to create surrealistic dreamscapes and have been exploring my psyche to relate scenery to images from eras which never existed and portray non-civilised life forms. With this approach I hope to reveal Terraneaus and her unidentified sentience.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
TD: I paint glass using a unique method that breaks through the limitations of classic teaching. Some lessons from the ancients are not practical any more so I had to develop a new technique which allows the process to be more creative and increases its potential. I prepare the body of the color as I would oil paints and imagine the glass as the canvas.
Using this process the different depths of glass and color become translucent light catchers and after firing, the work becomes a hologram with variable assets of light. I spend a lot of time to prepare the basic composition and the textures created through the preparation become my visual inspirations. A chaotic laying of color provokes me to re-arrange and plant some meaning within the cacophony. I let it direct me, and trace its leads. Hence my tendency towards automatism. Spatulas and knives are my tools while preparing the paintings structure; mostly for glass. The next phase is shading, contouring with brushes. I’m now gaining the flexibility for both glass and canvas.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
TD: Without any guidance or art education. I wasn’t certain what to do with my unrelenting imagination. Meanwhile demands for glass art appeared and this became a way out from the conventions in my daily life. Painting, staining and decorating windows served me as a talisman for a long period of time and led to my discovery of a unique fusion. My unconscious process through art led me and I adapted my technique in reaction to mistakes made along the way.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
TD: Watching and admiring the endless art treasures and their creators.
b-uncut: Do you consider your personal and professional life one and the same—do you define your art or does it define you?
TD: My abstract thoughts have moved to a deep part of my consciousness. At first it didn’t seem possible to realise any of them since they could not be useful objects. Now I see how this created a limiting and tiring separation between my personal and professional life. Hypothesising abstraction as the most necessary object of my daily life unified me with my art. It now allows me to define my art and hopefully this will continue.
b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?
b-uncut: Your favorite swear word? TD: When I get mad at somebody I call him a tyrant. Teeny weeny teensy weensy tyrant.
b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other? TD: Most attractive is benignity, least is the ‘poor baby syndrome’.
b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw? TD: I’m so indecisive but have now mastered it to evaluate both sides.
b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t? TD: Oh I can be a wooden horse and following any advice is the most difficult thing for me.
b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had? TD: Teleporting myself to anywhere on the world and the universe.
b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet? TD: I wish he was alive, well maybe we’ll meet in my dreams ; Carlos Castaneda.
b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview? TD: I guess this one.
b-Honest!
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..
One month? Ready for fructuous moonbaths in spring.
This week b-uncut caught up with British artist Annett E. Bank.
Bank, a painter, lives and works in Brighton. Her work is both abstract and figurative. As she puts it, “one is not confined to one’s physical form alone, instead we are connected to all that is.” Her philosophy can be seen in her art: female figures float and drift in a sea of color, often disappearing into their surroundings. Bank has exhibited at the UK’s Best Graduates Show, Salon Gallery (London), Cambridge Art Fair and the Affordable Art Fair in London & Brussels. She is currently preparing for a solo show at the New Steine Hotel in Brighton throughout May 2010. Read on to find out more about this fabulous artist!
b-Loud!
b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?
AEB: A very early piece from 2001 was a charcoal and pencil drawing called ‘Awakening’ which encompasses all that is still present in my current work- namely vibrant physicality, sensitivity and sensuality within the human form. The composition was so successful that it has been re-used as a template ever since.
b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why?
AEB: I love them all in a way as they speak to me about aesthetics, perfection, meditation, spirituality and poetry. I learn from them. They tell me about a particular feeling of holistic wellbeing. I consider it an artistic relationship and it makes the work genuine and memorable in my eyes. I am grateful for each one as I see people get completely captivated by their visual appeal.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
AEB: Most recently I returned to working in oil on canvas again. I adore the fabulous qualities of that medium with which you can create those wonderful rich and sculptural effects. Oil is perfect for impasto application and pliable in designing different shades. I work very intuitively with a focus on spontaneous, highly dynamic pattern in order to create images of graceful living and contemplative beauty. I think there are enough ugly things in this world and so I see it as my responsibility to take care of that side of society and contribute to make it a little more enjoyable. I never experience such a thing as ‘fear of destroying’ the painting even whilst being very experimental and bold in my approach. I think this physical involvement with the design process produces authentic art that captures the imagination of the viewer, which I consider my challenge. In the past I have almost exclusively used unusual liquid paints and pigments in combination with other mixed media – and felt very comfortable with that method too. Essentially, I want my paintings to portrait a certain aspect of what it means to be alive- to have boundless energy, sensitivity, passion, awareness and enjoyment of one’s own body.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
AEB: Determination, personal strength, an irrepressible urge for self-expression, individuality and independence, an unwavering trust in my talent, and a total love for everything I do.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
AEB: The divine creative spirit who governs all. But apart from that: a life coach, many progressive thinkers, philosophers and writers, fellow students, my friends and my family.
b-uncut: Your work is vibrant and spiritual, and much of it focuses on the female form. Does your work reflect your personal life, does it define you?
AEB: With any creative person it is imperative to acknowledge the connection between the artwork and their personality. I discovered that nothing in life is separate – my paintings cannot be what I am not and so, of course they are a close part of me. I see them as transformational, inspiring and uplifting…the same characteristics that I wish to develop in my personal life. I would say that my gut feeling has shown me the way to paint – long before I was aware of different concepts such as spirituality, human potential movement, postmodern society, or the influence of a hidden agenda for our well being. I believe the world is changing and will be marked by men who are more subtle, and women, who are more powerful, so that there will be balance in the end. The female element in my work is therefore not by accident. In my opinion is the feminine principle on the rise and I feel contemporary art is a great way to express that esoteric tendency.
b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?
AEB: Alex Grey, Joel Peter Witkin, Lucien Freud, Rex Church, Francis Bacon
b-Quick!
b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?
AEB: I don’t swear.
b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?
AEB: compassion / unreliability
b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?
AEB: it takes me far too long to compose articles and publications
b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?
AEB: to live a sensible life
b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?
AEB: I’ve got all the power I need
b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?
AEB: I am not into celebrities, but I like to meet Alex Collier
b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview?
AEB: Where are you from?
b-Honest!
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..
One month? Selling all the pieces that I currently have in exhibitions
One year? Moving into a new studio/home in the countryside
One decade? Still selling artwork that people appreciate
The artist in the spotlight this week is Italian appropriation photographer Simone Boscolo. Boscolo lives and works out of Milan and creates work that is “research between memory and oblivion inspired by the history theories of Walter Benjamin and others.” His work is ephemeral and hauntingly familiar. Using images from the past the artist manipulates his medium, superimposing his own emotions, fears, and hopes on the photographs through his unique technique. b-uncut caught up with this talented illustrator turned artist for the scoop on his inspiration:
b-Loud!
b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?
SB: My first artwork was “Famiglia Deluca di Pozza di Fassa” (Deluca family from Pozza di Fassa), three years ago (2007).
b-uncut: Describe the one you love the most—why?
SB: My first, ‘cause in this work there are the aesthetic directions that I’ve tried to develop in all my works including my last work’s series. However it’s difficult for me to love my works after too much time. When I finish a work I feel that it’s not mine anymore and when I see what I have done I see all the things I could do to make it better…
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
SB: It’s hard to talk about your own work because the picture is always incomplete. First of all I have to find a narrative starting point, then equally important is the choice of the pictures on which I plan to work. I get inspiration from historical and social changes that took place during the 2oth century, and more specifically within the context of a 2oth century Italian–very complex, controversial, and with the point of view often being one of countrymen. I work on survivals, on unsolved tangles of a sort of “historic unconscious,” or resistance in loss and persistence in loss deriving from changes that began in the 19th century and accelerated during the 20th. This was the century that produced junk and dizzy dreams destined to fail.
I have found in Walter Benjamin’s “Angelus Novus” a good starting point to channel this research. All this trying to set aside unjustified nostalgia and regret. I think that from my pictures emerges a kind of obsession for death but I believe this belongs somehow to the dynamics or to the origin of the creative process. I also need a “soundtrack” when I’m working and it becomes part of the same creative process. Generally I work listening to Arvo Pärt, Fauré, Schubert, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Die Form or sacred music from 17th and 18th century. The soundtrack is vital for me.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
SB: Some years working as an illustrator and three years as an artist. It’s a very short time and this has been a long way to walk.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
SB: The Art-Director of the gallery in which my works are in permanent exhibition (Galleria Zamenhof in Milan). Until three years ago I was an illustrator only. He suggested me to try to find an artistic way for my projects. And I have tried to do it. Also my family try to support me and, over all, my wife that believes in what I do. Sometimes more than I do.
b-uncut: Do you consider your personal and professional life one and the same? Does your art define you, or do you define your art?
SB: This is a complex question. I can answer that what I do in the way I do is what I love to do. It is a basic part of me. I must do it. But the artistic way is only a part of the symbolic representation codes through which I try to define the world and my role in it. I can affirm that in many ways my art can define myself, my perception of life, history, society, my personal fears and obsessions, my expectations, mistakes and illusions too. My “Weltanschauung” in other words. Perhaps art is the final product of every side of my life but I don’t live my life like an artwork.
b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?
SB: Well, these fives could be it (not only painters or visual artists): Joel Peter Witkin, Peter Bruegel “the Elder”, Jorge Luis Borges, James Ensor and Werner Herzog or Pier Paolo Pasolini (not very fun party indeed! I think I will also include five porno-actresses…)
b-Quick!
b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?
SB: I have a latin motto: “Nomina sunt consequentia rerum.”
b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?
SB: It’s not a quality (I think) but in others I’m attracted by their contradictions. And I love the ones who can take themselves and their life with a touch (or a lot) of irony. Too much seriousness is not for me. But normally I don’t ask too much of other people. They are not born to entertain me and I’m not born to entertain them.
b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?
SB: A lot on the same level: like a human being I’m irremediably unreliable, often lazy, with a tendency towards selfishness and reasonably vicious.
b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?
SB: My mother desired for me safe employment like every good mom but…
b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?
SB: ESP powers…
b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?
SB: No one, it is a very dangerous thing.
b-uncut: Your least favorite interview question?
SB: All good questions, really.
b-Honest!
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..
One month? In Milan to finish the second and the third part of my Emanuele Gudester’s series.
One year? In Milan with some good exhibition and some more money (I hope).
One decade? I hope to be alive…and if it will be I should like to live with my wife in a cottage on the Hebrides, in Scotland, and, honestly, with a solid artistic career (not only in Scotland, obviously).
16 year old Joanna “DROPDEAD” is an “artist, photographer, writer, singer, musician, mechanic and computer nerd” living and going to school in New York City. It was her passion for music (at the age of 6 she was in a band called ‘Hello Gorgeous’ that is currently still together) that led her to the visual arts, another outlet to bare her emotions. Joanna’s approach is straight and raw. Her work pulses with honesty and directness. No commercial concerns impinge on her message and b-uncut glimpses traces of a young Tracy Emin. “DROPDEAD” is an artist to watch…
b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?
JD: I believe I was around eight or nine years old and my art teacher decided to do “cave paintings” on dry wall from her re-done bathroom. I got so into the project and finished with my dry wall cave painting of a wolf on a mountain. This of course was probably not my first experience with art, but it was the first time I was truly proud of my work.
b-uncut: Describe the one you love the most—why?
JD:Unique, different, adventurous, creative, curious, accepting, intelligent, understanding, someone that I can rely on to always see right through me, that can view past the cover and flip through the pages. I think I’ve always wanted someone to see me for a unique person, for a personality unlike others out there. Most people see me as a “freak” a “weirdo” and instead of trying to discover who I am, they label me as what they want me to be.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
JD: I’m not a method person. I’m not into rules and step-by-step operations. I’m a completely free thinker and my creativity blooms from that. Anything can give me inspiration. The world is such a beautiful place. There is music everywhere, in the air, the trees, in the city, in people; everywhere you go there is music, but only for those who choose to listen.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
JD: Everything takes time, for me it has been my whole life. From the beginning of 2009 to the end I have been completely content with my life. I am passionate about my art, my relationship with others, my music, and my career. So it has taken me long, but the receiving product has been worth waiting for.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
JD: I have been in a whirlpool of different people in my life, and the people who have truly helped me the most have been the people I have recently met. There have been few in my life that I can count on and trust, so most of my help has been self-given, but those who have helped me will forever be my friends.
b-uncut: Your work acutely reflects the fears, anxieties and frustrations of teenage life. It is raw, fresh, and in a word—cool. As a young artist, how do you see your style progressing as your work matures?
JD: My Artwork has always been about getting the chaos or the insanity of what you are feeling and ripping it out to lay it upon the page. It’s my insanity, my chaos, my eccentric self, and I think the main thing about my art is to challenge people. I want to challenge people to see things through different eyes, to feel the pain or the happiness that someone else may feel. It also focuses much on being trapped in a place where you feel alone, like you are a flower in a field of buds. I want my artwork to grow, what artist doesn’t? But I would love to see it still challenge people, and hopefully inspire people.
b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?
JD:Picasso is the ultimate, his work is inspiring in so many ways, he was unique and his blunt way of painting the truth was beautiful in a sense. Megan Cedro is one of my role models, she is an amazing artist and she is so young. Her talent amazes me and I would love to be like her when I grow older. Oscar Wilde, his art was more reflected in his words then in a canvas, but he is such an amazing person and I use him as a model for myself. He was unafraid of being himself and I greatly look upon that as an act of bravery. Mozart, because of his success and intelligence is such a grand accomplishment at such a young age he is truly an inspiration. Then finally, Beethoven, because he poured his soul and entirety into his work, his devotion was so grand that he went deaf.
b-Quick!
b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?
JD: I would have to say this is definitely F#!k, you can use it with anything and it’ll just make any insult more interesting.
b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?
JD: I hate stupidity, so I find intelligence attractive.
b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?
JD: I would have to say this that I rush into things to quickly.
b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?
JD: “Don’t run on the ice.” BAM I fell.
b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?
JD: I wish I could fly, that would be amazing.
b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?
JD: Everyone says that I resemble Demi Lovato in personality and in appearance and Iwould really like to meet her just to see if it’s true.
b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview?
JD: I’m a pretty open person, I don’t like when people try to get in depth into my life and things like that.
b-Honest!
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…
One month? Studio Art class building up on my portfolio.
One year? Taking a million new classes to improve on my portfolio.
One decade? In my first home in New York City, in a small but reasonably nice apartment, managing my own art gallery, still in an amazing relationship with my only love Connor, with two dachshunds one named Bruce and the other name is still pending.
Samuel Aoun Charbel is an architect, sculptor and painter from Fanar, Lebanon. He considers himself a realist expressing the state of humanity as he sees it through his art; evoking reactions from his audience as a truth seeker as opposed to creating merely to please/amuse the viewer. His art is dark, thick with emotion and awe-inspiring. Charbel doesn’t consider “artist” a career choice but rather a calling that cannot be ignored. He is the second artist to be featured in the b-uncut “Special Exhibition” gallery. His exhibit “Fattoush Beirut” opens today and will last through the 7th of March.
b-uncut:What was your very first artwork?
SAC:It was a moment when I was listening to Beethoven and I was just letting myself go, freely expressing the music with strong strokes or soft ones…it came directly from my ear through my physical body and I couldn’t see it visually…It was this moment of expression that I considered my first piece of art.
b-uncut:Describe the one you love the most—why?
SAC: Usually the latest one, and then I hate it again and do something better or aim for doing better or more before I start to hate it again…I like my art for a short period of time, I critique my art more than I should.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
SAC:I find my inspirations around me all the time; it’s the rebel feeling inside of me…we’re living in cities conceived for the benefit of a few…the interest of the ordinary people is ignored, the spatial experience is only visual to mark the power of some…it’s the lack of humanity in everyday life that creates in me a feeling that I transform into my art.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
SAC:The motive….The injustice and the materialistic dominant context of our world motivates me to stand and express…it’s a responsibility that I feel inside of me and I can’t shut myself down and hide my feelings…
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
SAC: I share an education and culture with a circle of friends. They stand near and support me when I need help.
b-uncut: Your paintings are intricate, expressive, and emotionally complex—does your art define you? Or do you keep your professional life separate?
SAC:Well it surely defines me, I even discover myself through my art…it’s an honest expression of the soul and state of feelings…
b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?
SAC:Nureyev, Goya, Da Vinci, Beethoven, Chaplin. It would be a combination of different fields of art .
b-Quick!
b-uncut:Your favorite swear word?
SAC:…
b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?
SAC:Most attractive is the simple combination of sensitivity and intelligence. The less is the materialistic quality.
b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?
SAC:Will know that later ( maybe in 5-10 years) due to the decisions or choices I’m experiencing at this stage.
b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?
SAC: none
b-uncut:The superhero power you wish you had?
SAC:To fly!
b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?
SAC:Roberto Benigni
b-uncut: Your least favorite interview question?
SAC:The swear word
b-Honest!
b-uncut:Where do you see yourself in…
One month?Painting and moving images…
One year? Exhibiting a combination of paintings, sculpture and video art, somewhere in Europe.
One decade? Dead…but maybe as an example of a person who alighted on the human factor and shook open emotions with his art.
Robert O’Brien is fresh from his exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The recent recipient of the third prize in the prestigious BP Portrait Award , he lives and works between London and Gothenberg. His art has an emotional, expressive and often melancholic tendency. His inspiration comes from highly emotional subjects that he meets head on particularly in the relationship between artist and sitter. His work is done primarily in oils and watercolours. Luckily for us he took some time out to answer the b-loud interview. As we can learn and see here he can’t speak Swedish but he communicates emotions and life experiences brilliantly just the same.
The b-you interview
b-uncut: What was your first artwork?
RO: A drawing of a face I did with my mum when I was about six. My mum divided a piece of paper in half, she drew one side of the face and I copied it on my side. I took it in to school and no body would believe I did it.
b-uncut: Describe the one you like the most-why?
RO: I don’t know it’s easier to say my favorite from another artist, Gerhard Richters, painting I.G. The three paintings of his ex-wife. I believe they could bring anyone to tears, they are beautiful.
b-uncut: Describe the one you hate the most-why?
RO: It’s in the bin, because I am so impatient.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
RO: Not listening to people who put you down, and there’s a lot of them.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
RO: Family and friends.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
RO: The psychology of myself and others.
b-uncut: If I ask you to describe your art, would it be redundant to describe yourself?
RO: Me and my art are like arch enemies, battling every day both wanting the same thing… power over the other one.
The b-quick interview
b-uncut: The swear word you like the most?
RO: O bugger!
b-uncut: The flaws a man/woman should have to seduce you?
RO: They should love cheeseburger and fries.
b-uncut: Your parents’ advice you shouldn’t have followed?
RO: No they have always have had good and loving advice.
b-uncut: The talent you wouldn’t want to have?
RO: I don’t want the talent of reading, writing, and spelling. I have very bad dyslexia and no talent for them. This has made me a very visual and creative person with an unguent able drive.
b-uncut: The person you’d like to be hated by?
RO: There might be one of two people that might feel that way already, I would not like anymore.
b-uncut: The question I should never ask you?
RO: How come you can’t speak Swedish yet?
The b-where interview
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…
5 seconds?
RO: This
5 minutes?
RO: Doing a spell check and then getting someone to look over it again for spelling and punctuation.
This week b-uncut has caught up with Scottish artist Robert Anderson: painter, poet, and writer. A multi-talented artist, Anderson is probably best known for his illustration style art. A Carpenter by trade, he is now a full time mid-career artist and poet. In fact, he classifies himself as a “poet with artistic expression” as all of his artwork stems from a poem he has written–it is an extension to his spoken word. His quick wit and quirky sense of humor are sure signs of his creative genius!
The b-you interview:
b-uncut: What was your first artwork?
RA: My first artwork was probably me if I am to go with a story my mum told me. She was having a piano delivered and placed me in my cot with my potty, so I did a number 2 in the potty then placed it over my head. When my mum noticed me, she said, “you really are a work of art Bobby?”
Bob Marley
Cheeseheart
The Holocaust
b-uncut: Describe the one you like the most-why?
RA: Probably, “Spills From The Hour Glass” It just depicts for me this apocalyptic course we as man kind are heading into. The turmoil created to an infestation through greed and survival of the fittest. I am disgusted by the mind of human kind.
b-uncut: Describe the one you hate the most-why?
RA: I don’t hate, I don’t know how to hate. I made an Easter, “boiled egg” for my daughters school competition using wires and bolts so it looked like one of the little, “Cadbury’s instant potato mash” aliens from the advert. She left it in her room and it fell over and smashed, and all these maggots spilled out. Well I must have jumped on every one of those little suckers…….eh? But I never hated them.
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
RA: Three eggs and a bag of flour, ha, ha! A lot of long hours and persistence, constantly believing in myself and keeping my work real. Whether this upset others or not. As long as I stayed true to myself and my art I knew I could do no wrong. I don’t work for commercial gain. For money I paint football stars and pets, GRRRR! This allows me to fund my realist art. The things I want to do. This art is my mind and sanity.
b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?
RA: Nobody, I have and never will ask for help. Everything I do comes from what was installed from the womb. I live in my own little bubble. I have never had a lesson in my life. It just seems to have always been there waiting to come out. Now it just flows endlessly.
b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?
RA: The scope of my world I suppose. If I see something that hurts on T.V. Or hear of some injustice then I paint and write about it. As I said, I try to keep everything as real and as close to the bone as possible. I also do this with fun things. I am not all doom and gloom, rather to the contrary, I am a very happy go lucky person.
b-uncut: If I ask you to describe your art, would it be redundant to describe yourself?
RA: My art is me, my mind and pain, my laughter and love, my illness of thought
I constantly strive in endless hours to keep it that way.
The b-quick interview
b-uncut: The swear word you like the most?
RA: Politician
b-uncut: The flaws a man/woman should have to seduce you?
RA: I love a woman that can’t cook, or pretends she can’t so I can show off my culinary skills. ha, ha!
b-uncut: Your parents’ advice you shouldn’t have followed?
RA: Well my mum always said, “It is not the coughing your coughing, but the coffin your carried off in” So I started smoking. Another one was, “If you fall out that tree and break your legs, don’t come running to me?” Yip, that was my mum.
b-uncut: The talent you wouldn’t want to have?
RA: That’s a hard one? I suppose knitting, I hate that bloody endless clicking sound like a metronome on high speed.
b-uncut: The person you’d like to be hated by?
RA: Dr David Starkey, He wrote terrible things about Scotland. So I wrote a poem about him once and he hates me for it. I love him hating me, the little English four eyed, bum buffing wimp. But I don’t hate him, ha, ha! I am falling of my seat in laughter here.
b-uncut: The question I should never ask you?
RA: Will you do another interview? Ha, ha! “kidding”
When was the last time you changed your underwear? Because I wont tell you. I will tell you however that I am not hungry as I ate a plate of corn flakes three Wednesdays ago. Am I evading the question here?
The b-where interview
b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…
5 seconds?
RA: Sitting here staring into empty matter
5 minutes?
RA: Making a coffee
5 days?
RA: Sitting here writing, or in my bubble painting.
5 months?
RA: Florida to see my girl
5 centuries?
RA: Sitting in heaven as a wise old man with my girl at my side,
looking at statues built in Dr David Starkey’s name, I can send some pigeons down.
The Should Would Could Interview:
b-uncut: Do we know you?
RA: You should , we had sex, was it that bad?
b-uncut: Should we know you?
RA: Not if your pregnant, ha, ha!
You should know me through the truth I try to write
b-uncut: Will we know you?
Yes as I am going nowhere. Watch this space?
Cheers from Scotland everyone xxxxxxxx Bobby
b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?
b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?
b-uncut: Qualities a man needs to seduce you?
