Sam Jackson

Artist Q&A with Sam Jackson

Sam Jackson’s approach to painting, digital media, and print combines subject matter that defies straightforward interpretation. The process of exploring how originality is captured and the aesthetics of its significance is a central theme of his practice. The do-it-yourself attitudes, homemade and amateur painting techniques, fantasy, excess, youth culture, violence, Baroque and Renaissance painting are all part of Jackson’s oeuvre. These urgencies are embedded in the painting’s application, growing into portraits or figures hewn with textual recalls. Medium and message are both extrapolated as a ground for further discoveries in painting, whereby paint is applied, translated, and governed by an intensity of appearance and reference. Mainstream culture, encouraged by evermore open media coverage, its absorption into high street fashion, investigations into compositional harmony, atmosphere, and the handling of paint, the ancient and the modern are strategized hybridity that are collective meditations on how contemporary painting is an oscillation between the textual and the symbolically real.

*One Of Us Must Know*, oil, ink, and spray paint on board, 8 x 7 in | 20 x 17 cm, 2022

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Caravaggio, I have always been fascinated by the use of the spiritual, religious, and subversion coming together in an emotional drama on the canvass.

How did you become a professional artist?

I was fascinated by art and painting from a young age. I was taken to a Lucien Freud exhibition aged nine and found the images fascinating and odd. Somehow, I could see that in painting, you could express something beyond words that were emotional in some way and really made me want to be an artist. So, after graduating from the Royal Academy for my postgraduate studies in 2003, I was picked up and started my ongoing relationship and representation … Click here to read more

Shinji Murakami

Artist Q&A with Shinji Murakami

Shinji Murakami’s work springboards from the philosophy of Gunpei Yokoi, the famous inventor of Nintendo’s Game Boy, Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology. Withered technology in this context refers to a mature technology that is cheap and well-understood. In contrast, lateral thinking refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting-edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. Murakami does not believe that profound human understanding has necessarily caught up to the explosive evolution of modern computer technology. Still, the pixelated expressions of 8-bit video games at the root of his work are one withered part of this evolutionary process. Murakami interrogates lateral thinking of this pixel. Working in wood, alkyd paint, and LED light, Murakami focuses on communicating his ideas to a broad audience. With the precision of a master craftsman, he renders universal motifs – flowers, puppies, hearts – in minimalism and pop, re-interpreting the aesthetics and context of each genre and reassessing their role within contemporary art. His practice is an ongoing search for simplification, removing more and more unnecessary elements and moving works into more ephemeral formats.

*Color Puppy* (Generation 5, iPhone 5c colors), wood, glue, alkyd paint, and collar 11 x 5 x 11 in | 27 x 11 x 27 cm (each), 2013

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

I love two great pop artists, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and they are two of the biggest influences on my work. I am a self-taught artist who never attended art school or took any special classes. In my early twenties, I found a series of TASCHEN books in a bookstore for about $10 and bought books by those two, Mondrian, Picasso, and Basquiat. In those … Click here to read more

Pedro Barbeito

Artist Q&A with Pedro Barbeito

Pedro Barbeito is a visual artist living in Easton, PA. Over the past 25 years, he has exhibited internationally in fifteen solo exhibitions and participated in over 50 group exhibitions. Solo venues include Basilico Fine Arts in NYC; Lehmann Maupin Gallery in NYC; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn.; Mario Diacono Gallery in Boston; Parra Romero Gallery in Madrid; Galerie Richard in Paris; 101/Exhibit in LA; and Charest-Weinberg Gallery in Miami. His exhibits have been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Art on Paper, The Village Voice, Artpulse, Frieze, Art/Text, Art Nexus, Examiner.com, and others publications in the US and Europe. Barbeito is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Director of Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) at Lafayette College.

*The Crab Nebula: Two Neutron Stars Colliding*, acrylic, pigment printout, and 3D printout on canvas, 65 x 95 in | 165 x 241 cm, 2000

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

A favorite must be Goya. I’m particularly fond of his tapestry paintings… and there’s specifically one at the Prado Museum that I love. Every time I’ve visited the Prado, I spend some quality time looking at “The Maja and the Cloaked Men.” I can’t quite figure it out, he has other similar paintings there, but this one really draws me in. There’s such a keen play between the composition, the color, the materiality of the paint, the narrative, the humor in the painting, and the skill with which he represents the landscape and figures, their scale, proportions… it’s painterly perfection. I’m glued to it every time.

How did you become a professional artist?

I knew I would be doing this as a profession when I was an undergraduate, but I didn’t start making a living from it for another … Click here to read more

Jim D’Amato

Artist Q&A with Jim D’Amato

Jim D’Amato (born 1978) is an American artist known for his elaborate biomorphic paintings and drawings that explore the infinite and unknown. He’s interested in the possibilities of spatial dimensions and intricate forms that fuse the organic and synthetic. His use of line, labor-intensive process, and bold, minimal color palette have become hallmarks of his work. Through these devices, his work pushes the boundaries of contemporary abstraction and engages the viewer in a multitude of ways. His work has been exhibited in galleries, alternative spaces, and museum stores and is in prominent private collections throughout the United States. He has been exhibited in group exhibitions with KAWS, H.R. Giger, and others.

Destroyer’s Song 6, acrylic on canvas, 12″ x 12″, 2022

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Jackson Pollock. He cut the cord from everything that came before him, which is an incredible achievement.

How did you become a professional artist?

It was my only real interest and the driving force in my life from childhood until now. For the most part, almost everything else has been a distraction from my work. Knowing that, working hard, and putting the time in got me here.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

I’m inspired by the unknown and what we can’t see. Spaces that may or may not exist in the natural world or the in the mind keep me going.

How is your work different than everything else out there?

My work lives on a very sharp edge between objectivity and non-objectivity. Because of that, the viewer is asked to participate and draw their own conclusions from it.

When is a piece finished for you?

When it absolutely cannot stand one more mark or gesture, … Click here to read more

David Rufo

Artist Q&A with David Rufo

David Rufo’s paintings explore visual oscillations and pattern structures. His work is informed by the hyper-kinetic shift of the art movements from the post-war period and the viscous psychedelic imagery of the 1960s and 70s. In addition to being a visual artist, Rufo is an Assistant Professor of Education at Cazenovia College in upstate New York. Previously, Rufo was a Clinical Assistant Professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education at Lincoln Center in New York City. Rufo has published articles on creativity in a variety of peer-reviewed journals.

“Muscle Car”, oil on canvas, 68 x 64 in | 172 x 163 cm, 2022

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

There are too many in my favorite category from which to choose, so my response will speak to an artist’s work that I would like to own. If I could live with any painting and have the opportunity to examine it up close over the course of many years, it would be one of de Kooning’s late paintings. These works from the 1980s are significant to me in a variety of ways. Most importantly, they span the time that I was a student in art school and then as an unknown artist living in New York City while working as a bouncer in night clubs in order to earn just enough to purchase art supplies and pay the rent. To me, de Kooning’s late work distills and refines the essence and visual profundity of his earlier masterpieces.

How did you become a professional artist?

I become a professional artist because I can’t imagine being anything else. To make a living, I earned my Ph.D. and work as a college professor. I first identified as an artist when I began my nightly painting routine at 14 years of age. I … Click here to read more

Lo Ch’ing

Lily Kostrzewa interviews artist Lo Ch’ing

In the summer of 2020, I was invited by the director of Whitebox Art Center in New York City to write a piece art review for an exhibition “Nocturnal Whispers of Pan” by Lo Ch’ing and Thomas Rose. It was the first time I saw Lo Ch’ing’s paintings; I was fascinated by the exhibition. The two artists open a new artistic dialogue that begins with an interpretation of an image’s meaning and a discussion of the cultural concepts surrounding the image. Using the cultural concept of Chinese calligraphy’s reimagined scenarios, Lo Ch’ing creates images of Chinese calligraphic “playful” icons with a focus on bizarre spatial arrangements with an abstract traditional format. He also created a poem for each image in both Chinese and English languages. In my childhood, my artistic foundation was trained in traditional Chinese calligraphy/painting in Taiwan, which made me wish to interview Mr. Lo one aday. The wish was granted two years later.

*A Maple Tree’s Magniﬁcent Autumn*, ink and watercolor on paper, 27 × 54 in | 68 × 137 cm, 2018

Lo Ch’ing, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, was a famous poet from Taiwan; he studied comparative literature at Washington State University in Seattle and obtained a master’s degree. After returning to Taiwan, he taught at the School of Foreign Languages of Fu Jen Catholic University, later serving as the director of the Chinese Language and Culture Center (Mandarin Training Center) of the National Taiwan Normal University, taught at its Fine Arts Department and many other schools as well. He has been invited to give lectures in various countries around the world and has appraised calligraphy and paintings in well-known museums, including the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, … Click here to read more

Matthias van Arkel

Artist Q&A with Matthias van Arkel

Matthias van Arkel has become known for his unique expression of merging painting and sculpture in his works made of silicone. Over the past few decades van Arkel has consequently investigated painterly ideas, his practice has emerged out of a conceptual approach. In his three-dimensional works meaning is achieved through density, sensuality and energy. There is a performative dimension involved in the creation process, as the artist balances intuition versus control through the special technique that he has developed. The sculptural shapes move like enlarged brush strokes forming abstract landscapes. Van Arkel challenges our perception of what defines a painting and invites us to see it from a new perspective.

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

That’s a difficult question. Probably Edvard Munch. I’m so interested in everything about him as an artist and a person–how he found ideas for his paintings. His graphic prints, especially, have a very strong impact on me.

“Gobelin (F.A.S)”, silicone rubber, 106 x 137 in | 270 x 348 cm, 2012. Photo credit: Erik Lefvander.

How did you become a professional artist?

It all started because it was natural in my family: my father was an artist. But the one who took me further with the thought of being an artist was my 9th-grade art teacher, who inspired me in all ways and stood as a model for me after school hours. She also gave me pep talks about my ability to be an artist, that I had the talent for it, and she told me to apply to art school–my dad didn’t do that. He thought it was a difficult life to be an artist; he wanted me to choose something else. But this teacher encouraged me at that young age to go for it. … Click here to read more

Kim25

Artist Q&A with Kim 25

In 2020, Kim25 began exploring the duality of the ‘boundary of undecidability’ that lies between inside and out, and sought to capture this complicated relationship. with her work “The Truth of Mystery.” In 2021 “The Truth of Mystery” series reveals its shape as the figure of the text at the point where inside and outside, inner world and outside reality, correspond. What is remarkable in her painting is that the undecidability of the boundary that belongs to both inside and outside turns into the very (textual, perhaps inter-textual) substance; the undecidability of the boundary becomes, through the artist’s kiasmatic logic, the boundary of undecidability that re-doubles the boundary and the object(s) and thus problematizes the boundariness of the boundary. Kim25’s poetic imagination that manifests itself on her canvas not only gives a new sense of aesthetics through which viewers can communicate with the newly expressed reality, but also facilitates the invitation to various interpretative participations.

“Meet of Each Other – L’éternité & Rimbaud”, oil on canvas, 32 x 46 in | 80 x 117 cm (each panel), 2021

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

My favorite artists of all time are Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Julian Schnabel.

How did you become a professional artist?

I was always friends with art and painting. Ever since I was born and had strength in my hands, I always played with drawing utensils. Painting is a fickle friend I meet every day.

What are the influences and inspirations in your work?

I am influenced by words from literature. On a gloomy day, looking out the window at the scarlet red sunset, I imagine the red sea. I think of the fate of the sea and how it becomes a mirror for the sky, mixed altogether and … Click here to read more

Kurt Lightner

Artist Q&A with Kurt Lightner

Kurt Lightner was born in Troy, Ohio. He received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design, OH, and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

Lightner’s works have been included in many significant group and solo exhibitions; Greater New York, PS1 MOMA, Kurt Lightner: Five Acres, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Queens International, Queens Museum, Other Worlds, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, and A View almost Picturesque and Slow Dissolve, Clementine Gallery. Lightner’s works have been critically reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, Freize, Beautiful Decay, Brooklyn Rail, New York Times, The New Yorker, Sculpture, and the Village Voice, among others.

He has been a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and The Headlands Center for the Arts Project Studio Residency in San Fransisco. Lightner’s works are included in many private and public collections both nationally and internationally.

He currently lives and works in Queens, New York.

Who is your favorite artist of all time?

Of all Time? That’s tough.

My favorites ebb and flow but here are a few that always stick in my mind. Charles Burchfield, David Milne, Early Vuillard, Lois Dodd, Alice Neel, William H. Johnson, Giorgio Morandi, Edvard Munch, Jacob Lawrence, William Hawkins, Arlene Shechet, Millet, Van Gogh, Horace Pippin, and Peter Doig. Not necessarily in that order.

“Planting Lesson”, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 70 in | 249 x 177 cm, 2021

How did you become a professional artist?

Since I was a child, I was always using my hands creating, making, growing something. I grew up in a small town in a farming community out in the country pretty isolated until I could drive. This environment allowed for a lot of time to find ways to entertain myself. I would draw and go on made up “archeological … Click here to read more