All in Interview
What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?
My dream is to spend the rest of my life in Arizona, where we moved to two years ago, work in my art studio and complete thousands of painting projects secretly stored in my mind. I know that abstract art suits me the best. I feel totally free and happy with it, although I love to exercise with landscapes and portraits.
I am a fine art painter and video artist with 30 years of experience. My current research project is based on creating visual responses to my observations of people, who are suspended in the vacuum of hypnotic repetition. I have travelled the world interviewing and recording individuals who genuinely struggle with their existence in the context of their survival. I have gathered substantial primary sources and evidence from destinations across the globe. Perhaps, the most significant research findings were from Haiti and Myanmar and resulted in producing the most spectacular paintings. They have inspired me to develop new and innovative ways of working and experimenting with image-making, which are appropriate to the subject. They combine the best of traditional achievements and the power of contemporary thinking and deep reflection.
Franco Baldazzi was born in Florence in 1969. Today he lives in the province of Sondrio. After finishing school, he abandoned the practice of painting for some years. From a very young age, he accompanies, in fact the passion for art in a parallel working life, which often involves significant setbacks in his creative journey. Periods of fervid production, alternating with deep moments of reflection, outline the stages of a painting that absorbs and intertwines the emotional life of the Tuscan, in style increasingly personal, not ascribable to schools or movements.
Can you tell us about the moment you decided to pursue a career as an artist?
I have to confess, I don't even know if I consciously decided that. However, I can still remember when, shortly before finishing my elementary school, it was a question of what you wanted to become and what goals you wanted to pursue in life. At that time I said I had one dream: I would like to officially call myself an artist one day – as I have painted and drawn since I was a young girl. So I enrolled at the Vienna School of Art and studied Multidisciplinary Art.
Andrew Binder is a contemporary visual artist from the United States. His work combines new and traditional media, featuring both figurative and abstract elements with Expressionistic and Disrupted Realist tendencies, focused on conveying a sense of memory, feeling, emotion, atmosphere, and subjective transitory human experience.
Dominie Chan (b. 1995) is passionate about eco-art and eco-aesthetics; she produces ephemeral, site-specific installations and paintings in which the body and mind and nature interact and influence each other in the process of creation. As an eco-artist, she is aware of the impact that poses of artists, not only in the artist community but also on society and the environment. Her goal is to use fine art as a way to raise awareness about nature and the need to conserve it.
Can you tell us about the moment you decided to pursue a career as an artist?
My decision came after a period of intense grief and in a moment in which my duties as a university professor of computer science were scaling down. My need for creativity has been fulfilled by my research activities for a long time, but as my interest in computer science started to wane, I found that photography was the right thing for me. As I have been photographing since I was a kid, I already had all the technical expertise and this allowed me to concentrate on content and creativity rather than on technique.
Weronika Raczynska was born in 1978 in Warsaw, Poland.
In the years 1997-2002 studied painting at the European Academy of Arts (EAS) in Warsaw, Poland. In 2002 graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting (distinction). From 2008-2010 studied painting at The Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in Cracow, Poland. In 2010 completed post-graduate studies in painting.
She has had 17 solo exhibitions of painting and more than 120 group exhibitions in Warsaw, Poland; Cracow, Poland, as well as in Basel, Switzerland; Kishinev, Moldavia; London, United Kingdom; New York, United States of America; Paris, France and Rome, Italy among others.
Rezaul Hoque is a professional artist, having completed his graduation from the Institute of Fine Arts under the University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since 1993 Reza has been experimenting and developed a unique technique of his own signature, alongside doing regular and traditional paintings. The innovation created by Reza is painting using heat convection which creates a soft illusion adding an atypical dimension and presenting a different aesthetic.
Aomi Kikuchi is a textile artist based in Kyoto, Japan. She holds a BFA from Kyoto University of Art & Design (Japan) and an MFA from Pratt Institute (USA). Aomi has exhibited her work throughout the world including at Woman’s Essence Show 2022 (Paris),The First Suzhou Craft Biennale 2021(China), Art Laguna 2021(Italy) and Art Laguna at Villa dei Cedri 2022.
Nancy Anne Woolf-Pettyjohn from the Kansas City, Missouri metro is an artist who hand paints in the style of fine arts. Her artwork covers all genres. Nancy started out wanting to be a surgical nurse but she fell seriously ill so had to drop out. God had other plans for her life. While recuperating she owned an antique shop did appraising, lecturing and repaired and restored old laces and linens. After doing it for years she decided to pursue the legal field. Becoming a paralegal/legal assistant working for lawyers and free-lancing she found herself not personally challenged as law was much too easy.
Kat Kleinman is a photo collage artist from the Sacramento, California area. She began her career as an artist in 2016, after she retired as a psychotherapist, working with homeless people for 20 years. Her past work is referenced because it does inform her current work with a focus on positivity and making people feel better, if only for a moment!
Kat specializes in collages, because the individual flowers, leaves or succulents used will combine to create a new and cohesive form, reflective of the healing process. She takes her own photographs, with the only exception being the occasional gift of a flower photo from a personal friend. It is important to Kat that she use her own photography, because it separates the integrity of her work from those who use more impersonal internet downloads as a source. Each image is hand cut, a process she calls meditative, and a single collage may require dozens of photos.
He was born in Lands of Don Quixote (Castilla-La Mancha / Spain). His family environment and the multidisciplinary influence of his professional activity; in sports, music, engineering, inventions and art, in Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid, were decisive for the artistic creation of a very personal and different style, called Rivismo, based on the application of the Experiential Brushstroke. During the last seventeen years, his research has managed to reinforce the Concepts and Philosophy that predominate in Rivismo and that have given prominence to the material elements to which he has assigned aspects, functions and values of people.
Born in 1998, based in London. As a master's degree student at UAL currently. He got a letter of recommendation from Steve Brodner in 2019. His artwork is selected for the 5th Fida Awards Final list, jungle illustration award 2021-New Talent.
He exhibits globally, including in Shanghai, New York, and London. Wowser designed fashion illustrations for many brands, including SAINT LAURENT, L 'Oreal Paris and co-designed artwork《Mirror Garden》with Florentia Village in 2021.
We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us again. Could you please give us a brief overview of the new art project titled "Environmental Series"?
Making art for the environment is nothing new for me. Every year, I paint one or two works for Earth Day as I believe in honouring Mother Earth. The earth is our home planet. It is the only one we got. But this year, I was invited to participate in a four-member group exhibition in South Korea. And decided to create a specific new series of 12 paintings dedicated to the care and protection of our environment. Because the audience was going to be Koreans, I included Korean texts in Korean scripts in some of the works.
Graduating in 1999 from Gray’s School Of Art with a BA (Hons) in Painting, going on to receive her Postgraduate Diploma/Masters in Art & Design in 2000. Angela Thouless has exhibited her artwork across the UK and further afield. In 2015 her work was featured at Het Kunstenaarsbal ( Amsterdam Cultural Festival).
Paul Ygartua is a painter and muralist with bases in Canada, France, Spain and England. He has single handedly painted some of the largest public space murals in Canada and the United States. His most famous works are his “Heritage Series” depicting North American Natives (Native Heritage Mural, Chemainus, BC) and other ethnic and cultural groups. He is renowned worldwide for his monumental murals. “The World United ” (100ftx25ft/3,048cmx762cm) being one of his most notorious, commissioned by the United Nations for the United Nations Pavilion at the World Expo 86 Vancouver and his largest to date “Legends of the Millennium”, over 9,000 square foot (24ft x 390ft / 731cm x 11,872cm).
Cheryle G. Galloway, born in Zimbabwe, is a US-based photographer. She has lived in South Africa and Brazil, before settling in the US. After completing a BA in Communication Science and becoming a mother, Cheryle was drawn to the visual art of photography as a medium for story-telling and interpreting her experiences. Through self-learning and participating in a series of Leica Akademie workshops, Cheryle’s work was surrounding nature, street and portraiture.
How would you describe yourself and your artwork?
I describe myself as a thinker, showing my images with a personal style and where each image shows that precise moment in just a few seconds and also the character is transmitting what I have in mind. I try to take pictures with ideas that I feel attracted to since the beginning, leaving my mark as an architect. I studied for my Bachelor’s degree in architecture in Mexico. I have a double nationality; Mexican and Lebanese.
What is a barrier you as an artist overcame? Is there anything that enabled you to develop your work as an artist in your life?
As an artist, I don't have much trouble expressing myself. Because I've absorbed a lot of things, and I've always expressed them as art, and my expression has always evolved. The problem with my activities as an artist is how to get people to see my work. I'm not rich, so I needed some ingenuity to spread my work. We've solved them by using the Internet effectively, but it's not perfect yet. We will have to continue to deal with those problems.
