Interview with Andrew Binder
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.
Can you tell us about the moment you decided to pursue a career as an artist?
There wasn’t a particular moment. I had always been interested in art. As a child, I was always drawing and creating. I ventured into a variety of different mediums as I got older. For a long time, I was serious about pursuing my art while working a “normal” job. I fit it in around work hours and/or on weekends. Eventually, for various reasons, I left the rigid 9-5 work world and began to pursue my art full time.
What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?
A visual artist working with new media combined with traditional media; a digital mixed-media painter; a contemporary expressionist; a disrupted realist; an artist working with both figurative and abstract elements; an existentialist. I see myself as any and all of those things.
What do you want your art to convey to those who see it? What is the meaning or creative motivation behind your work?
Generally speaking, I prefer my work to be open to interpretation and the viewer’s own subjective experience. Existential angst, transitory memories, feeling, emotion and mood, a sense of impermanence and mortality are probably all through lines. At the same time, a lot of my work is also concerned with the aesthetics and process of making it. Self-expression and the need to create are my main motivators.
Can you tell us about the process you use to create your works? What is your typical workday routine?
My routine is really all over the place. If I am working on artwork, I try to get started sometime between 8AM - 9AM. There’s usually a lot of coffee and a lot of music. But the specifics of my routine really depends on what I’m working on and my general mood. It also depends upon how easy or difficult things are going. Some days it goes very smoothly and I will just be working non-stop. Other days it’s a real struggle and there will be a lot of breaks where I need to look or do something else for a bit and come back later.
As far as my process goes well that varies as well. Primarily it’s digital painting which I combine with various analog elements I’ve either painted with traditional paint or items I’ve scanned like tape or torn paper, etc.
Generally, I work by slowly building up form, layer by layer, painting and tweaking and combining different elements. Then once things are “built up”, I like to experiment with breaking up and/or distorting different elements of the image. There’s a lot of improvising and experimenting.
I try to allow for some expression during the buildup stage but that part is generally tighter than the latter phase where I allow for more expression and experimentation. I usually create a few different versions of various elements, and in the end I combine the parts that I think work or most achieve what I am looking for.
Where do you find inspiration? What motivates you to create?
I’ve always been motivated to create. An inherent need to create has always been a part of me. I feel inspiration comes from many different sources. The human condition, subjective experience and my own self expression are constant broad inspirations. But I am inspired by many disparate things such as other works of art (of course), music, literature, history, movies/TV, conversations, emotions, etc. It really depends.
Sometimes it’s even just process oriented where I ask myself “What would happen if I do this…?” or “What if I combine this with that?”
What has been your most outstanding achievement to date?
Exhibiting and selling some of my work, I suppose.
What are your ultimate career goals?
Really to just keep creating art and to continue evolving and growing as an artist. Selling more work would be good too.
What are you working on now, and what can we expect from you soon?
I’ve been doing a lot of studies and experimenting with different ways of approaching my process for the last couple of years. Now I’m at a point where I’m looking to utilize what I’ve learned and discovered in more “complete” works. There are also a couple of series I had semi-abandoned when I went on that journey, which I would like to revisit and/or recontextualize with some new ideas.
