Category: Artist Interviews

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist?

I guess that took me some time and it was a gradual change rather than a sudden realization. Thinking about it, I’d say I started to see some relevant potential in my creative thinking around the age of 16 while browsing a studio book shelf of mostly postwar and contemporary art at one older painter’s studio. I thought, ‘This is fun. I can do this. Why not, actually?’. And I slowly developed my attitude through trial and error.

Where are you from and what was your upbringing like? How has this impacted your work?

I was born in former Czechoslovakia just before the fall of Communism (of which I have no conscious memory) and so grew up in the period of Slovakia’s fast paced transition to a capitalist open-market society. Coming from a historically fragmented culture the notion that landscape/territory are matters of foreign landlords who serve their best interests is deeply embedded in me. In my teenage years painting became a process of a meaningful escape from the barrage of uncertainty. It grounded me and I’ve discovered a way to immerse myself in the creative process more and more. Besides, growing up in a landlocked European country without direct ocean access, crossing borders meant passing through foreign territories, languages and cultures without the clear sight of new or distinct horizons. My paintings have their origin in this shaken background. Painting, as a constructed space, allows me to synthesize these ideas in a visual manner and  explore these notions of non-verbal immersion to impossible territories and fictive spaces.

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist? 

When I started painting, back in 2018. I felt that I was doing something artistic when I was a  photographer, but I didn’t really feel like an ‘artist’ proper until I began painting. That  probably has more to do with my own romantic notions of what an artist is than any  practical reasons, but it also came from a strong, steady feeling that I was finally doing what  I should be doing. 

Where are you from and what was your upbringing like? How has this impacted your  work? 

I went to school in Berkshire, but I spent the first 10 years of my life going abroad regularly  as a result of my father being a geologist. I have sensory memories of being in South Korea  when I was very little and then Indonesia later on. There were many other places too for  shorter periods. I think the main effect this had was to give me a real sense of rootlessness,  and a taste for new places, for which I am very grateful although it has meant a rather  fractured life. That contributed probably to my permanent sense of being an outsider – although I did feel at home in London always, that city is my spiritual home. 

The work is definitely guided by my outsider sensibility, it is also probably a contributing  factor to the exotic and tropical elements that find their way in to my work, shapes  resembling palm trees, lots of snake-like shapes, the presence of predatory mouths and  backgrounds of partially seen activity – they make me aware of hazy memories of jungles. 

Paint us a picture of your artistic journey. What inspired you to first pursue, and then  continue to practice, artistic work? Was there a pivotal moment when you felt you were  on the right track? 

Well, I discovered photography around the age of 20, which led to University and a long  standing love of my camera culminating in my moving to London and pursuing music  photography. These experiences were all an important part of my journey. However, I was  ambitious but also unsure how to steer my career and quite what I wanted out of it.  Circumstances ended up leading me to painting eventually and out of London, and  somehow I was able to focus much more clearly.  

Maybe I was overwhelmed by external stimulation in London and so when that wasn’t there  I had time to look internally, I had recently divorced as well and life was evolving. At that  moment a lot of things seemed to coalesce within me and I felt like I was doing what I was  meant to do finally. 

Tell us about your upbringing. How has it impacted your work today?

I was born in Switzerland, my dad is Swedish, and my parents met in London. I. moved around a lot, South Africa, Austria, Slovakia, and Spain. My upbringing was nomadic. It made me very curious, always wanting to learn more and see more. I think that’s how I approach art, too; forever exploring and wanting to learn.

Where do you consider home?

I’d say London is home in many ways, as I have spent so much time there. But I moved to Stockholm a little over a year ago, and that’s beginning to feel like home too. And, wherever my three cats are, they will always be home to me.

In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes a variety of fantastical cities for his host, Kublai Khan. Eventually, Polo confesses that he is actually describing one city: Venice. Similarly in Chan’s work, his subjects may stem from different sources (ranging from Canada to Germany), but his works often result in reappraisals of his home of Hong Kong. This repetition of intent not only reflects Chan’s love of the city, but perhaps the specific type of Chinese love known as 不捨, which translates to the unwillingness to let go. It is the indelible relationality between objects, interpersonal relationships, geography, and time that forms the emotional groundwork of Chan’s paintings. We had the pleasure to hear more about his practice. 

Paint us a picture of your artistic journey. 

I started painting in elementary school. I continued painting for ten years, so it was a natural progression to continue studying art in college.When I did my graduation work, I would draw my subjects according to scale and imitate even the tiniest of details. But then I began to question myself: why do I need to adhere to verisimilitude?

My current practice begins with taking inspiration from images. The way I see images is that it presents a secondary reality. The proliferation of media and technology has made it challenging to approach subjects through a primary source. I began to accept painting as a way to communicate with this struggle, almost like depicting a tertiary reality. What you see on the canvas is a world that belongs to me, created by me. 

What does the idea of  ‘tertiary reality’ add to or subtract from the painting?

A heightened sense of readability is added to the painting. I try to make the primer and the underpainting apparent in my work. I will even deliberately leave certain spaces blank to allow the painting to breathe. Painting is different from photography in the sense that the process is visible. I don’t consider the blank spaces to be a loss. Every choice I make gives new information to the painting. 

I’ve often wondered that given the intense climate of 2022, painting can seem like a frivolous task, especially within the context of Hong Kong. But this thought has inspired me to demand more of myself when I start a new work: what am I actually doing? What is actually the purpose here?

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist?

I think I  always saw myself as an artist, I grew up in a household surrounded by art and my mother is a sculpture. As cliche as it sounds I think it was my first language. I suffered from a severe speech disorder and was put into the autisic bracket. Normal communication was not how I entered this world. Instead I used images to communicate, landscapes and flowers were when I was happy and dark muddy pictures were when I was angry. All that I do today is a slightly more sophicscated verson of what I did as a little boy attempt to communicate a feeling. 

Where are you from and what was your upbringing like?

I grew up in north devon at the top of Exmoor, where the hills roll into the sea. Growing up on a converted farm with nature in abundance and endless things to do. We were always outside playing and creating in one way or another which set its president in my process to this day still. Trying to understand people and trying to see beyond what our vision allows. 

As I mentioned before my early years, with the speech disorder, were challanging but my fortune was my upbringing. I had a mother would could understand without words actions and movement were enough for her to understand me as my father too. 

I think all our past responds to the work that we challenge ourselves with, the tentative years growing up, absorbing new surroundings, feels, moments. They all happen at a blink of an eye and it takes us our adult life to really understand how those few years shape us as characters and create our foundation which stays true through into death.  

Paint us a picture of your artistic journey. What inspired you to first pursue, and then continue to practice artistic work? 

I was obsessed with Van Gogh as a child, someone who painted landscape with the vivid colour of someone that could see beyond what the eye had shown. Which I related too, dedication that went far beyond a ‘healthy relationship’  which again I could empathise with. When I was 11 my dad took me to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam I remember walking round the pemerminte show coming to the end of his life ( the show is in chronological order) and meet the painting ‘Wheatfield with Crows’ I start to blush up and tears stream down and I look my left and my father with the same bloodshot eyes. That moment shaped my life, to be able to make someone cry from an image, without a political edge, just a metaphor of someones life. I thought that was pure power. 

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist?

In the past few years.

Where are you from and what was your upbringing like?

I was born in Israel to immigrant parents. They came here in the 1970s from the US (though my father was originally Dutch). My parents had certain ideals and values, like the importance of family, of working, of education, but they didn’t know how to talk about feelings. I think this is a characteristic of a lot of my generation (born in the 80s). Also, it could just be something that happens between parents and children – the gap between the generations. It’s very frustrating. As a child there were many times I didn’t understand what I was seeing or understood something I couldn’t see. This brought to my attention that seeing is not automatic, and neither is meaning. There is a real question regarding what you see and what meaning or interpretation you give it. This is still a big question for me.

Paint us a picture of your artistic journey. What inspired you to first pursue, and then continue to practice artistic work? 

I always drew and painted as a child, but then at some point I stopped. I returned to painting as an adult during a study year in Freiburg. I had a serious medical occurrence, and after I got out of the hospital I went and bought some oil paints and canvas. Painting creates a connection between the body and the psyche, and for me it was a way to touch something that I couldn’t see. On the one hand it is a very physical action, especially if you like to paint on big canvases, like I do, and on the other there is always the mental process of deciding what to paint or if you want to paint over something, or what colors to use and so on.

When I was in Freiburg I was studying art history, which is what I started studying at university. I was completing my MA. After I returned I enrolled in Bezalel art academy, and studied art and painting. When I finished the academy I rented a studio and started working. So, I’ve been painting in the studio for ten years now. I don’t think I’ve had one pivotal moment. I’ve had a few. With painting it is an ongoing process. I paint and paint, and at some point I feel like something has to change, or I try out an idea I had and say – look – this is a direction I’d like to develop. And so, my painting also changes. It is alive, and reacts to my life, and also, of course, to the studio process which is always developing.

I have found that exposing myself to different techniques gives new perspectives to painting. So, I’ve learned different kinds of print – etching, silk screen, and just recently woodcut. Each one of these makes me think anew about painting, and I love that.

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist?

The decision of embracing my passion for art represents a commitment to my creative self. As I decided to dedicate myself to my artistic practice, I saw this as an act of loyalty towards my inner joy and desires, and as a way to challenge myself to a greater extent. It was after I started feeling such a strong sense of commitment and passion towards art that I also began to see this as part of my identity. 

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist?

I think that I’ve always seen myself as an artist: For as long as I can remember, I’ve been making things with my hands. When I was a child, I used to make a lot of pocketbooks out of paper, and my great aunt taught me how to sew on a machine when I was around five years old, so I began making clothes, pillows, and blankets at a young age. I also took painting and drawing classes at places like the 92 Street Y and the Art Student’s League throughout my adolescence.

In spite of my early exposure to art, I didn’t think that I’d pursue anything artistic as a career until recently.  However, when I went to college I decided to take a drawing class during my freshman year. My great grandmother died around this time, and I found that spending time in the studio was something that invigorated and inspired me—I appreciated that art making felt more intuitive and physical than my written coursework. I liked to supplement my academic research with studio time; it felt like a balance between the body and the mind or the Apollonian and the Dionysean, in the words of the German philosopher Fredich Nietzsche. I feel that I’ve maintained a studio practice since then, and I see art as a way for me to work through issues like ancestral communication, archival research, and personal experience.

Where are you from and what was your upbringing like?

I was born and raised in New York City, a place filled with visual art and cultural institutions. I feel very lucky that my family introduced me to art when I was a child—I’ve been going to museums, galleries, and cultural events in New York since I was an infant. When I was a child, my grandfather also took me to museums around the city including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met Cloisters, the Frick, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the Museum of Natural History. My great aunt was also a collector, so I also had art in my home. And my great uncle played for this avant garde jazz band called Sun Ra. I have a half sibling, but I grew up as an only child, so I also spent a lot of time alone making things and looking at content on the internet, which influenced my aesthetic because I often blend text with images, something that is very endemic to internet culture. 

Even though I grew up immersed in images, I didn’t consider working in the arts because the art world was still very white and rich, so I didn’t think that I’d ever have a job within it. I grew up with a single mother in the South Bronx, and I went to public schools until college, so art school seemed like it was reserved for rich white people on the Upper West Side—not me.  However, around 2014 or 2015, movements on the internet like the Art Hoe Collective made me realize that it might be possible to make art into my career, and conversations about accessibility made me feel more hopeful that the art world would become more democratized. I try to prioritize things like racial and gender inclusion in my work, and I also try to make it as intersectional as possible.

Paint us a picture of your artistic journey. What inspired you to first pursue, and then continue to practice artistic work? 

As I mentioned in the previous question, I feel that art has always played a role in my life, but certain events definitely called me to spend more time on art making. I think that many of the classes I took in college helped me see what it was like to have a studio practice, and I continued to follow my passions from there. I also began freelance writing for Artsy after college—having a job in the art world certainly helped me become immersed in it and encouraged me to continue making work. 

When did you first begin to see yourself as an artist?

In 2015 I sold my first drawing to someone who I didn’t know. I was moved by the fact that the person appreciated the work just by itself. That was a defining moment for me. 

Where are you from and what was your upbringing like?

I was born and raised in Japan. My father is a psychoanalyst and he often brought me to his office when I was a child. he had a big wooden box filled with sand and tons of miniature figures displayed on a shelf in his office room at that time. That was there for a type of children’s therapy called “Sandplay therapy” a method by which the doctor was able to analyze a child’s unconscious thoughts by the miniature world they created with the toys on the sand landscape inside of the box. Every time I went to his office, I was so into making my little world inside of the box. They are all the elements of this real world but depending on how you place them, the world becomes unusual and that made me imagine all the different stories behind them. That experience influenced me in my creating process.

Paint us a picture of your artistic journey. What inspired you to first pursue, and then continue to practice artistic work? 

Making a visible daydream is the coherent purpose for my creation. I define daydream as another world that a human can bring their imagination to their reality so it can exist on the boundary between the “Usual” and “Unusual”. Most people must have been living in their own daydreams when they were kids. I remember myself was there and always imagining like “what if when I turn the corner then there is a giant elephant standing in front of the super market today?” and also I believed I was able to be a pink bunny when I grew up. Those daydreams made me terrified, excited, fascinated, and feeling free. Somewhere down the line, I started living in the world based on common sense. In that world, there is no big elephant in front of the supermarket and of course, I can’t be a pink bunny. 

The first time my “Of course” got cracked was the time I moved in US. my language was not a communication tool anymore and the size of the food was five times bigger than the food on my plate in Japan. Surrounded by the big buildings and people who’s speak I could not understand made me feel as if I was a tiny child, fixed upon the boundary between my usual and unusual and I recall that feeling I used to feel. That made me realized that I can still experienced that feeling again even though I grew up. Then I started to wonder if I can give this experience to others through my creation.