BRIAN CYPHER

untitled, 2012, acrylic on paper,11 x 15"

What are you working on in your studio right now?

There’s always a mix of drawings, paintings, and various works on paper in progress. I’ve been making smaller collage and paper constructions (which is a recent new tangent for me to explore). I started my first works on panel at the end of last year and I have a dozen or so that are ready to go. I'm really wanting to do some printmaking again... monotypes and drypoints. I really enjoy the surrender that happens when working with a press; you become a victim to the physics at work and the results are shared between intention and consequence. In general, I just really need to maintain several bodies of work happening at once. I don’t want there to be any down time or for any one body of work to monopolize my time in the studio. It’s a way to keep ideas in constant circulation.

Can you describe your working routine?

My routine revolves around creating as much as I can whenever I can. When I’m not at my full-time job or doing family things you can find me either working in the studio or out enjoying my surroundings. The studio is next to my house so that provides a very efficient way to maximize my time. Most of my weekends are spent in and around the studio. I have some time during the work week but it’s less concentrated and I use that time for things like work documentation, studio organization and just looking at the work. My most productive time is definitely from Friday evening until Sunday evening. I love working at night, into the next day.

Can you describe your studio and how, if at all, that affects your work space?

My current studio is a repurposed storage/workshop building on my house property. It was remodeled several years back and it's a rather small but functional space at 10 x 20 feet. When it was remodeled, I pushed the ceiling up and brought natural light into the space with windows and skylights. It really wouldn't have felt like a proper studio without it. It's quite a wonderful space to work in but I am starting to feel some growing pains with it. There’s one main wall that I use for painting and looking at work. The opposite wall contains two large flat file drawers that are stacked and the top surface functions as a workspace. I also keep all my books on that wall. In one half of the floor space, I have a long table that doubles as a workspace and a printmaking area. The rest of the walls function as places to put up images for reference and reflection. It's mostly a mix of recent work, older work and other visual interests that I’ve collected. The studio mostly affects my work because of the close proximity between it and my home. It's always there when I need it to be.

in progress

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

On an existential level, it really begins with the impulse to create… the wanting of ideas to be actualized; to see that energy manifest into physical form. My process takes place when the observation of our surroundings begins to trigger a response and I comply. The brain decides how to filter all these various inputs and it makes aesthetic decisions based on what’s visually important to me. This is what really drives my pursuit, creating something which did not exist before but yet informs me about my world in some new way. The visual information of everything we process becomes an instigator of investigation and experimentation. That’s not to say that all things have an equal value or importance but that my decisions are made through the interests of what I want to react to. It’s simply a process of discovery and trying to describe anything beyond would never suffice. Ideally, everything has an opportunity to play a part in my process; if I can see it, experience it, then there’s a chance it may surface in the work. In terms of what I do physically, it’s all about making marks that echo my thought processes. It’s a constant reiterative dance between the idealized and the actual. Some ideas have natural endpoints, where others could stay in a state of perpetual revision.

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I'm probably having the most trouble resolving the tangents that occur while working. Sometimes there are just so many possibilities of exploration that arise. Searching out every direction or idea is not a realistic or even feasible notion and that’s usually where I start to generate some anxieties. Choosing which directions to go investigate always feels like I’m sacrificing some unrealized discovery or something. I mean, I know that's part of the journey and experience of creation but still, I’d like to think I’m finding everything I seek. So, in actuality, there really isn't anything to resolve; it’s inherent in the creative exploration. It just comes down finding a balance between what's being realized and what I want those next steps to be and I know that the answers are found after the fact, in hindsight. I’m constantly driven by the act of putting all these pieces together that result in an experience and of course, the resultant object but that’s just evidence of creation, a visual container. I just don't want to leave any paths unexplored and that's a really nice problem to have as an artist.

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I haven’t ventured too far away from the typical materials that are used for drawing and painting but I wouldn’t confine myself to only using those materials. I’m not actively seeking out different materials just to add bulk to the work. If ‘alternative’ materials find their way into my process then it will be because of what material does on some functional and/or aesthetic value.

What does the future hold for this work?

It’s quite open-ended and full of all kinds of possibilities. I know I’ll be happy just continuing on with what comes from my process of inquiry and realization. Ultimately, the artwork serves as a consequence of my thinking; physical objects of creation that leaves evidence of experience. In this respect the future of the work is to show me my past.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my work and thoughts. I’ve really enjoyed your blog over the past year and appreciate being able to be part it. It’s always interesting to see and read about what other artists are doing.

Sikuli, 2011, spray paint, sharpie

& china marker on opalux, 24 x 19"

TERRY GREENE

Untitled (P1100579), 2011, Acrylic, tape

& staples on canvas, 11 3/4" x 9 1/2"

What are you working on in your studio right now?

At the moment I’m working on several ongoing series of works. Some on canvas, these are small acrylic paintings. A series of works on gaffa-tape over stretchers, incorporating coloured tape and paint. I also have a series of works on found boards and which I think of as sketches or drawings, again employing acrylic paint. Each of these three series is distinct and autonomous but inevitably informs the others.

Can you describe your working routine?

I'm lucky enough to get into the studio every day to at least look at the paintings I’ve been working on. But first it's emailing or blogging, then breakfast and walking my dog. My workspace is the attic room and I get in for around 10'ish. I always have a number of pieces of canvas, paper and boards on the floor, in various states of beginning, collecting happy accidents, incidental marks and the occasional footprint. Other works are leaning around the edges of the space and one or two are on the walls - these tend to be the ones I’m thinking about and feeling are near some state of becoming or just bloody awful. I don't have a particular routine in the studio one of the ongoing pieces on the floor suggests a move and it all just begins. In productive periods I can spend most of the day in the space until about 4'ish.when I have to go to work (I have a part-time admin job). I'm back home for around 8.30 and either return upstairs to continue working or alternatively I like to make mix-media sketches on small bits of paper from cheap drawing pads.

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

At the present time the attic space is my studio. It's rather cluttered with lots of old computer monitors, camping equipment and suitcases for some reason. The space is a little chaotic but to be honest it works for me. Perhaps because of the cramped quarters I work on a small scale, but that feels perfectly natural and it enables me to work on lots of paintings at any one time. Also because wall-space is limited I work pretty much exclusively on the floor.

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I have stacks of (shop purchased) ready stretched canvases and in perhaps a critical act against my own intimidation (or reverence) for the “canvas” and its surface, I cut the primed cotton away from the stretcher. This has the added advantage of enabling me to work on both sides of the canvas until the moment one side wins out. I work across any number of bits of canvas littering the floor, adding and obscuring stains of colour and variously generated marks. My thinking at that point is, in part, that I’m engaged with drawing attention to the fact of the paint (or tape) on the loose plane of the canvas. Often tape is employed as little objects on the canvas while at the same time they are colour and light illuminating the ground. I’m particularly interested in exploring that moment between when the background and foreground don’t really meld or talk to one another and that split second that a real dialogue begins – however unrefined. Finally the canvas is re-attached to a stretcher in a rather provisional manner.

Untitled (P1110501), 2012,

Acrylic on canvas, 17 1/2" x 12 1/2"

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I'm not sure I am really trying to resolve anything - just being open to the moment when some form of dialogue begins within each work. But then I guess there's always a small matter of resolving the decision of taking up a medium, and attempting to maintain a level of distance and ambivalence towards it’s grand narratives.

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I think like most artists I like to push at any parameters from time to time, to explore some new territory and surprise myself. However at the moment a list of materials would include all the usual suspects: acrylic paint, canvas/fabric, stretchers, found boards, paper, pencils, marker pens, insulation tape, Gaffa tape, staples, wall paper paste and general studio mess/dust. These materials are combined or approached in a number of expanding ways - but all pretty much firmly rooted well within what would be thought of a painting practice.

What does the future hold for this work?

Well, I guess if I am honest I’m not really sure. I have some exhibitions in the pipeline. However, recently I’ve discovered I enjoy living with my work, not necessarily looking at it on a day to day basis, but rather that strange sort of "re-discovering" that takes place with a painting or drawing - when viewed weeks, months and years later. There begins a new and interesting dialogue which arises from the inevitable collision between the present and the past.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I would like to thank you Valarie for this opportunity. Also recently I’ve begun to notice a very creative community of artists, up here online, with whom it's possible to develop a real and expansive dialogue and one which personally I’m finding invaluable. And so thank you all.

Untitled (P1110492), 2011,

Acrylic and tape on canvas, 10 1/2" x 8 1/2"

RENÉ KORTEN

Fall From Grace, 2011
120 x 154 cm, acrylic on MDF

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I’m working on new paintings for two upcoming solo exhibitions starting in June. They run almost simultanuously, both in the city of Tilburg. One show is in the beautiful Museum De Pont, the other one in Luycks Gallery. Combined with the exhibitions a book about my work will be presented, entitled ‘Diver’s Eye’. Creating that monograph also takes up a lot of my time at the moment, in fact even most of my time.

Can you describe your working routine?

I don’t have a fixed working routine. Different periods ask for a different focus and that’s allright. I can be very focused on painting and drawing for periods of time and at other times I’m working on other things like teaching art, doing work for two advisory committees I am a member of, but also other stuff like preparing panels to paint on, making frames, updating website and so on. So now making a book in collaboration with the publisher distracts me a bit from painting. It’s important to me that all of these activities are connected to art.

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studio space is the first floor of a former small engine factory. It is divided into three parts because three artists used to work here. Now I’m on my own. There are windows on both sides: on one side I look on the roof of an old big industrial space, on the other side is a lot of greenery and some big trees, very near. A museum director once visited me in the studio to prepare an opening speech for an upcoming exhibition. In the speech he mentioned the contrast of the two views in my studio, and he suggested that this must have inspired me in the work dealing with the polarity culture/nature. I didn’t think that he was right about that at the time, but now I think there was more truth in it than I realized then. Although I have never been an artist who depicts directly what he sees.

Dub, 1,2 & 3, 2011,120 x 154 cm,

acrylic, graphite, charcoal on MDF

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I make my paintings on wood panels. They used to be plywood or masonite, now I prefer MDF boards. The hardness of the surface suits me well. By using tape I can create hard edges,and this is combined with applying highly diluted acrylic paint. Therefore the painting panel is always placed horizontally on the floor or on a table whenever I do the actual painting. Each painting has its own process of creation. Sometimes I make a painting or a series of paintings, based on a concept, for instance in a recent three-part series, where the first layer of each of the works is a big letter in pencil lines, and the combined letters make up the word DUB. In other paintings there is a more gestural approach. But always my aim is to somehow connect the more rational or intellectual part of creating an artwork to the pure joy of working with paint, to an intuitive and only partly controllable way of working.

I don’t prepare my paintings by making sketches. But I do sketch on the paintings themselves by adding and shifting bits of paper in different colors and shapes. I do this to find out what the next step has to be, working towards a composition that is complex and rich because of its contradictions, but that is also convincing and clear. This means that sometimes it takes a lot of time to develop and finish my paintings.

Next to painting I make works on paper, lately in pretty small sizes. Their creation goes much faster. I call these SWOPs (Small Works On Paper). This is an ongoing series and I work on them in periods, as mentioned earlier. In these works I often involve prints based on photographs. I always carry my camera and I take a lot pictures wherever I am. Photos of things that catch my eye and surprise me, of interesting compositions and combinations of elements that look promising. But these photos are just material; I rework them on the computer to create images less recognizable and with a drawing-like suggestive quality. Then I print them and use them as a starting point to create new works by adding one or more elements or layers of paint.

In progress

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

The thing that gives me most trouble resolving is in fact the essence of the work: how to transform a number of visual ingredients into a meaningful image. And there is not a recipe for that. In the beginning it’s just trial and error, I’m moving things around and most of the time nothing happens, but I’m always looking for the moment that the lines, forms and stains come alive and in their combination start talking to me: ‘let me be’. It’s a matter of chemistry. This is what I strive for, it has to happen, but I cannot predict when it does and how long it takes.

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain

parameters?

Experimentation with different materials is not an aim in itself. I have always found that limitations are stimulating to me. I love to work with techniques and means as simple as possible. That’s why I use acrylic paint. It enables me to act very quickly once I know what to do, and there are hardly any technical problems to solve. Not a focus on technique, but on trying to take the right actions, making the right choices and by that creating evocative images.

What does the future hold for this work?

I have no idea. But I do hope to keep developing the expressiveness of my work. Hopefully the recognition of it will continue to grow, enabling me to keep creating work and exhibiting it in many interesting places.

Senkrecht,  1996-2012
122 x 93,5 cm, acrylic on masonite

Is there anything else you would like to add?

The last few years the atmosphere in the Netherlands changed dramatically, also in regard to the arts. Although the political situation is shifting again very recently in a somewhat hopeful direction, the importance of the arts has decreased considerably in the public opinion and artist have been pushed to the margins of society. That’s why I want to express the hope that we as artists from everywhere stick together; we have to support each other and keep focusing on the power of art to inspire people in living together in a compassionate, openminded and loving way.

Thanks Valerie for the opportunity to tell about my working practise and express this wish.