Interview with the Chilean artist Angelica Turner about her art process, view of nature, spirituality, teaching art, and how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting her artwork.
Artist website: https://www.angelicaturnerartist.com/
When I discovered Angelica's art, I was immediately drawn in by the bright colors and calm compositions of ferns and foliage applied in expressive gestures. I was very curious to find out about her process and what it means to be working and teaching art in the world today, and also how things have shifted due to the current quarantine.We sat together in a remote conversation on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.
Interviewer: Fiona Neary, in Saratoga Springs, NY
Artist: Angelica Turner, in San Francisco, CA
Photographs courtesy of the Artist.
Fiona Neary: "Hi, Angelica, it's so nice to meet you."
Angelica Turner: "You too, thank you for your interest in my art!"
FN: "Of course, its so beautiful and inspiring! So, how did growing up in Chile and hiking in Patagonia influence you as an artist? Was there one moment in your life where you knew you were going to be a painter? Sorry, I guess that's kind of two questions..."
AT: "Yes, definitely my life in Chile was a huge influence on my art. I can actually answer that in one question. So I grew up in Chile, I always loved to paint and draw, but mostly in a very elementary/ high school way. It would be the work they asked me to do. But I never took any painting classes or anything, instead I had piano lessons that I hated. And then I went to art school and that was actually my first time understanding a little bit more about art and contemporary art, more than just liking how to draw or paint. And I learned there, but all of my first explorations in art had nothing to do with what I do now even when I knew that painting was what I wanted to do. My actual body of work started after hiking for a long time and taking pictures of the forests, the vegetation, and preferring those kinds of landscapes to others. Until I just started to do drawings of my pictures and I decided that I actually like landscapes. I always thought I would paint figures or nudes, and suddenly it was like "this makes sense!" I moved into landscapes and forests and I've never stopped since then. But everything was (I mean now it's not because I'm living in San Francisco), but everything at the beginning was Patagonia, like the forests of Chile which I've started understanding that it can be any forest but it has to have some [particular] qualities. I like natural places to be very pristine so they have the sense of "untouched". Its more difficult for me to have a strong connection and take it to my work with something that is too touristic or too developed, I kinda need that sanctuary thing of the forest which is when you are alone or in a small group."
"To long for (añorar) #2" Oil Painting, 2020
FN: "I totally understand that and I love that idea. So I also read in a previous interview that you associate nature with spirituality- Do you feel the same connection when you paint as when you are in a forest?"
AT: "That's something I've thought a lot about and I think the reason why the forest is very spiritual for me is because hiking or camping, or anything- gives me the space to think about things, like bigger things, and to have meaningful conversations. I like getting to things that are more spiritual. And that is something that I am still chewing while going through the whole process of going to the studio and working. And then, all those conversations or thoughts that started in the forest start appearing in a different palette, or start becoming a metaphor for the forest. The forest is the object I use to actually work about something much more personal, and what is affecting me. It can even be political, and all these conversations assume a kind of color palette, a kind of brush stroke, an amount of intensity, or silence, or different things."
FN: "I love that, how everything in life has its own medium like a paint texture or color!"
AT: "Definitely"
FN: "What is the reaction that you would like to get from your viewers, that when you paint you would like to have them feel?"
AT: "I think its those different emotions of the forest- sometimes when I paint something its like I really miss this place and it starts being really nostalgic and intense. So its not like I expect someone to feel exactly like I do, but at least to have that vibrancy or that energy of it. And I do feel like its very important. Sometimes I think I'm getting too abstract in some areas, but I don't care if it is in some areas. I do feel that our connection in nature is essential to maintain that idea of the forest as a refuge and this place that is allowing and making you to feel these things. I believe valuing how the forest, and green and vegetation, and each place in nature basically, is really important. Even though I'm not an expert or anything, I feel that the ecology of the planet is important. Like actually being grateful about a place and wanting that place to exist..."
FN: "Right!"
AT: "...And as well generating a kind of a new world in these places. I used to be much more representational in the way I painted first, and I've kinda moved and taken distance, just to give something much more emotion to it. So that's it basically, I don't know if it makes sense."
FN: "No, definitely it does, I like that."
AT: "Good"
FN: "So do you feel, as we are in a pandemic right now, do you find that it is affecting how you are producing your art or how you view your work?"
AT: "Yes, it has changed the rhythm I was having before the quarantine started, it was pretty different-I had been working a lot, and my day was always structured where I'd paint, but I was always having to answer emails and very be structured in other things. So in some way things stopped, or almost stopped and I had to rethink ways of networking. Everything is slower now, which has been really good for my work. I have thought about it much more, I have made many more mistakes but at the same time, I think that it is growing much more and having a good turn, like the artwork itself. But obviously the pandemic stopped a lot of submission opportunities, and even things I was working on. I feel like its probably going to be bad for the art market, but for the work itself in my case, I think its going to be good. I've had the space, its kinda been like a retreat. I do believe everything happens for some reason."
Work in progress with the series "Friendship"
FN: "Yes, everything has a certain balance. Ok, I think I'll do one more question."
AT: "Okay."
FN: "I heard that you teach art to high school students?"
AT: "Yeah, I've taught like every age!"
FN: "Oh, great! So what is it about teaching art that is the most satisfying?"
AT: "I've taught from four year old's with little workshops after class to kids in high school and seniors, and a lot of oil painting. I do feel like the most exciting thing is actually when the students do that "click" in which they understand how to observe something or they discover something they wouldn't have thought they could do even, like something very abstract or very difficult to measure. But when they click and actually become more motivated and they understand the message, that's amazing! When you see them in the element- like wow, exciting! I think people also have the preconception of art teachers being much more free and untidy maybe, but I do feel like its the opposite. We have to be really structured to have the class divided in steps, otherwise the students get lost. Also I think that its not good to give too many instructions and there has to be a space for people to be creative and expressive and everything. Students in general, especially the ones that think they are "bad" at art need rules, everybody needs a different structure. Something where they can come in and from there open up [gestures with hands together then apart]. I feel it is a very gratifying work! It is exhausting to teach art, it is a more noisy environment, so every time you have to say something you have to quiet the room again. So that requires a lot of energy but its amazing. It also is really nice to discover how the instructions can develop into very different things and how you then get ideas from that and actually learn from students. Adults are another thing, I don't know if its old education or what, but there are some insecurities in some people where they think they are "bad" at things. So many adults take oil painting classes and go in thinking that they might be good but they are probably very... "bad" at it, so they are really insecure about doing something stupid. So giving them the freedom to make mistakes, and letting them know that everything can be corrected and mistakes are part of the process is the most difficult thing... like making them loose again because they can be very stiff and that is the fault of an education system that is making them be good at one thing and not another."
FN: "I'm sure its a lot of work getting rid of those insecurities after all of those years!"
AT: "Exactly it's like clearing everything out. Thank you very much, Fiona!"
FN: "Yes, thank you so much for meeting with me Angelica! This was wonderful."
Comments