Quick Draw Artist Interview #16: Janna Watson

Quick Draw Artist Interviews are a series of interviews conducted by Otino Corsano using Facebook's IM Chat feature. Spontaneous conversations with international artists are recorded and documented. New “Quick Draw Artist Interviews” will be posted here on the Toronto Artpost blog.
Otino personally thanks Lee Ka-sing for welcoming him back to Toronto Artpost.
Quick: drops. It wasn’t the first time it started to rain like this here. teem. It’s strange how first everyone was just fine in the lake; yet the concept of soaked is altogether different in a downpour. They run; we freeze; chemise evanescence; dissolved; just real and raw. Draw: art about art.

Janna Watson is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, and has already begun building an impressive list of exhibitions. Using a hybridizing and synthetic set of tactics, her work is intended to (con) fuse categories of painterly and graphic, landscape and body, 2D and 3D, to blend tension and coherence as one. Watson's most recent solo exhibition opens at Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver in June 2011.



Clear Window · Report
Today

Otino
8:35pm
Hey Janna!
Would you happen to be free now?

Janna
8:35pm
hey hi
I have about 15 min.
Otino
8:38pm
Let’s make this Part 1
and we can pick it up again later...
Sounds good?
Janna
8:40pm
cool.

Otino
8:41pm
The reason I’m intent on interviewing you is since I first viewed your work I imagined it to be the type of paintings I would want to create if I was exclusively a painter.
Janna
8:42pm
interesting.

Otino
8:42pm
You seem to gather so many contemporary tropes and weave them together into something both familiar and unexpected.
Janna
8:42pm
I like that.

Otino
8:42pm
It almost seems your solutions are obvious at first –
as if I had already once thought of them.
Yet I didn't.
You did.
Janna
8:43pm
haha.
Otino
8:43pm
How did you formulate your aesthetic?

Janna
8:44pm
It happened over years
of getting into the work;
letting myself make mistakes
and trusting those mistakes.
Otino
8:44pm
It appears you are constantly free-forming, improvising. Is this true?
Janna
8:45pm
totally.
I never plan anything...

Otino
8:45pm
Isn't that both scary and painful?
I mean as a painter...

Janna
8:45pm
no.
maybe it was a factor in the beginning.
I was worried I would never be able to create something as good.
Then I realized things can really happen in the moment.
It’s like having a conversation
with someone you have learned to trust.
You don't plan out these kinds of conversations.

Otino
8:47pm
One of my grad school instructors told us the story of how a Hollywood film crew had asked him to host a well-known actor at his studio. They thought it would help the actor to observe a "real artist" at work as research for his role as a famous artist in an upcoming feature.
My professor warned them: "I don't really do much in my studio”. Still the reputable actor showed up and left after a few minutes due to boredom.

I really think they should have sent the actor to you instead.
Your works are the perfect cinematic paintings.
They are archetypal in their abstract formulations and passionate forms.
Are your works paintings of paintings?


Janna
8:50pm
hmm…
Do you mean
metaphorically?
Otino
8:50pm
It seems they are iconic in their painterliness.
And you adopt abstraction without hesitation.

Janna
8:51pm
I think there is definitely
an assimilation between the painterly and the graphic.
Otino
8:52pm
In your writings you speak of the importance of Line.
We see swirling linear elements spiraling in lyrical motions...
Nevertheless, I see Volume as the overriding factor in a lot of your compositions.
Are you playing the two off one another:
Solid vs 2-D?

Janna
8:54pm
Each line and gesture I create is an actual experience with its own innate history.
It is not illustrating something - it is the sensation of its own realization.
I am interested in playing with depth and line can really aesthetically harmonize a work.
Otino
8:54pm
Your colour palette is enviable and mature.
It's like you are attacking the surfaces with slivers of light all blending into new hues.

Janna
8:55pm
Thank you for being so thoughtful about my work.
Otino
8:55pm
It’s all there.

Janna
8:56pm
I want to save this conversation somehow.
Otino
8:56pm
It’s saved!
We are publishing it remember?


Janna
8:57pm
hah. Nice.
O.k. I was supposed to be out the door by 9...
yet this is intriguing...
When should we continue?
Otino
8:58pm
Just call me when you are free.

Janna
8:59pm
O.k. I will text you.
I'm open tomorrow
Otino
8:59pm
So am I.
Thanks Janna.

Janna
8:59pm
O.k. cool.
Thank-you.
Talk soon.
Janna is offline.

Clear Window · Report
Today

Janna
10:20pm
hi.
Sorry, somehow I didn't put your number in my phone yet.
Otino
10:21pm
hey.
O.k. Ready for Part 2?

Janna
10:22pm
haha.
I guess so.
I think you are more ready than I am.
Otino
10:22pm
Only sometimes.
So last time we spoke we focused on the formal aspects of your paintings.

Janna
10:23pm
yes.
Otino
10:23pm
There are many formal qualities to consider.
It is as if you paint to make these elements the subject matter.
So do you consider your work non-representational?
Janna
10:24pm
yes completely.
I think that's why it is sometimes difficult to speak about

Otino
10:24pm
So there are no overarching narratives the viewer should worry about?
Janna
10:24pm
no.
Otino
10:25pm
No images of explosions?

Janna
10:25pm
I think the reason why I feel my titles are important
is because they create another point of entry for the viewer.
Otino
10:26pm
Like what a song title offers an instrumental/ambient track with no vocals/lyrics?
Janna
10:26pm
yes.
Yet, no one questions music the way they question abstraction in painting
because music is a more tangible sensation.
Whereas, to understand non-representational art
you have to become sensitive to it.

Otino
10:27pm
I think people can feel what you are doing.
Janna
10:28pm
Some get it
and some feel it but don't understand why.
This is where my titles come into play.

Otino
10:29pm
How does the title "an orange peal and a radio" better prepare me to receive your 2010 painting?
I wonder if you would be better off with the default "untitled" as the title and force the argument into pure non-representation?
Push the perceiver to leap in…
Janna
10:31pm
Even though the viewer ultimately owns it through experience:
"your heart is a strange little orange".

Otino
10:31pm
The full line “Your heart is a strange little orange ready to be peeled”
is familiar from your online artist’s statement.
I think the “peeling” is the best part – and definitely should not be omitted.
Janna
10:32pm
It is obviously metaphorical, feeling-based, romantic, dealing with complexities and probing the viewer to open up the poetical side of their mind to visually experience a lyrical feeling.
My paintings could be anything and everything
but I am most interested in staging a feeling.

Otino
10:34pm
I grew up in the seventies and I really miss the freedoms associated with the time.
Your work seems to remind me of college kids partying in the local public park in the summer time without shoes.

Janna
10:34pm
hahha. amazing.
Otino
10:34pm
Letting it go and experience the beauty of colour, light, texture, etc...
In an uptight digital culture - this return to the tangible essentials is so fresh and needed.

Janna
10:35pm
It really is about letting go.
Even in the beginning, I realized when exploring painting in an abstract manner "mistakes" are key.
Otino
10:35pm
Are you a hippie?
Are your paintings utopias?
Janna
10:35pm
haha I'm not a hippie.
I wear a lot of black
and I am prone to melancholia.

Otino
10:37pm
Are your paintings escapist mechanisms?
Janna
10:37pm
no. I don't feel they are mechanisms for escape.
hmmm…
i guess you could say my paintings are mini utopias;
yet I’m mostly obsessed with the sky.

Otino
10:40pm
Your new show at Bau-XI Gallery in Vancouver opens on June 4th.
Are there significant new movements in this body of work or are they unique renditions of classic Watson maneuvers?
Janna
10:41pm
I feel like my current Vancouver show is pretty classic -
bringing rationality to the etheric.


Otino
10:43pm
I think I would be scared to share a studio with you since I imagine
you must get really intense when you make such robust and dynamic work.
Do you sometimes get heady about your working procedure or is it now down to rote?

Janna
10:45pm
It can get intense with larger paintings because it's easier to incorporate full body gestures.
In those moments, I really feel like I'm in the work as opposed to working on smaller paintings where it is more like contemplation.
Sometimes I definitely feel the process has become rote for me; yet those pieces usually get overhauled.


I think it’s important to just paint. Always.
A big part of my process involves leaving the work and returning to see the painting differently.
I always try to look at my work with new eyes.

Otino
10:47pm
What is with abstraction and Canadian artists?
Isn't abstraction inevitably imitation?
Janna
10:48pm
imitation of what?

Otino
10:48pm
Pollock
Janna
10:48pm
I hate Pollock

Otino
10:49pm
…or any of the NY heavy weights.
You seem like Sam Francis to me
and less the Jack Bush type.
Jack tried to win over Greenberg and the entire theoretical package.
Francis just had fun on the West Coast doing his own thing.

Janna
10:50pm
My favorite artist is Cy Twombly.
I love Jack Bush more than Sam Francis.
Jack Bush had an off beat sense of colour and space.
Sam is so primary colour
and symmetrical.

Otino
10:52pm
What about your contemporaries?
Who do you watch?

Janna
10:52pm
Kim Dorland is one of my favorite artists.
I try not to watch too hard -
enough to be inspired.
I don't want to be so influenced by what other people are doing
because it’ll make my ego flare up.

Otino
10:54pm
Do you think painting is sustainable?


Janna
10:54pm
As a career?
Or as object?
Otino
10:54pm
Both.

Janna
10:54pm
Yes.
I think painting is one of the most sustainable of all art forms
because of its history.
Otino
10:55pm
I accept your historical argument only because it is clear to me your works have the uncanny ability to make time stand still.
As for history,
looking back
you must be happy with your accomplishments thus far.

Janna
10:57pm
I feel lucky.

Otino
11:00pm
It is pretty easy to say you are a painter's painter since I’m sure many artists wish they could lighten up just enough to make work as liberating as yours.

Janna
11:01pm
You say a lot of nice things.
My father is a pastor and I grew up in a super fundamentally Christian environment.
Coming out of this context and liberating myself
is mirrored.


Otino
11:03pm
Funny since I think your paintings are definitely proof of the existence of some greater force.

Janna
11:03pm
I’m happy to hear it... I think you really get it.
I think a lot about ego
and having humility
and letting spirit in and out
and I want to reflect spirit in my work.



1 comment:

  1. The paintings are lovely and so is Janna! I like how down to earth she is, nothing worse than haughty pretentious artists who take themselves too seriously, it usually ruins the art for me! So yeah, keep it up please and hopefully see this in bigger and better galleries soon!

    ReplyDelete