The following is an interview with Kristen Pastore, a senior painting major at Mason Gross. We briefly talk about her inspirations, themes in her work, thesis development, career goals and life after graduating Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Kristen:Yes, I'm a BFA painting major.
Me:Ok. What made you want to choose painting?
Kristen: Because I really love drawing and I explored painting at Mason Gross and I just thought it was really interesting and a new way to explore drawing further.
Me: Do you prefer using color versus black and white or kinda like both?
Kristen: Um, I like to mix it up but I like the presence of a painting.
Me: Do you usually use oil or acrylic, gouache?
Kristen: I usually use oil and I use a lot of stand oil that make my materials really shiny and glossy.
Me:Do you ever put like a kind of gloss on top of that also?
Kristen: When I'm done I usually put a finish of stand right on top of it just to maintain the gloss.
Me: Oh ok yea I'm not a painter so haha. Um..it looks like you like drawing a lot from life..um..why is that?
Kristen: I just like um I just get overwhelmed with a presence of a person or thing and I like to capture that in my work.
Me: Yea I always like drawing from life because it's like a lot of detail and it's like you have an association you know like I want to make this look like how it is exactly in front of me you know. Um..so what are you thinking about doing for your thesis?
Kristen: Um I'm really interested in exploring graphic painting with a painterlyness and maybe to take that further in possibly representational art or even abstraction. I'm really interested in fashion in art and like their ties and their relations.
Me: So, you're looking to do something on the graphic side but with a textural part of a painting like brush strokes and stuff being noticable and like you know like expressing that while also having the graphic quality.
Kristen: Exactly.
Me: That sounds cool. Um, yea I think if you did a series of something from life because that's obviously something that you like to do and you're really good at it that it would be really successful but do you know as far as a concept? Like it looks like you have the design standpoint down like the technical thing you want to do but like the actualy concept behind it do you know yet?
Kristen: I'm not 100% sure yet but I like to explore this aesthetic further. Like possibly take my representational art and abstract it more and possibly comment on the fall of American industry and take this like Americana kind of aesthetic and kinda comment on America today.
Me: Yea cause I feel like that's actually something I didn't initially notice but I feel like you use a lot of like American symbols like Al Capone and Kurt Cobain and like this very pin-upy kinda like going back to all of these big icons and oooh if you did a series of just like American icons but you know using those techniques that you were saying I think that would be really cool. Um, do only painters influence your work or do a whole bunch of different artists?
Kristen: Um..a bunch of artists influence me. I'm really interested in Richard Prince's work involved with a lot of car art.
Me: Oh ok very technical kinda.
Kristen: Yea. Andy Warhol has always influenced me. Um..I like how he took his subject matter like pop icons and his mixture of silkscreen and painting. I think I might want to possibly explore that for my thesis.
Me: That'd be cool. Um, so what did you want to do after Mason Gross?
Kristen: Um, continue painting and possibly go into advertising. A lot of my imagry is based off of advertisments so if I could kind of carry that aesthetic of my painting into the advertising world I would love that.
Me: Would you ever consider going into graphic design type like also bridging maybe the gap between?
Kristen: Um yea I took alot of graphic design classes and I was actually going to take one this semester but I didn't have time. Haha. But I would love to do something like that. And I'm more interested in the image based work than like typography even though I have a new appreciation of it this semester.
Me:Well it's hard you know with typography is like looking at type as image as opposed to just type which I'm struggling with right ha. Um, but yea I think definitely like I can see the pop art and the Americana theme in your work and I think if you did something like that for your thesis it would be successful.
A lot Kristen's work reflects the theme of American pop culture. One of her influences being Andy Warhol who we all know shared the same theme in many of his works. Kristen hopes to bridge the gap between painting and design in hopes of continuing forward into advertising after graduation.
No comments:
Post a Comment