An Interview with Oliver Chan

1. In three words describe your intentions for the graduate show?

Show my achievement

2. Can you describe your work, your process and the vision you have for your exhibition space?

My paintings focus on people and places that are important in my life. I paint relationship because it is a way to express love which I find difficult in the real world.  Some of these painting have spilt faces with several people of they are having a conversation, inspired by Picasso. Doing painting get me away from my obsessions and I feel calmer when I do art.

In the show I will have a mixture of busy urban landscape and portraits.

3. What’s proving to be the most difficult part about preparations?

The difficult part for me will be the installation as I get anxious about how to hang my work.

4. What one piece of your is closest to representing everything you want to say?

My closest piece to representing is the Shard From the Art Studio in Borough High Street. I like this piece especially because of the unusual view.

5. What unique opportunities has attending the AAL Fine Art programme given you?

The Academy has taught me to paint with vibrant colours. When I did drawing in measurement it taught me to draw more precisely. I learnt new technique for painting for example starting with the big shapes and then going to the smaller one.

6. What artist intrigues you at the moment?

I have been triggered by Picasso because of the split faces and vibrant colours. I am also influence by Hockney, Freud, Van Gogh and other traditional artists.

Weeping Woman 1937 by Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 © Succession Picasso

7. What do you think you have got from the Academy that you might not have got from another college?

I found that I learned to paint in the traditional way compare to some other university. I also found that the lesson are a lot longer in the Academy which means it give me more time with the tutors and give me more time to paint properly.

8. What do you want to be doing as an artist in 5 years?

I am hoping to be making my living as an artist.

http://oliveryuchan.tumblr.com/

An Interview with Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury

1. In three words describe your intentions for the graduate show?

Uncanny, Labrynthian, Cavenous

2. Can you describe your work, your process and the vision you have for your exhibition space?

“Metaphor is natural to the human imagination, but this potential can only be realized by allowing the unconscious full play.”(Lautreamonts, The Surrealist Manifesto, 1924). In my recent work I use the cave as a metaphor for the mind. I create psychological landscapes, which hinge on the notion of ‘making the familiar strange’. (Freud, Das Unheimliche, 1919).

3. What’s proving to be the most difficult part about preparations?

Thinking about how to install the show is the trickiest part. How to bring all the works together with each other and the space.

4. What one piece of your is closest to representing everything you want to say?

“The Sea of The Mind”

5. What unique opportunities has attending the AAL Fine Art programme given you?

A commission to build a piece of Public Art

6. What artist intrigues you at the moment?

Peter Doig

7. What do you think you have got from the Academy that you might not have got from another college?

The Art Academy has provided a truly supportive creative environment for me to develop within. Furthermore the Professional Development Program has given me a real insight into life as an artist outside of art school. I have also had opportunities to exhibit, and travel and teach through the college.

8. What do you want to be doing as an artist in 5 years?

In five years I want to be immersed in a world of paint.

www.rhiannonrebecca.com

 

An Interview with Lucy du Satoy

1. In three words describe your intentions for the graduate show?

Appealing  – meditative – memorable.

2. Can you describe your work, your process and the vision you have for your exhibition space?

For me, the process of making art induces a kind of relaxed concentration and I try to share this same sensation with those who view my work. While absorbed in painting my attention hovers between the greater intention and the physical application of paint.  Moments of clarity and blurring comfortably co-exist.

I am most interested in capturing transitory episodes of beauty which are often found in the ordinary and mundane, such as the absent-minded observation of raindrops on a window pane or the motion of landscape seen from a speeding train. Ultimately, I hope to transform the transient and ordinary into something more permanent and beautiful.

I maintain a keen interest in composition, colour, and space, and I hope that my work can also appeal on a formal level.  Currently I prefer to work in oils.

I hope that my exhibition space will be a positive environment, where viewers can engage and the works will resonate.

3. What’s proving to be the most difficult part about preparations?

I am most concerned about the technicalities of the space – quite literally, the nuts and bolts of constructing walls and covering windows.  We need to convert what is a busy shared working studio environment into a gallery space with optimum light, clean lines, and ‘flow’, –  in order to create the most effective dialogue between the work and the viewer.  The painting is the easy bit!

4. What one piece of your is closest to representing everything you want to say?

Train Window I.

People seemed to ‘get’ this painting when I last showed it.  In that sense it must be the most successful recent piece.

5. What unique opportunities has the AAL Fine Art programme given you?

I have been privileged enough to have been guided by commercially successful artists with diverse talents across a variety of disciplines.  Apart from being hugely inspirational, by their very existence they offer up the possibility that life as an artist can be both enjoyable and rewarding.   And – by painting alongside some truly gifted artists, I have learnt to have confidence in my own creative abilities, and to treasure and nurture them.

6. What artist intrigues you at the moment?

I am currently reading The Secret Knowledge by David Hockney.  Despite having tremendous respect for him as an artist I am finding his research and observations into the use of optical aids (lenses and mirrors) by artists over the course of history fascinating.  This is of particular interest to me as I almost always use photographs and video stills for my paintings, and am often called upon to justify my use of them. Am I a cheat? I don’t think so. I am currently working on my argument and David is helping me!

7. What do you think you have got from the Academy that you might not have got from another college?

Ultimate flexibility. It has been a challenge to make time for my art while looking after my young family.  The structure of the Fine Art course has allowed me to switch attendance days around to suit me, while at the same time work towards the diploma as a meaningful end goal.

8. What do you want to be doing artistically in 5 years?

There is still, and always will be, more to learn. I hope I will still be growing and developing as an artist.