The Quick Q & A editorial in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine is a much loved regular feature, in which we ask 6 artists the same 4 questions. In the June Issue 45, these were the Quick Q & A questions:
- What is the biggest change you’ve made to your art practice since you started, and why?
- If you could only create one more work what would you like that work to say?
- What impact has your upbringing and cultural background had on your work, and how it has influenced your approach and aesthetic?
- What motivates you to keep going even when sales are slow or you hit a creative block?
We feel that the artists’ responses provide such a valuable insight for our community of artists that we wanted to share one Quick Q & A response from each issue with you, going forward. The June 2024 Issue 45 print issue is available plus you can download the digital magazine via our webstore to read more. To ensure you never miss an issue again, you can also subscribe to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, and have each issue sent straight to your door each quarter.
Excerpt from Issue 45 // June 2024 Quick Q & A editorial: Fandi Angga Saputra, Grant Perry, Diego Fernandez, S.V. Williams, Stephanie Inagaki, and Shinya Takanezawa all respond to the below Quick Q & A:
Quick Q & A: What impact has your upbringing and cultural background had on your work, and how it has influenced your approach and aesthetic?
“My alma mater, the Indonesian Institute of Arts Yogyakarta, was the pivotal starting place for me to hone my painting and artistic skills intensely. Through focused practice on traditional painting, I learned to master all of those mediums. I’ve also begun to gain an interest in myth and metaphorical language as the main ideas that I presented in my works. My upbringing in Indonesia, immersed in Javanese culture rich with myths and metaphors, sparked a desire within me to translate it into an imaginative visual language, conveying messages from our ancestors. As a custodian of Javanese culture, I strive to preserve its essence for future generations, utilising my art as a vessel to transmit timeless messages and foster a sense of continuity amidst the ever-changing landscape of modernity.”
“I fell in love with classical art at a very young age as I grew up visiting various art museums regularly whenever my parents went on business trips. Even from a young age, I tended to be drawn to, or appreciate, work that shows mastery of skills. The aesthetics of classical art appealed to me for that reason because its level of understanding in multiple aspects of painting and drawing is not easily achievable. I like to work towards something that can challenge me and push my abilities to expand. My parents are a big influence on that tendency of mine because they taught me to be inquisitive and proud of the work you do.”
“Even though I don’t come from a family of artists or with a special interest in art, my parents were very supportive of me and took me to art classes when I was a child. I used to be very curious as a kid, and I remember reading about classical art and masterpieces like the sculptures of David and La Pietà by Michelangelo. I enjoyed and learned a lot in History of Art classes in high school but what really had an impact on my artistic style was when I learned about Alphonse Mucha while I was studying advertising in college. His style is still one of my biggest influences in both my personal and commercial work, in terms of composition, movement and expressiveness.”
“Around the mid 1990’s, during my teenage years, I became heavily involved in graffiti. Painting trains, freeways, and large scale graffiti productions with a crew of friends, consumed most of my days during that period of time. I focused mostly on letter structures then, which taught me speed, scale, composition, and many other important aspects of this lifestyle that were crucial to my upbringing and most influential to the way I continue to develop today.”
“Around junior high school there was a trifecta of films that came out: The Crow, The Craft, and Nightmare Before Christmas that pretty much set the tone for my aesthetic life, along with discovering gothic and 80’s music. My parents are Japanese immigrants, so we spoke Japanese at home and we were exposed to my heritage through frequenting Japanese markets, watching Japanese TV at home, as well as watching all the Miyazaki films before they became popular in the West. All these influences are still apparent in my darker drawing and jewellery making aesthetic, mixed with my use of Japanese mythology and folklore, alongside anthropomorphic animals like cats, foxes, crows, snakes, and bats. These animals tend to not have negative connotations in the East.”
“Japan has an anime/manga culture that developed independently after being imported from the USA and Europe, and I have been in close contact with that culture since I was a child. At an art university in Tokyo, I studied and mastered Western academic oil painting techniques, but on the other hand, anime and manga have always been my interests. When creating my work I wanted to depict something unique, and I thought that by combining the accumulation of these experiences an unexpected
world might emerge, and as a result of my exploration I arrived at my current approach. For me, Raffaello Sanzio, Hokusai, Jakuchū, anime, and manga all exist on the same level and are an equal source of inspiration.”
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