Carolin Leary Prinn Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory member provides some fascinating insights into her practice and experience as a magical realist artist, as she responds to the questions below:
- Has creating art ever served as a form of emotional regulation or healing for you? How so?
- Do you work with recurring symbols, archetypes in your art? What do they represents for you?
- What role does imperfection play in your art? If any?
- How do you imagine the relationship between technology & creativity changing in the next 10 years?
Has creating art ever served as a form of emotional regulation or healing for you? How so?
My work serves as a place of serenity for me, a little paradise island to retreat to and dream my dreams and create a place of magic. Part planned and part developed along the way, my work is a way for me to answer life’s questions, told back to me in a key of symbols. It is in this subconscious exploration that I find underlying truths, new paths or perhaps a silver lining previously veiled.
My art is overwhelmingly a world where I go to pile all my sense of beauty, hope and magic in life, what I believe can be found no matter the circumstance, and it is my hope that this feeling reflects back to those who encounter it.
Do you work with recurring symbols, archetypes in your art? What do they represents for you?
My first influences since I was a child came from symbolic and narrative sources, ancient art and myth, so I naturally started painting and writing stories in this form. Over the years I collected both universal symbols and formed a vocabulary of my own. The prevalent eerie fish in my work, for example, come from a recurring dream of these creatures surrounding me in a lagoon of otherwise crystal clear water, the fish themselves looking at once frightening and imposing and yet beautiful and never causing harm.
They have come to represent to me a kind of subconscious shadow, a false worry or challenge that is not as daunting as it seemed at first. As for archetypes, many of my works feature heroes or heroine types facing various journeys or questions about our world. The deities I portray, on the other hand, have become my own proverbial Ancient Elders on the Mountain Top, peaceful beacons reminding me of wiser paths, calm waters and far seeing perspectives.
What role does imperfection play in your art? If any?
Growing up I was a perfectionist and I found this can create both great drive but also staggering hesitation. I kept saying for example oh, I will publish books from my world once everything is all set and perfect. An important mentor advised me to start publishing in parts and it turns out that process has helped grow my world in ways it couldn’t have if I had clung tight. Today I just go for it in my projects.
You have to learn the skills, but in the end you let go and follow that arrow where you shot it. I recently made a painting touching on this subject. The more you cleave to perfection and control, the more it traps, armours and evades you. Fall into rapids and fight too hard against the current and you get into trouble. Watercolor and pen, two of my primary mediums, are all about this balance of expertise and release.
What is funny about forgoing perfection, not ruminating, is that I tend to create something far better than when I am so controlled. This sentiment, like so many things, echoes between my art and my life.”
How do you imagine the relationship between technology & creativity changing in the next 10 years?
Technology is advancing and, for better or worse, I think it will to continue to do so. Like Icarus daring too close to the sun or Pandora opening the forbidden box (luckily leaving behind hope, in the end), ambition, sometimes headlong and reckless, is in our nature. On one hand, I hope technology continues to be used as a beautiful tool in the art world. I admire what technology has brought to the creative world – I am a huge fan of animation, tastefully used CGI in movies can bolster beautiful visuals and audiences are now reached that were once not possible.
My hope is there remains a balance, where the human hand and heart is the prominent feature. This is after all what I think we love about art, that quiet communication with everything that makes us human, that voyage through our secret depths. Things have already gotten out of control in terms of ownership of art and this will hopefully be reigned in. I do fear what slowly will be lost to us through over-implementation of these tools – used as a crutch, or a time and budget saver.
Much like I can only place myself so firmly in the shoes of those who experienced life before our technological age, my concern remains if anyone in the future will really know or understand what they have lost, because perhaps no one will be around who remembers it.
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