Sarah Struck, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 61st 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed the fantastic abstract painter Sarah Struck. I discovered her work at Hopkins Center for the Arts in 2019 and I have paid close attention to what she does since. I feel like she and I have a similar approach to making art. Her answers are great! Thank you for reading! (All images courtesy of the artist / Instagram: @sarah_struck_art)

Jackson: Did you always feel like you wanted to be an artist? Or did something specific happen that put you on this path?

Sarah: I did not have being a practicing artist on my radar although I have always been highly creative; visually inclined and loved color, typography, decor, and fashion much like my gifted matriarchs. I thought everyone was like that, until I realized we had something special happening. 

In 2014 I needed a change from long work hours and raising our son. I asked my work manager if I could do full time in 4 days instead of 5 - so that I could take an art class on Fridays. I never looked back! Everything hinged on him saying "YES".

I knew I wanted to paint and the only class that was of interest or even open (at Minnetonka Center for the Arts) was local and accomplished artist Ellen Richman's contemporary class. Thus, the adventure began. I had no idea how impactful and life-changing this class would be.

It is going to be 10 years in January since I took my first class - which was a 6+ year run until Ellen no longer taught it and then COVID muddled things too.

Jackson: What inspires your abstract paintings? Do you have an idea in mind or do you begin and let the painting happen as you go?

Sarah: The feeling of beauty or awe inspires me to create on my own. Its source may be anywhere - from Architectural Digest, or The Project, to a visit at the MIA, or just a beautiful peaceful day where I often walk in the park. Oftentimes I am not inspired to paint so then I make a conscious effort to just practice painting. Building a practice makes it possible to bring in inspiration (or not) and gives me an experimental and safe zone to create something. I do not have ideas, but more like color feeling or a size or scale of artwork that I want to create. Looking at something like birds, pottery, photography, or beautiful spaces simply gives me something to respond to when I get to a piece of paper, canvas, board or otherwise. Art for me is always about responding to something that is living inside or outside of me.

Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?

Sarah: Lee Krasner was born in 1908 which is near the birth of my grandmother. Krasner did abstract works and had a design degree. I would like to paint with her in the studio and hang out, find out what life was like in the early 20th century for female artists. According to my Grandma, her own choices were nurse, secretary, or teacher. None of which she was too excited about.

I also love the free approach of Krasner's brushstrokes. She led the way for other abstract female artists who were known in the 1920s. I'd like to see what else she created apart from her abstract paintings and to understand her inspiration or ideas (similar to question #2 above).

Petra von Kazinyan, Artist (Repost)

 

Hello! In honor of The Big Clouds, Petra von Kazinyan's new exhibition at Art Circle Wien in Vienna, Austria, I am reposting my November 2020 interview with Petra with some updated photos. It was in the middle of the pandemic and things were weird but her answers were great and also comforting. (All photos courtesy of the artist / Instagram: @petravonkazinyan / Website: www.petravonkazinyan.com)

 

Jackson: What inspired you to make art? Did you have a specific experience?

Petra: Since my early childhood, I had the desire to transform my life into art. I was never not painting or drawing. When I was six years old, I started to sign my works; the first one I ever signed was a small landscape painting, a forest scene. Funnily I wrote my age not my name in the bottom right hand corner....

So to me, art is all about self-expression, coping with reality - it's just something that has always been there and can't be separated from my inner self. Like Christo once said: When you're an artist, you're always an artist, there's not one second in your life when you are not an artist.

Jackson: Has the global pandemic changed your art or your art career? I had some things cancelled or postponed. I think it might be different there in Europe than it is here in the United States.

Petra: It was (and still is) the same here due to the coronavirus, I also had to postpone a planned solo show to next year. A group show in Venice, Italy fortunately happened to take place, under strict measures for protection and hygiene. 

And to sum up my feelings in 2020 so far: being an artist, self-isolation is nothing new to me; nevertheless, I felt different during the lockdown because it is something else to choose isolation of your own free will. So being told to stay in for public reasons was kind of a new experience - and it was a very interesting, highly creative one.

Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?

Petra: Lucio Fontana. I'd love to have a philosophical discussion with him about the concept of space in art. What the terms "space" and "place" mean today, in our liquid modernity as Zygmunt Bauman once called it - in a globalized and digital world where the only constant is change.