Karin Jacobs, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 71st 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed the super talented realist painter Karin Jacobs. I love her art and she was really nice when I met her at the Northrup King Building. I've really liked following her career and I very much enjoyed her answers. I think you will too. Thank you for reading! (All images courtesy of the artist /  Instagram: @karinjacobspaintings)

Jackson: Do you feel you were born to be an artist? Or did a specific event put you on an artistic path?

Karin: First, thanks Jackson for selecting me for 3 Questions. I've followed you and your work for some time now and I'm honored to be included in this series. I don't know if I was necessarily born to be an artist but creating was very much part of my identity when I was growing up. My siblings and I were always drawing, making little rooms out of shoeboxes, and putting on plays. I know there's one in every classroom, but I was that girl who would draw a horse for anyone who asked. In college I had a double major in English and Art but was too self-conscious to even think about a BFA and showing my work. I ended up in the nonprofit world then had kids and spent my spare time volunteering; I had few creative pursuits of my own. Finally about 15 years ago I signed up for a painting class at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts and was immediately obsessed. It honestly felt like coming home and I'll be forever thankful I decided to take the class. Still, it took participating in the WARM Mentorship Program to really feel like I might call myself an artist. I was 55 before I got my own studio so I would say to anyone wondering that it is never too late. Now I couldn't be happier with my studio in the Northrup King Building among such a wonderful community of artists.

Jackson: How did you find your specific style of realism? Your way of painting is very unique.

Karin: Though I'd like to experiment more with different types of painting, I think I gravitated to realism because it just fits best with how my brain works. My first subjects were things I knew - old family photos, our animals, the local landscape. At some point I decided to see if I could capture the plastic nature of a life-size fiberglass horse and found I loved figuring out the subtle color changes, highlights and shadows necessary to give a figure gloss and dimension. After that I went on the hunt for smaller plastic figures, mainly toys, most from the 1970s and older: these cheap mass market objects can be a good reflection of what was valued at that particular time. Sometimes the objects I paint are quite small, and I enjoy that can occur when they're painted many times their original size. Visitors to the studio sometimes comment on the spookiness of the human figures especially, and when someone gets a laugh out of a piece there's no greater compliment.

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

Karin: This was a really hard question because to be honest I get anxious at just the thought of meeting famous people! At museums I definitely gravitate to the painters and there are any number who I'd like to hang back with and watch work. That said, in the end I chose Cindy Sherman, whose work just seemed so exciting to me when I was a college student in the '80s and is still. Though my understanding is that she would rather her work not be viewed as feminist art, a woman can certainly view it and project her own thoughts on the various roles in which Sherman presents herself. I can only imagine the experiences she must have had making her mark in the male-dominated art world.

Jon Summers, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 70th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview with the amazing painter Jon Summers. I first came across Jon's work in his show Seasons at Anderson O'Brien Fine Art in Omaha while on an art road trip with my Dad. My Dad and I both loved the show and I have been paying attention to everything he does on his Instagram since then. I love the large scale and the amazing colors! His answers to my questions were thoughtful and interesting and I think you will agree. I feel like Jon and I have a similar approach to making art. Thank you for reading! (Website: Jon Summers Art / Instagram: @jon_summers_art (Photos 1, 3, 4 and 5 courtesy of the artist, photo 2 from @artworldexploration)

Jackson: Were you interested in art as a child or did you have an experience that made you an artist?

Jon: I have always been interested in art. The art I did as a child was very different, though. As a kid, I mostly drew trucks and cartoon strips. I thought I would be a draftsmen or an architect or maybe a commercial artist. I went to college thinking that's what I would study. During my first year at Kansas City Art Institute, I was encouraged to try lots of different mediums. This is when I started to really enjoy painting.

Jackson: How did you arrive at using abstract colors as your primary way of making art? Does it have conceptual meaning for you as well?

Jon: My first paintings were very layered and textured. I sometimes incorporated modeling paste and cheese cloth. I was really enjoying the process and these early painting were pure abstraction. My sketchbook drawing, however, were of landscapes. I was encouraged by a professor to get out and draw things in nature. I ended up drawing a lot of construction sites focusing on the geometric shapes I saw. These drawings began to influence my paintings and I started focusing on the distance between objects, shapes and shadow. I began to prioritize foreground, middle ground and background. The more I painted, the more I learned about color and the relationships between colors. My current work is still largely about the process but now incorporates an awareness of the landscape. My canvases combine vibrant colors with my interpretation of what can be seen in nature. My hope is that viewers are drawn into my landscapes in a way that feels familiar yet completely undefined. 

 

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

Jon: As an artist, I believe it's important to continue to learn and grow so I am continually looking at the way in which some of the artists who came before me handled spacial relationships. I have been drawn to the Impressionists, my current favorite being the father of Impressonism, Claude Monet. I would like to share my admiration for his work with him and I would like to learn more about his day to day, his process and the materials he used. 

Brenda Ward, Artist

Hello and welcome to the 69th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed the super talented painter Brenda Ward. Brenda's work is completely different than mine but something about her way of painting has stuck with me and resonated with me from the first time I saw her paintings at Hopkins Center for the Arts with my Dad, and I've enjoyed everything I have seen since. Her answers are fantastic and interesting - thank you for reading! (Photos 1 and 3 courtesy of the artist, 2 and 4 from the Instagram I run with my Dad: @artworldexploration, Artist website:  www.brendajwardfineart.com / Instagram: @bjwardfineart

Jackson: Do you feel you were born with artistic skills? Or did something happen in your life that made you want to learn to paint realistically so well? You are very talented.

Brenda: Thank you Jackson for your encouragement and the opportunity to share my life and art!

I do have a few artists on my family, however it was my mother who taught me to draw the human figure at the age of five, which gave me all the confidence to move forward. All throughout school I was known as the artist that was enlisted to make school posters and enter competitions. I grew up in Sacramento and received a bachelor of arts degree from California State University, Sacramento. I then worked as a commercial artist, book cover artist, and muralist. With the encouragement of my husband, I attended the Atelier Studio Program of Fine Art In Minneapolis and happily returned to my artistic roots: painting in oils. I thank the Atelier for teaching me French Academic Drawing with American Impressionism to say that I'm "classically trained". My favorite subjects to paint, that still remains to this day, are portraiture and figurative works. 

Jackson: What part, if any, does religion play in your artwork? Do you see it as subject, metaphor or neither? The first painting my Dad and I saw of yours was an Adam and Eve type of scene.

Brenda: Yes, very much so.  I'm a Christian and every opportunity that I can get to share my faith through art is a blessing. I've completed a 3 paintings series on Adam & Eve from Genesis and a painting entitled Faithful & True from Revelation, you can also see glimpses of that theme through my other works. I also aspire to bring light and beauty and (hopefully) a story with each painting, especially in the Card Series, and a painting called AI Reflection.

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

Brenda: I had to stop and think about about this question. Joaquin Sorolla or John Singer Sargent comes to mind and I would follow them around and watch them paint, ask why they are using that technique or color, how to capture the light and mostly learn to paint more "painterly" by using loose brush strokes! I would like to capture the correct facial features, yet have the rest of the painting in loose but accurate application of paint. I attended a Rembrandt collection at Minneapolis Institute of Art and noticed that his earlier works were very realistic and so were his later works, yet painted very differently with a heavy impasto technique. Never stop learning, I'm a work in progress.