https://www.patreon.com/artistdecoded
About CJ: Cj Hendry (b. 1988) is a New York based artist originally from Brisbane, Australia. Globally renowned for her large-scale, photo-realistic drawings of consumer goods and immense, interactive exhibitions, she has developed a dedicated following through her unique brand of technical mastery and conceptual depth.
A self-professed “lover of products”, Hendry is heir to the Pop Art tradition that firmly established depictions of everyday objects and mass culture in the art historical canon. In the footsteps of Andy Warhol, Hendry generates instantaneously appealing images that celebrate kitsch aesthetics and it’s ubiquitous presence in contemporary digital culture.
More recently, the artist has incorporated new subject matter to delve into deep-seated concerns and anxieties of current society. After seven years of studying architecture and finance in Australia, Hendry abandoned the endeavor in 2014 to pursue art full-time. She has since presented 6 solo exhibitions across Australia, the U.S., and Asia. In 2017, the artist collaborated with esteemed fashion house Christian Louboutin to present her first works in color during the 2017 edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong.
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- Adaptability
- Not being bogged down by life and “going on with the show”
- The dynamic of achieving greatness without falling into individualistic, isolated, and greedy viewpoints.
- Discipline, and its relation to our daily life.
- The importance of community, and how opening yourself up and allowing people to be involved with what you are doing brings about a particular level of freedom.
- The concept of creative energy - Being relaxed, calm, and effortless within your life and art practice.
- Art not about being able to draw something well. Rather, art being more about the conceptual nature behind it.
- Creatively letting go of what others think about you, and doing work that is fulfilling for yourself within art.
- The concept of working hard and living humbly.
- Triumphing in the midst of defeats.
https://www.patreon.com/artistdecoded
About Anna: Anna Park is a contemporary artist based in New York City, creating pieces that blur the lines between figurative and abstract work.
Creating a dazed, yet emotional experience, Anna’s central content revolves around larger bodies of people within social settings while provoking a vaporous and ethereal sensation.
Her most recent work takes on a new form, having a larger, tangled, and fragmented abstraction that envelops the viewer as the cacophony of black and white charcoal reveals intimate messages relating to society and the people we interact with.
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- The inspiration behind her most recent work describing them as an “amalgamation of people”
- The desire for “the viewer can become the voyager”
- Anna feeling that the inspiration for her new body of work can be attributed to her living in New York City
- The dynamic of paintings feeling nostalgic and how our subconscious draws from past memories without truly knowing why
- Work and life during the quarantine
- The dynamic of creating art in a self-fulfilling way vs creating art specifically for other people
- Anna’s upbringing moving from multiple states and her interactions with her mentor, Bruce Roberson, and how he “taught her everything” and how it solidified Anna’s desire to be an artist
- Gratitude surrounding Anna’s move to New York
- Submergence within different cultures
- Community
- Power structures and how toxic masculinity has permeated the world and made it difficult to empathize and move past our hierarchical viewpoints
https://www.patreon.com/artistdecoded
About Ryan: Ryan York is a Doctor of Philosophy, postdoctoral scholar within the department of neurobiology at Stanford University, and an author of over a dozen publications.
His research is focused on the evolutionary genomic basis of brain and behavior with a specific interest in the courtship behaviors of Lake Malawi cichlid fish.
Having a passion for music and working in constant collaboration with individuals such as Justin Daashuur Hopkins, Ryan borders the line between highly intellectual compositions and spontaneous, free-flowing, and seemingly primal soundscapes
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- Ryan’s work as an evolutionary biologist, and his specific project working within computational methods in understanding behaviors
- Applying concepts used within artificial intelligence and using them for work in other areas of science
- The overlap of art and science
- The idea of repeatability
- Collective consciousness and collaboration
- Provisional answers and the unknown
- Continually shifting based upon your ever-changing context
- Scientific having ties to elements of spirituality
- Free will
- Humility
- The power of the mind
- Philosophy of science
- Different levels of understanding
- Dogmatism
- Placebo’s having a similarity to art
- The subconscious vs analytical instinct
- Slow vs fast understanding and experience
- Creativity being an exploration of what the world is
https://www.patreon.com/artistdecoded
About Daniele: Bolelli reads a passage about fear from his book, “Not Afraid: On Fear, Heartbreak, Raising a Baby Girl, and Cage Fighting”
Daniele Bolelli (born January 11, 1974) is an Italian-American writer, university professor, martial artist, and podcaster based in Southern California. He is the author of several books on philosophy, and martial arts, including On the Warrior's Path. Known for his writing since the 1990s in Italy and the early 2000s in the United States, Bolelli rose to greater public prominence in the 2010s, beginning with his appearances on popular podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience. He went on to create his own podcasts, and has hosted The Drunken Taoist since 2012 and History on Fire since 2015.
Bolelli holds M.As in American Indian Studies and history from UCLA and California State University, Long Beach, and did postdoctoral research in history at Cardiff University. As a professor, he has taught a wide variety of courses in the arts, humanities, and social sciences on topics including Native American history and culture, Taoist philosophy, and Ancient Rome. He teaches at CSULB and Santa Monica College.
https://www.patreon.com/artistdecoded
About Jerome: Acclaimed and revered painter, Jerome Lagarrigue, was born in France to a father who was an illustrator and a mother who was a writer and journalist. Being rooted within a world of creativity and culture, Jerome’s life - from youth to adulthood, can be described as a type of compelling metamorphosis, including experiences both from a creative and racial point of view which directly saturates his current work as a painter.
Finding love within depicting movement inside of his work, Jerome continues to create powerful work that calls into question particular aspects of the world we live in and frames the subtle and reflective essence of human beings.
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- Jerome being exposed to two different cultures, and how it offered both confusing and later, harmonious element to his life as a whole
- The topic of race – its objectivity, functionality, horrific nature, and the struggles that have come with being associated with a specific race
- Jerome’s upbringing - living both in France and Harlem, and how he was always drawing as a child
- The effects of social injustices on racial identity
- The layered nature of the social justice protests and riots
- Capitalism shaping the way we live our lives
- The genesis of creativity
- Decisions of engaging in a subject matter
- Searching continually within art
- The power in saying no
- Creative instinct
- The wave and the weight of the reaction to coronavirus
- Captivation within the movement and process of painting
- Stanly Kubrick’s process and its relation to creativity
- The growth from the mentality of seeing the world as either one or another absolute into viewing the world as being “gray”
- An Individual’s desire to be comfortable rather than be challenged
- Jerome’s decision to paint riots
- The connection of energy, nature, and humanism within paining
- Feeling, rather than reacting