My Story
My Story
the real version
Is this your primary job, side gig, or hobby? How did it come to be? My primary job is a photographer. I do both wedding and commercial photography.
Wow, you ready for this long story? Okay, here it goes. My boyfriend of 6 years and I broke up and I wanted a photography studio downtown. I found one that was freaking awesome in an old abandoned building: no running water, 3rd floor, it was an old ballroom so it was 4k square feet and SO awesome inside. Seemed amazing for me, who needs running water anyways?
With all that space I was able to have my photography studio and have my paintings out 24/7. I kinda got into a groove where I would edit, and while it was exporting I would paint, and then while that was drying I would edit again. I was able to experiment with so much just due to the fact that it was out all the time and when I got that spark to do something, I could. Having that capability I just started to do more and more and more. I didn’t know that having proper space would bring me to do art more, but it did. I think I grew more as an artist within those two years than I had in the five years prior.
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You talked about working within restrictions and such with things like using natural lighting over studio settings. Can you talk about your go with the flow style approach to art?
I come from a graphic design background. When I have way too many options I tend to get completely overwhelmed, but when I am under restriction, I think that gets my mind moving. I like to think of myself as a problem solver so having guidelines actually makes me more creative.
I do not do photography to get images to paint with. I do photography for my photography expression and if an image sticks out to me, I use it for my art. I feel like that is when it happens naturally.
When it comes to starting a painting, I pretty much start with white or black and go from there. I like to think of myself as an experimental artist where I am always trying to play with new techniques, different mediums, and just mess around with it. Due to that nature, I mess around quite a lot and mess up even harder. Most of the time I am like “welp, this is a piece of shit” and don’t care if I mess up, so then I do something and I like it and then I’m like “ I love this piece”. It’s like that artist meme and it hits home so hard:
This sucks,
I suck,
This is awesome,
I am awesome.
Can you explain how you started using screen printing as a means to enhance your photography art?
I have always had a love for portraits. Every time I painted I just saw a big face on it. I tried different methods of transferring an image or even just hand painting a portrait but it wasn’t until I screened that it really came to life for me.
I played with resin art awhile ago and what I loved and hated about it was the fact that you couldn’t control it. I have so much control with what I do that I wanted to just let go. That also drove me bonkers but every time would lead to a different result. I one day was like “maybe I should screen on this because it would be a sweet background”. I didn’t know how to screen at that point so I made some terrible homemade thing and kind of figured it out. I found some image on the internet (not even thinking about using my own) and made a screen. I had just finished a photoshoot with one of my favorite models and was like “Wow, that was stupid, Addison, use your own”. That’s kinda where the idea came from.
