20 Questions with Gretchen Andrew
20 Questions with Artist Gretchen Andrew.
Learn more about Gretchen and makes this artist tick!
How long have you been an artist?
On my first day of school I wrote that my favorite activities were art and gym. That’s still true. But professionally, I’m coming up on my 6th year since opting out of the workforce.
2. What made you want to become an artist?
Art. Specifically Edvard Munch’s On The Waves of Love and The Kiss By The Window.
3. How would you describe your work?
I’ve always believed that discipline leads to the most luscious freedoms. While I’ve explored making many types and styles I am now embracing making paintings that are more inherently joyful. Working from this place has become a matter of discipline through which I am discovering a new freedom. The result is visually bright and conceptually integrated with my digital practice of search engine art.
4. What issues or themes are you looking at and what challenges are there?
My work has academic and activist edges but the center is more abstract, more personal. It’s harder to talk about the center so there is the challenges of my practice coming across differently than how I experience it.
5. What mediums do you work in or prefer to work in and why?
Recently I’ve been self proclaiming a Search Engine Artist. I manipulate search results with my paintings by inflicting them within an unwitting digital landscape, like an internet graffiti. I make the paintings and then I create the search engine artwork on top.
6. What is the main theme of your work or your message?
I’d love to believe that if I were able to articulate that in language I’d just be a writer. Writing seems so much easier to a painter and the reverse is certainly true. At least Henry Miller agrees.
7. What are the obstacles or difficulties that you have in your location?
I want to be in two places at once. I love LA. It’s being very good to me. While i’ve resolved to stop thinking about it, if I let myself, I miss London terribly.
8. How have you managed to overcome them?
At the moment, unsuccessfully.
9. What are you currently working on and have you discovered anything new?
The most important thing I’ve uncovered recently is how dangerous it is to not acknowledge, even and especially to yourself, what you want. Once you put yourself at some remove from your desires, in any aspect of your life, it permeates. I tried it for awhile but I no longer expect to be able to make the work I want without also fully admitting to and pursuing the life I want.
10. Have you had any setbacks?
Of course, constantly. But in retrospect many were self inflicted. This is great news because the holes I've put myself in I can climb out of. I’ve also recently become a lot more peaceful with the process by focusing on the “what” of what I want instead of the “how.” It’s classic self-help stuff but I, like many people, can get hung up on specific people, places, opportunities instead of the endgames of peace, love, happiness, belonging, fulfillment. I’ve been spending serious and dedicated time defining the life I want and I’m not surprised to see the work and opportunities responding.
Still within this mental shift I think of Robert Frost telling his editor, “to betray myself utterly, such an one am I that even in my failures I find all the promise I require to justify the astonishing magnitude of my ambition.”
11. What’s been your greatest achievement to date?
The frequent and loving criticism from my mentor. One of the most incredible people I’ve ever met feels like I am capable of more, better, truer art. On some days it can still be devastating but somewhere along the way I “achieved” a relationship where I get very constructive honesty from a voice I trust and respect deeply. Of course this isn’t an achievement. I am lucky and I am grateful.
12. Where do you see your work in the future?
Coffee mugs, MoMA, airline magazines, the homes of friends, bonfires, SPACE, the internet, album covers, glossies, books, textbooks etc. etc.
13. What would you like to develop regarding your work?
The drawing. Drawing is the foundation of, in my not so humble opinion, the best art.
I come from an intellectual tradition that I love but am also trying to be more free of. I can tell you about how my paintings will prevent techno dystopia. I can lecture about the impact of art on artificial intelligence. But mostly I’d like to make great paintings and escape my head. Great paintings require great drawing.
14. What excites you at the moment?
Routine. And also the new people I’m meeting in LA.
15. Who is you favorite artist?
I’m obsessed with the clothing my friend Bouyez makes. His sense of who he is and what he wants to make is so clear. I’m inspired and in awe of him.
16. What influences you and your work?
Right now mostly routine and intention.
17. What advice would you give to your younger self?
Not getting what you want when you want it how you want it is fine. But don’t, under any circumstance, pretend you don’t know what you want.
18. What’s your favorite color? Food? Movie? Music?
Green
I have Movie Pass and live in LA, I see all the movies now.
I shuffle between Conor Oberst and Taylor Swift.
19. What is your favorite quote? Why?
“Find what you love and let it kill you.” Charles Bukowski
I like it because while Joseph Campbell tells us that to be our own selves we must follow our bliss we tend to forget he goes on to say we can’t hope to be respected and accepted for doing so. Bukowski understands this is a more pithy way. What we love is paramount but there is no security in it. And well, another favorite by Tennessee Williams, “Security is a kind of death.”
20. What can we expect from Gretchen Andrew in the future?
When I am old I want to spend half my year living in London’s Barbican where I will have a matching monogrammed robe and slippers that I wear down the elevator and into the galleries and concert halls and theaters. Sooner though, my work is taking me through London, Dubai and Cape Town this summer. I am also working on a bunch series of Search Engine Art: Made For Women, What is Ubuntu, Torschlusspanik, saudade, gokotta, L’appel du vide
BreezeOnlineGallery would like to thank Gretchen for taking the time chat with us. Please checkout her new exhibition in our main gallery entitled - What is Ubuntu and learn more about her work on her artist info page.
