Interview with Stephen Knudsen!!!

Fresh in today!!!


Stephen Knudsen, a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, was kind enough to answer a few interview questions for me regarding his latest work!  


For those of you not in the know, Knudsen is a well established writer for both Art Calendar and Artstory.org, focusing mainly on teaching tools for teaching art, art history, art theory, and color theory.  He holds a Bachelor in Science in Biology from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma Washington, and received his Masters in Fine Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.  Knudsen is an established artist, and exhibits his work frequently across the country (and Europe, and beyond!!!).  




Q&A


Courtney Holsinger: You publish quite a few articles on color theory and teaching methods.  Do you find that these writings can also be tools for yourself and help inform your own work and flesh out ideas you have been working on for yourself?

Stephen Knudsen : The publishing gives me another teaching tool as students can collect the essays and use them to reinforce my demonstrations, lectures, and critiques. They also get my ideas out to an even wider audience. As far as publishing goes, it helps in sharpening my own ideas, sometimes up to three editors may be involved and that always makes one look at every idea, every word, every sentence with intense scrutiny.

Mortality, 2006, 6'x6'
Stephen Knudsen

CH: Other than mimicking nature, and perhaps the way the eye truly "sees" color, what other importance  does color hold for you in your work?

SK: I like to think of color as a language that might loosely relate to some actual optical experience but never do I want to be a slave to that. In Painting dead animals in graduate school the colors chosen looked more like illuminated stained glass. Now I have never seen such an animal but I have seen some of the greatest glass in the western world and Abbot Suger's idea of light passing through matter as a visceral spiritual language (apart from subject) was ingrained in my aesthetic software. I wanted that color language in my animal paintings.

Juliet, 1992, 4'x6'
Stephen Knudsen

CH: Lately, it seems your personal work is moving more towards abstraction, or perhaps even surrealism.  Do you believe you are entirely deviating from your old work, or do you find this new style to the natural result of having worked in realism up to this point?

SK: In a way I am coming full circle since my graduate work was based on a high degree of abstraction. It seemed right for this particular  body of work. Surrealism was not on my mind.. But longing for something that I had not exactly seen but wanted to see was.

Vista, 2011, 5'x7'
Stephen Knudsen

CH: In your artist statement you state that your "...paintings are about yearning for a perfect state, one half imagined and unattainable."  Do you find that perhaps you are leaning more towards the world of the "...half imagined and unattainable."?  Or, perhaps, even that they are the manifestations of the "... shifting sensations and perceptions in the psyche."?  If so, how do you think your old work fits into this statement?  If not, do you believe your artist statement fits your old work better, and also, does it ring true in any sense to the new work that you have been creating?

SK: Funny you ask it this way. The statement was written with the newest work in mind. We just can not escape the idea of progress and in some cases, if not disillusioned yet, like my young students, we still aim for perfection. It started in Western antiquity (or even before..who knows) and Classicism  seems to rise up in permutations still around us, still being made. I am amazed at our collective will in spite of inventing the end of the world, in spite of the problems every informed adult must face, in spite of ourselves.

The older work fits into this as well. I hope when I am at my best my paintings do have the potential to stir up shifting sensations and perceptions in the psyche. In regard to all the work there are half imagined and unattainable qualities. In spite of our flaws though sometimes things work out well enough and if one keeps working one may create that work of art that Robert Hughes talked about ,one that has such Whitmanesque intensity that it seems to inhale the world around it. One day....

Bacher Spring, 2004
Stephen Knudsen

CH: Lastly, do you think that you are moving in what you believe to be a more scientific approach to the "... shifting sensations and perceptions in the psyche.", or do you think your work has a more spiritual bend?  How so?  Also, what role is color playing in your approach?

SK: I did get a degree in biology while I was also studying fine art so "Shifting sensations and perceptions" speaks of science, but also religion, spirituality, art...anything that we use to reach out to the the infinite and eternal in our joy and despair, framing it into our temporal reality. 

Sacrifice, 2010, 5'x8'
Stephen Knudsen

Wow!  Thanks Professor Knudsen!  Definitely some interesting insight into the thinking that goes on behind these extraordinarily beautiful paintings.  Truly, these are a sight to behold. 

The Art of Understanding

When I first began this blog, I started it as a class project, thinking I would dedicate it only to art, the art world, and my on work.  I failed to grasp that, perhaps, if I am truly to discuss what art is about, I would have to embrace the fact that I am an artist as well, and have my own opinions, thoughts, and philosophies and that these would invariably disclose themselves over time.  I wanted to be objective, to be the sideline commentator and act as a resource, not like the opinionated woman I am.  However, this cannot be the case.  Even in calling Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's piece spiritual, for instance, I created my own meaning for the piece.  After hearing him speak personally about his piece, it became clear that any spiritual connotations were not intended.  Rather, Hemmer had hoped only that the piece, Pulse Spiral, would be interesting visually and as a piece of technology that interacted nicely with its human participants.  What the viewer took away was supposed to be optional, given the individual.  I, however, presented my findings like facts, as if this as the true and only intention for the piece, even if that was not my intention.

So, in light of this revelation, I am going to start posting some thoughts, philosophies, and other material that is related to what I perceive art to be about.  I will continue to post articles, information, interviews, and any other supportive material which will either support or contradict my claims.  I will still report on my findings as objectively as possible, but interspersed among these findings will be my opinions.  I suppose that is the nature of the beast.

This article, in following its title, will be about the Art of Understanding.

Artists have manifested in many forms for many reasons for many years.  The precedent for any incoming, new artist is great.  You have to compete with all the old masters, the modernists, and the new emerging crowd, with their fresh ideas and even new definitions of what art truly is.  I will not go into a long, lengthy art history discussion.  Chances are, if you are reading about art, you already know a bit about it, or at least interested enough to learn more.  If you do want to know more, and aren't sure where to start, feel free to leave a comment and ask for clarification; I'd be happy to give you a brief overview and/ or direct you to some awesome reading material.

This actually brings me to my point.  Why is it that people interested in art are the only ones interested in art?  Is it because of the fact that when others think about art, they think of men in stuffy coats staring out at them oddly realistically?  Is this not appealing?  Or is it because they think about what artists are calling art today and think it's stupid as hell?  In my own findings, I find that it's both.  People feel just as disconnected from the men in stuffy coats, staring at them from a time long since past, with little relevance to today's world other than standing as a monument to human history, as they do to today's artists, who throw paint on the passerby, calling them names and then calling their project art.  How do you, as an artist, explain this phenomenon to the common man?  The person who, in fact, you are trying to make an impression on?  Aren't these the people that matter, that want insight, that seek it?  Aren't hese the people that watch the news, hoping to gain at least some footing on what the hell is going on in the world, who crave to be in the know?  Aren't these the "ignorant masses" who need "culture" in order to educate themselves?  Yes, of course they are.  This is the information world, the time and place where everything is supposed to become like an open book; you just need to flip to the right page in order to find the answers you seek. 

Well, how do you make your form of communication relevant?  The problem stands that, in order to really explain the people throwing paint, you have to explain the entirety of art history in a concise, yet accessible way, to provide both meaning, understanding, and relevance.  You have to explain all the  questions that artist's ask themselves when making a piece, and talk about how the answers to these questions manifest in their execution.  Then it all has to boil down to: Yes, throwing paint on people is relevant to life, this is why.

Of course, how do you make this accessible?  People just get pissed off.  Those who understand/ love this kind of art don't understand how everyone can't understand/ love this art.  If they do understand why the common man doesn't get it, they either dismiss Him (uppercase, as it is a collective whole) as ignorant, and unworthy, or they puzzle over it, and think, well, how do I solve that disconnection?

It's the latter question I'm more interested in.  How do you solve the disconnect?  I think it is really easy to just throw out opinions of those we deem "unworthy".  The problem is, they are worthy, they're probably the people who would get the most out of it if they just knew what was going on.  One of my fellow classmates put it perfectly.  "Artists are philosophers who need visual aids."  This is fantastic!  (Thanks, Jessica!)  The thing is, she's summed it up perfectly.  Throughout history, each and every artist was working out of a philosophy they endeavored to, what I would call, mortalize.  Not a word, mind you.  The thing is, when you create something, you give an idea life.  If you do it successfully, people can relate to it (or at least that's the idea!).  It's not just portrait painting, it's not just some stuffy looking dude in a coat, if the glorification of that stuffy guy!  He was painted at a time where people were still glorifying mankind, and prettying them up, and making them the idealistic version of man.

The people throwing the paint, however, are trying to make a statement about the use of animals, abuse of animals, and/ or that anything can be art, simply because it is touched by the hand of a so-called "artist".  It's a performance piece, really, which these days can constitute as a work of art.  A little confusing, hence...

My proposition!  Why not make art more relatable (also not a word)?  I think there needs to be a breaking down of the current pretension walls.  I think there is too much hype, and not enough thought.  There needs to be thought, dedicated specifically to who is looking at this stuff.  It's not just other artists, or at least, one hopes it's not just other artists.  Ideally, you want everyone to be interested, not just you click.  So, I think there needs to be some constructive thought on how you make art more interesting and informative to your average joe, because, let's face it, he's important, too, and deserves your attention.  After all, it's for his that philosophy is written, so that he may become enlightened, and therefore, a better human being.  Isn't that the point of philosophy?  For betterment?



Artists that I think do this to some extent: Michael Scoggins, Luke Murphy, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Elizabeth Peyton, Paula Rego, and Glenn Brown (if for no other reason than for sheer badassery, and awesome technical skills. Obsession, much)