Associate Editor: Claudia Puccio Writers: Zoe Hyde Ian Sanity Marita Spooner Visual Designer: Darius Loftis Web Developer: Nick Rachielles Submissions If you would like to be a contributing writer or photographer – to conduct an interview, write an article, or cover an event – and you believe it fits our criteria, please email us at Submissions@Abstraks.com for consideration. Please attach samples of any past writing or photography.
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Table Of Contents Issue 25
Artists Josh Morrisette
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Erin Zaffis
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Ultimate
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Princess Mia
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4
Josh Morrisette Interview by Ian Sanity
“I am an artist, a daydreamer, a keeper of a crazy fantasy world that resides in my head,” says Joshua Morrissette. “I’m an illustrator, a photographer, and a Photoshop guru. Often times the wizard behind the curtain. I spent a decade as a professional photo-retoucher.” Josh is a very well rounded visual artist who has worked on comics (fine art, illustration, comic coloring, layout and design, lettering, and some writing), been an exhibiting artist, and has also been a teacher. Josh is a new father and a brand new husband. Josh is a busy man. As many artists understand, you’ve got to make the time and find the energy to always create and Josh is clearly no exception to this rule. His current body of work is a look into a slightly frightening, very mysterious world. It seems like the work of someone with some skeletons in their closet, or some bodies perhaps. But that’s just not the case. “I grew up watching Horror movies. Had Jason, Freddy, and Hellraiser posters all over my walls as a kid. I read Fangoria. I loved special effects make-up and classic Monster movies.” Phew! He’s just a horror buff.
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“My recollection is having a very good and loving childhood. The reality of moving so much, making new friends, and switching school systems a lot. That made me subject of some bullying. Luckily I have a gift and a curse of being able to compartmentalize all aspects of my life. So I never brought negative feelings home once the bell rang. Overall I really enjoyed being a kid in the 80’s. But I’m more drawn to a foggy bridge in the woods than a bright sunset.” Morrissette seems to have been fascinated with the ‘bizarre’ ever since a young age, as well as having a phenomenal imagination, and an aptitude for improvisation. Josh describes some of his earliest memories of being creative playing with G.I. Joe’s. “I used to ball up blankets and throw them up in the air, how ever they landed became a series of caves for my action figure adventures. I would take the screw out of the back of the Joes, and create my own characters from all their parts. Out of boredom comes creation. But also that shitty elastic that held their legs on would wear out
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after some time. So, if I didn’t want legless Joes (which were great for the post-war scenes), then I would start operating. I also had doubles of certain characters. I would slice them up with a buck knife and add some red paint...again, more victims for after the fighting or bombs dropped.” Despite being a happy (and maybe slightly violent) child Josh’s young life was riddled with tragedy. He lost both his mother and father at early ages and had to cope with his mother’s sickness all his life. “It made us have to be more responsible at a young age. Did I have times when I wanted to escape or delve into bad habits? Sure. But overall, I had a good head on my shoulders,” explains Josh. “Everyone has a story, and my plight has made me who I am.” After high school Morrissette went to Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass where he began to dabble in multiple mediums. “I didn’t know what I wanted to study, so I tried it all. Painting, sculpture, illustration, photo, printmaking. Halfway through my junior year they forced my hand. I chose
to pursue photography. Most of my closest friends at school were illustrators, so I figured I could keep learning that by proxy.” “When I was a junior I was introduced to the photographer Jerry Uelsmann. He was not the inventor, but the perfecter of the darkroom-created photographic montage. He would use up to ten enlargers (and as many negatives), to mask and burn and dodge, creating these masterful photographs from his visions.” All techniques that Josh has learned to do, both in the dark room and digitally, he applies to his work. “Before learning photographic techniques, I thought of photography as factual representation of an actual event. But seeing it come to life in the chemicals did have some magic to it. Learning to “sandwich” negatives, using contrast filters, cross-processing slide film, Polaroid transfers...these were things that hit me on a creative level, but also hit some weird scientific nerve that intrigued me. The idea of falsifying, doctoring, restoring, or toning photos made that stiff definition of photography fade
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away.” After college Josh began his time as the jack-of-all-trades. But there was one job in particular that seemed to bring Josh’s art to the place it is now. “I worked at a digital imaging lab for many years. I was their quality control manager and photo restoration guy. I have a very accurate eye for detail. Sometimes to a fault. Doing photo restoration, I would see cherished family photos and albums in all conditions. Left in the attic for years. Been in a flood. Torn, stained, stuck together, discolored, faded. I had to restore them to their former glory. Well an interesting thing happened organically over the years, I fell in love with the look of the staining. The tears were appealing to me. The discoloring and fading was beautiful, yet unintentional. It began to find its way into some of my art. Intentional degradation. Desaturating and muting the color fields. Adding textures to age things. Selective softening to emulate the errors of photographers who lived long ago.” Josh describes himself as a “visual packrat.” He constantly collects
collaging and layering materials with his camera. “Sometimes I know what it’ll be used for later, but often just to collect and have for when the opportunity arises.” For the most part his process is pretty organic and every piece comes together in a different way. “The culmination is that it always happens in Photoshop. I mean sure there are photos I’ve taken that I like purely on their own merit, and there is a place for them somewhere without needing to manipulate them, but I feel more of a sense of creation when I begin to formulate something out of my imagination.”
ting his website up and running. Until then: “I currently have a few illustrations in a traveling “The Big Lebowski” exhibit. I will also have an illustration in an upcoming book project titled “States of Terror”. It’s a creepy black and white retro/grindhouse style book of different Artists interpretations of monsters spanning the 50 states. West coast Writers, East coast Artists. I can’t reveal my monster at this time.” But it’s undoubtedly going to be awesome. Contact: facebook.com/jomoillphoto behance.net/jomophoto
All of the visual tools that Josh has acquired over the years layer themselves together with photography and illustration to create the spooky universe of his mind. A world where nothing is certain and everything is veiled in mystery. Faces blur, edges darken, and textures can make your skin crawl. A world you want to stay away from but find yourself staggering deeper and deeper through the fog towards certain doom. Josh is currently working on get-
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Erin Zaffis Interview by Marita Spooner
Erin Zaffis was seventeen-years-old when she became a mom for the first time. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was troubled, but I had my issues,” says the artist, now thirty-seven. As a teenager, she explains, “I wasn’t motivated to do much of anything. I just wanted a boyfriend.” Today, Zaffis is a mother of three, living in Southbury, CT. As a maternity nurse and multimedia artist, she’s married her two passions into one through her exhibit, Mama, a group of works that uses pregnant mannequins as its canvas. The series, which explores the general theme of motherhood, is naturally a reflection of Zaffis’ own experiences as a mom, starting with her first daughter. Zaffis returned to high school her senior year a mother. Always a creative spirit, she previously imagined studying art, but college no longer seemed like something that was in the cards. “I thought I’d go and be a secretary, like my mom,” she says. Her guidance counselor balked. She was graduating from high school, why couldn’t she go to college? To college she went. She did decide, however, to do something practical. The phrase, “starving artist” occurred to her and she realized that while it was one thing for her to struggle, it was quite a different thing for her baby. Instead, she mused, she could become a nurse. Zaffis didn’t know much about nursing. In fact, she had hardly spent any time in hospitals, except—of course—when she
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delivered her baby, an experience that left much to be desired. “It was horrible,” said Zaffis of her first labor, “The nurses weren’t kind.” Perhaps they did not approve of her situation. Zaffis wouldn’t speculate. She only knew that she would be a better nurse. She graduated on time—with her peers—at age twenty-two and found herself working on a maternity floor. There she realized that being the better nurse was easier said than done. “The [maternity] system doesn’t work for women,” she explains. Instead, it works for staff, doctors, and insurance companies. It wasn’t until she gave birth to her second daughter during her mid-twenties that she realized things could be different. Instead of a typical maternity ward, she tried a birthing center attached to a hospital. It was a completely different experience. “Night and day,” says Zaffis. Unlike her first labor, which felt like a “painful extraction,” she felt respected. “It was very empowering.” Soon after, she left the hospital, and went to work at that same birthing center. She also eventually returned to school to pursue a master’s degree in holistic, integrated health. It was this experience that eventually spurred Mama. As a master’s program for working adults, classes were held on weekends. An art therapy workshop one Saturday is what
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inspired Zaffis to reconnect with her creative side again. A friend, who recently opened a tattoo shop, had scoured the local mall for equipment to use for his new business. A maternity store was going out of business and offered to sell him, among other things, their mannequins. He gave the mannequins away to his friends that were mothers, thinking they could paint them for an art show at the shop. “He gave me one and I started painting it,” says Zaffis, “But before I finished the first mannequin, I had an idea for another one.” She realized that once she started her thesis, she wouldn’t have time for the painting anymore, so she decided to make her new pastime the project itself. “I told [my advisors] nine mannequins for nine months. I totally screwed myself. I could’ve said four mannequins or three mannequins or something.” She called her first work, “Blood, Milk, and Tears.” The least complicated of the series, it’s mainly paint and paper mâché—a blue belly with a sprouting seed. “It represents what being a mother means to me.You love this baby, but it drains the life out of you. It represents that first month.You’re bleeding, you’re leaking, and you can’t sleep.You just feel like a slave to this little tiny being, but there’s also this overwhelming joy. It’s a weird dichotomy.”
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Her second mannequin, which she created after deciding on her thesis, explores not just the internal feelings that come with motherhood, but also the outside influences—specifically the consumerism that’s pushed onto mothers. The artwork itself is covered in logos from Barbie to Chanel. “I get angry about [that consumerism]. I shut off my cable TV because I don’t want my kids to watch commercials. Being a woman, they try to market so much to you. And they take advantage and exploit women through their children. Children don’t buy stuff,” Zaffis fumed, “the parents do.” With each mannequin, she explored similar themes and different ones as well. New ideas for pieces often came to her when she was half-asleep or meditating. “I was also reading a lot books for school… little bits of those books also turned up in the mannequins.” While she did sketch out designs, the pieces would often change organically, morphing as she played with new materials, discovering new sculpting techniques and also making mistakes. The cracks on one mannequin developed after spray paint dripped unintentionally. “I was stuck, I fucked up, and then tried to fix it.” She took some self-drying clay and rubbed it onto the belly and groin area to cover up the paint. By the next day, the clay had cracked. “But,” Zaffis thought, “It added depth to the piece.”
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The white, cracked mannequin, with an egg in the center, and several hands reaching toward the egg, has inspired a range of reactions in its viewers. Many see it as a pro-choice statement, while others think the cracks in the groin represent sexual assault. One woman simply related the cracks on the artwork to the stretch marks on her own belly. Zaffis appreciates these different interpretations and welcomes the dialogue that Mama inspires. She hopes to show the exhibit again, along with the lecture that accompanies it, “Birth as a Creative Process,” which she presented at Western Connecticut State University. “The combination of the exhibit and lecture provide a great opportunity for education on childbirth, art and the innate creative potential of humankind,” says Zaffis. If you are interested in having Mama displayed at your college, gallery, or nonprofit, you can contact Zaffis through her website, www.erinzaffis.com. You can also visit her Etsy page to see another project by the artist, the Mamadonna, tactile figurines inspired by the Venus of Willendorf that can be used by mothers in labor for meditation and stress relief. See these at www.etsy.com/ shop/MamAmore.
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Ultimate Interview by Zoe Hyde
When I am scheduled to interview Tim Moores, in-house artist of Allston’s Greenside Up Gallery, the week so happens to fall between overlapping shifts at my old waitressing job and the new book store job that I’m desperately trying to force on-track. The one day I can interview Tim is my one day off in-between 10-day weeks, and I’m running late as I troll the streets of Allston-Brighton, hungrily looking for a parking space. I finally find one and fill the meter, but it’s a short-lived rental, because as soon as I meet Tim, he takes us away to his house in Brighton. Tim’s “studio” is his bedroom, a small room with a single window on the 3rd floor. Colorful paintings of Brighton rooftops and neighborhoods hang on his walls. There’s not much else in the room besides canvases and a bed. Downstairs, in the basement, we drink cans of PBR and sit in front of a huge green screen to talk. We are painstakingly wired for sound. I am sitting next to a very deliberately placed potted fern. Before we begin, Tim puts on a pair of dark sunglasses. “I look better with sunglasses”, he says to me.
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Zoe: Why live in Boston?
creating art purposefully?
Tim: Massachusetts is where everyone I know is, for starters. I definitely wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I was still living in Braintree. Once you move to the city, that definitely opens up a lot more opportunity. But yeah, just the community of people around me, its like, I work for Greenside Up, they’re out of Allston, I work with Color Channel, they’re also out of Allston, but yeah its pretty much all my friends are around here so that’s what’s keeping me.
Tim: First memory of creating art purposefully...that’s a good question.
Zoe: Can you explain a little bit what you do for and at Greenside up? Tim: So, I am the in-house artist for Greenside Up, I do all their promo stuff, fliers, stickers, website stuff, t-shirts, all that. I also curate in the Allston gallery. We try to get new artists in there, try to get a new one in every month or so. But yeah, my main responsibilities for Greenside is being the in-house artists and doing all their design stuff. Zoe: What is your first memory of
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Zoe: Or like thinking to yourself, “this is something I made’ and having that realization I’d say probably it wasn’t until I was getting out of high school, senior year, to when I was getting into college and I started like, printing t-shirts and getting more of a feel of like, the art that I was doing. There was just-I don’t know what exactly the change was but it was like once I started putting art on t-shirts, I guess, my mind started working that way, to think abstractly and get ideas and work through it.Yeah, it’s putting art on t-shirts would be the first real realization of, having art as a purpose. Zoe: And that’s something that you still do? Tim: I do still do that, I’ve been putting out a lot of shirts lately, I just got a printing press going, trying to get a shop going out
of Braintree, so I’ve just recently been back into doing t shirts. For the past few years, I’ve been focusing more so on canvases, which is definitely a very good feeling, I started doing t-shirts but then that turned into doing canvases, and now I’m just now getting back into doing t-shirts, but it just feels good to do the same idea that I’d put on a t shirt onto a canvas, to just make it, bigger than me. Zoe: What kind of mediums do you use? Tim: For canvases, I just use acrylic paints, sometimes paint markers, but that is actually really it at this point. I’ve been waiting to start experimenting with oils, just based off what people have told me, oils just seem like a little more fitting and easier to work with. Zoe: A little bit more freedom in regard to time. Tim:Yeah, yeah. With the acrylics I just kind of do it layer by layer, wait for it to dry, sit on it, meditate on it, come back to it. Figure out the next step. So that’s why most of my paintings I work
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on them, off and on, for at least a couple months. I work on a bunch of them at a time and just kind of pick away at them. I would like to start experimenting with oils, it’s something I‘ve yet to do, but just probably the next step. Zoe: So each piece takes a few months? Tim: It takes a few months before I feel comfortable putting it up anywhere. Even when I do put it up places, I usually feel there’s more I could be doing to it, but my studio is the room I sleep in, so I spend a lot of time just looking at it and obsessing over it, seeing what I could or should do. A lot of the times, you should just stop when you think it looks good, because that is how you fuck it up, but yeah a couple months is usually how long it takes to get rid of a canvas out of my room. Zoe: Once you feel like you’ve completed it, but you obsess about it and make more marks, can you ever fix it? Tim: If it doesn’t sell. I am kind of at that point right now, I just
moved into a new place; it was a very big house we were living in before, and I have a bunch of pieces up that used to be in the gallery but never sold, and then I just put them up at the house, but now we moved into a new places I have all those up in my studio again, so I probably am going to go back and touch them up a bit. Gloss those bitches. Zoe: What are some of your inspirations, artists or otherwise? Tim: I’m definitely inspired by the people I surround myself with, I put a lot of value on community and the people that are usually around me definitely inspire me, a lot of like-minded individuals, I live and work with Color Channel, those guys inspire me all the time, they’re always pushing the envelope. Artists that inspire me, Ron English is a favorite, Robert Williams, Rex Ray, but...even like, people who aren’t artists like Howard Stern and David Cho. I listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m creating work, so...I listen to a lot of Stern, David Cho, Joe Rogan. Zoe: Interesting, I wouldn’t have
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thought Stern would be an inspiration for paintings. Tim:Yeah, what he’s doing is definitely a form of art, just at its rawest form. He’s just a guy who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else’s standards, he just does what he feels and he totally changed the game, just doing what he felt, and he got a lot of shit for it too. He’s sittin’ pretty now, and still on the radio after all these years. Zoe: Would you say that your work is abstract? Tim: I wouldn’t say the majority of my work is abstract, some of my more recent pieces have been abstract, I’d say the pieces I was doing...I’d say probably a year to two years ago were a lot more planned, and I’d have ideas in sketchbooks, and I’d say “Alright, how can I take this to canvas?” and I’d throw down colors, use projections, just kind a wing it off that. But lately, I’ve been, yeah, trying to do more. Some of the pieces have ended up being a little abstract, but I’ve just been trying to challenge myself more, go straight paint to canvas and not really think about
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it, but I feel like that’s just getting my technique down, and exercises for myself, just a different element that I can bring to my pieces. But usually, yeah I wouldn’t say they’re abstract, usually there’s an idea at the forefront, but some of my more recent pieces have just been me feeling it out, not really any idea in mind, which I like, but once I get back to bigger pieces again, that’s just a different element I can bring to it. Zoe: So in the past, you’ve kept sketchbooks? Tim: yeah I keep a lot of sketchbooks, I try to draw everyday just to keep my mind up to it. Its just all training, really, just like anything, playing music, being a boxer, you just gotta train. Drawing is definitely my training. Zoe: Does gender or gender politics play a role in your work? Tim: I wouldn’t say that gender or gender politics necessarily come to mind when I’m creating art, but I would say, offending people comes to mind. I realize sometimes when I draw certain things,
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somebody or certain genders might be offended by that, but it is all just exercises for myself, I try to keep it stream of conscious as possible, very raw, but I do think and draw some obscene things sometimes and I know some people will be offended by it. I gotta let it out. Zoe: But that’s the primary function of it. Tim:Yeah to just let it out. I definitely don’t consider gender when I’m creating art. Zoe: Have you ever branched out into more three-dimensional work? Tim: Not necessarily, doing sculpture or 3D work, I did a window display one time; a friend of mine runs a recording studio in Arlington center. His parents-in-law used to own the place, it used to be a jewelry store, and they had this pretty small window up front, so I did a window installation there, just a bunch of pieces and stuff hanging from the ceiling, that’s actually still up, it’s been up for a year. I was the first artist he
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booked for that, and he plans on booking more. That was really my first opportunity to work more than just a canvas in a gallery, more taking up a space. I would like to do more installation type stuff, just more walking into an atmosphere, as opposed to just walking into your usual gallery setting with just paintings on a wall. Zoe: Is sound something you’d be interested in experimenting with? Tim: It would be, yeah, I mean I’m definitely open to whatever. Really, everything interests me and I wanna do so much, I even think about going to open mics and doing stand up comedy Zoe: Oh my god, you should definitely do that Tim: - or do like a podcast, that would be fun. But to do art and a sound installation would be fucking sick. I know and live with a lot of musicians so it’s very doable. I want to start taking things in that direction too, make it more encompassing. So like with the videos, we’ve been trying to get more footage, really of anything, and just
take it to editing. I work very tight with Color Channel so they can always put music to whatever I’m working on. Hopefully soon I’ll be doing live visuals for those guys, I started kind of figuring out video mapping and animations, I have to sit down and spend more time with it. Same deal with Greenside, I do all Color Channel’s artwork. I want to start taking that and animating it so we can put it behind them when they’re playing, that’s definitely a goal. Zoe: How do installations interact with the viewer differently than just a painting on a wall? Tim: Um, music reaches people a lot quicker than a canvas on the wall. I think video does that too; it also has a more direct approach than canvas. With my canvases in particular, I feel like, the more you look at it, the more you can get out of it or the more you notice. I think with video and audio, it’s a little more instant. It’s just creating more of an all-encompassing vibe; with art on the wall you can be distracted very easily. If you’re at a show and you see, like, a huge projector while you’re watching
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a band, that might keep more of you attention. Depending on the person. Just a different form. Zoe: Do you ever find yourself compelled to create art for a specific audience? Tim: I try not to target my art towards any audience; I try to make art for myself as much as possible, which is very hard. Just living with a group of people, because I work out of the room I sleep in, so I’ll have people come in all the time and I’ll have unfinished pieces on the wall, and they’ll start to give me their opinions about them. That definitely does have an effect. I try not to let it, just try to keep it as raw as possible, try to keep it what I’m thinking in my consciousness. But when people come through and give me ideas, it does totally fuck up the process. But it is interesting to hear what people have to say. Sometimes people will be like ‘dude that’s sick, sell me that’, and I’ll be like, I haven’t even...I just started that, I have so many more steps in mind. That definitely has a role but I try not to think about that. I mean, any criticisms that people give me
I will consider, but I try to keep it just in my state of mind. Zoe: What is the difference between art and decoration? Tim: That’s a good question. Honestly I don’t know if I could even answer that. A lot of the stuff that I do is very decorative, I like to do a lot of pattern stuff you can put on the wall and it makes you feel good to look at, very nonobjective. But I still consider that art. Art’s just a very weird term anyway; I try not to even consider myself an artist sometimes. People have taken that word and ran with it as far as they could. I think the work that I make is very decorative, but yeah I do think it’s also art. Even if the pieces I make are objective, and might make some people mad, I want it to still be enjoyable to look at so even if what I’m looking at offends me, I can’t look away. That’s why my color palette is very bright. I try to merge both art and decoration.
website: www.GETULTIMATE.net instagram: @get_ultimate
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Princess Mia Interview by Ian Sanity
The waves of a giant angry ocean crash against her body, they envelop her in a forceful, cold, blue embrace. Flowing up her chest, up her neck, tangling with her deepspace colored hair, the weight of the universe climbs. In her eyes is sadness, but also determination and resolve. On top of her head sits, glowing, a golden crown; a shield against her doubts. It represents the adversity she’s gloriously overcome in the past. It’s foreshadowing her future victories. She is powerful. She is an angel living in another universe. This world exists in the head and artwork of Princess M. It’s bright, it’s magical, and it’s alive. The ‘pop surreal abstract portraits’ she creates can be found on paper, canvas, phone cases, bags, her website, her blog, and on her various social networks.You name it she’s on it. It’s no surprise that one of her major heroes is a businessman and inventor and rather than an artist. Her blog is even a follow-along art business adventure in which she highlights daily tasks that keep her art business running. The two personalities of M combine beautifully - like her
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watercolors and her black ink - to keep her bills paid and to keep her smiling. “I’m usually working on 5 art pieces at a time, she explains. “I have about 8 now I haven’t even inked yet. Some take a day, some take a few minutes and some take months.” But that’s not all. “I am constantly and actively selling my art. I am on a lot of print on demand sites and marketplaces.” And Etsy. And Deviant Art. And Instagram. Keeping busy is an important part of staying as prolific as Princess M. Keeping a hectic lifestyle is nothing new to her, though. “I grew up in a small town around the Bay Area in California. My family was fairly big. When I was little there were about 10 people to one house and I had many aunties and uncles that lived around the area.” Growing up in a bustling household definitely created an environment that bred a hustling lifestyle, though not necessarily a happy one. “I was always very pessimistic when I was younger and always expected the worst,” says M. “I
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never wanted to be attached to anything because at a young age I learned that things don’t last forever. To really escape, from me thinking so much, I started to draw and it really helped me stay in the present moment. Which is still the main reason why I make art the way I do. If I’m super filled with emotion I make art on a really large surface, if I’m feeling calm or not really feeling anything I normally draw on a small surface.” She creates surreal personified landscape portraits that tie fantasy to real life feelings. It’s a way to deal with emotions. Good or bad emotions can often be overwhelming. “It really helps me get out of my comfort zone. There are so many things I would have NEVER done if I never decided to keep being an artist. I get panic attacks often with the uncertainty it brings but it’s exciting at the same time.” Often the obstacles that artists must overcome inject themselves directly into their art. Every one of M’s characters seem to deeply feel the emotions that drive the direction of the work. “It all depends on my mood. I have to actually be filled with some type of emotion or my art would suck.”
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M, being from the Bay Area, paints with very much a west coast style, reminiscent of many of the Upper Playground players. Colorful, free, surreal, playful, and finished with the patience of an illustrator. It’s clear much of her inspiration comes from artists like “Audrey Kawasaki, Jeff Soto, Joram Roukes, Miss Van, and Craola Simpkins.” But she has a much less obvious inspiration as well. “My hero now,” says Princess M, “is probably Sir James Dyson, the guy who made the Dyson fan. He made over 5,000 prototypes and was millions of dollars in debt but kept calm and kept going regardless of what he was going through. If he gave up, he would have lost everything and I would never have made that gamble or took that risk. But his belief in himself inspires me to be the same. That is something a lot of artists need, they need to be very motivated even when they struggle.” And their struggle becomes their motivation. After finishing a piece Princess is right off to the other side of her life where she is a business wiz.
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She sells reproductions of her work, originals, and even phone cases, pillows and much more. She sells her work through various online stores and is even searching for more venues constantly. M really is not only an artist but also an entrepreneur, a hustler. She is what the modern artist has to be in order to beat the odds. To rise above the struggle. And despite the waves of adversity that crash on her shore, Princess M, like her characters, will find a way to proudly shine through the fog of what we call life. You can find her work on her website artofprincessm.com or you can follow along on her blog, or her instagram account (@peekaboohime), or her Facebook page (facebook.com/artofprincessm). And just like a true businesswoman she has links to her store on any and all of those outlets. If you yourself are a struggling artist who needs a little inspiration, do yourself a favor, check out her blog. The link is on her website. http://www.artofprincessm.com/
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TM