Interview
PETRA KNEZIC draw-ink.com
When you first lay your eye on one of Petra Knezik’s creations, it’s the details that hit you. Almost immediately, your eye wanders from one element to another, trying to soak it all in. Using an isograph with drawing ink, her works are the result of hours of meticulous attention to detail, each piece telling its own story. Based in Slovenia, Petra initially started with pencil and charcoal and was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci award in Florence Italy as well as the Canaletto Prize for outstanding work in her field in Venice, Italy. Would you say that the ‘Soulies’ in your painting are blank canvases that the viewers can fill? Yes, Soulies have been designed without a specific face or body type. They can and should be altered to your own wishes; they should become the projection of yourself or somebody else you want to see in a story. This way everyone should be able to feel what is going on in the drawing; everyone could be in the deepest depths of an ocean, and everyone could be the one saving that person with their love and light. When we walk around on this planet, we don’t hold a mirror in front of ourselves the whole time; we don’t act like something because it fits that face we are wearing. We look from the inside, a place that wears a
specific awareness of self, that we project through our actions to the outside. Like this, we should be able to think ourselves into somebody else’s shoes, try to understand why other selves act differently. Soulies should bring this attempt at empathy closer because you are not limited to yourself or somebody else’s face. You could be the one winning or the one losing, the one being saved or the one saving; it’s up to you where you want to see yourself. You can be any “Soulie” in the picture. How important is the narrative of your work? It depends. Most works are the narrative, without it, there is no work. Some are 60% - 40%, because I was exploring my rules of drawing, how they fit into a work or if they 58
