All images courtesy of the artist.
Myra Kooy
Interview with Julia Buntaine, SciArt Center Director
JB: As an artist you are inspired by your environment, from the natural to the urban. Why do you think this is? Is your environment something you've always been interested in?
MK: My art is a direct response to my immediate environment, my past experiences, and an ongoing investigation of my heritage and culture. I explore interconnections and relationships of particles and their ecosystems as they compare to societal units - family, racial, economical, for example.
As a black and lesbian woman, I find the city is much more friendly to me than the suburbs. It is very relaxing to see people that look like you and give them a nod when you walk down the street. I have travelled to quite a few countries Amsterdam, Rio, Bahia, Lisbon and many cities in the states, and have always wanted to come back to New York. The level of diversity and vast cultural experiences available in NYC is a big gift to me as an artist.
Interview with Julia Buntaine, SciArt Center Director
JB: As an artist you are inspired by your environment, from the natural to the urban. Why do you think this is? Is your environment something you've always been interested in?
MK: My art is a direct response to my immediate environment, my past experiences, and an ongoing investigation of my heritage and culture. I explore interconnections and relationships of particles and their ecosystems as they compare to societal units - family, racial, economical, for example.
As a black and lesbian woman, I find the city is much more friendly to me than the suburbs. It is very relaxing to see people that look like you and give them a nod when you walk down the street. I have travelled to quite a few countries Amsterdam, Rio, Bahia, Lisbon and many cities in the states, and have always wanted to come back to New York. The level of diversity and vast cultural experiences available in NYC is a big gift to me as an artist.
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The beauty of my life is that my parents chose me to join their family of three biological white boys and one black girl. After WWII my teenaged parents immigrated from Holland, built our home, and raised us to live off the land. As a child I played with carpentry tools, milked goats, raised chickens, and canned fruits and vegetables. My mother taught me to use the encyclopedia, dictionary, sewing machine, rolling pin, oven, and so much more. She taught me to embrace, rather than fear, new materials and ideas. Later in life I applied my childhood experience with all of the skills I learned from my mother into a series called Wearable Art for Your Soul, which exhibited at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. My Grandmother’s Stories is the artistic result of meeting my biological grandmother fifteen years ago.
My father, a landscape architect, took me for walks in the woods and taught me to see beyond the trees, the leaves, the grasses, and the flowers. Patterns on tree trunks and all-shaped leaves glowing around their edges emerged while a multitude of colors danced in from above. This precious time was the spark for a series of assemblages I called, My Father’s Land. These experiences made me confident that I could figure anything out - a quality that became more precious than ever when confronted with new materials and ideas. My Grandmother’s Stories is the artistic result of meeting my biological grandmother fifteen years ago. In the years after we met her many life stories ignited my poetry, and the passion in her voice inspired me to create. I grew to embrace my black skin with a knowing and pride that I never felt before. The experience was so significant that it changed the trajectory of my creative process. I was given the opportunity to explore nature verses nurture using myself as the subject. So, yes both my immediate surroundings, the people and the things that enter into my environment become apart of my personal fiber. When I get lost in the creative process those things that have touched me will surface and be naturally incorporated into my art. |
JB: You work in a lot of different mediums - what's your favorite right now, and why?
MK: I would have to say that oil and encaustic paint and print making have captured my fancy right now. They promote my passion for playing with color while giving me the ability to express my visual ideas. For many years I have used old doors that bring their own history to my painting. Their history is perfectly suited for my on going heritage/cultural art. But most recently, I find the surface of a canvas to allow me to express delicate transitions between painted masses and to accentuate a possible glow found behind a colors with grace.
I also, love glass painting and find the relationship between glass, the paint, and the viewer to be continuously active. The energy of a glass painting placed in a window will comes a live through a glow of being back light, to the true painted image at night, to the reflective surface of glass it self. While creating this work I became aware of the interconnectedness of actual objects and the air that floats between them.
MK: I would have to say that oil and encaustic paint and print making have captured my fancy right now. They promote my passion for playing with color while giving me the ability to express my visual ideas. For many years I have used old doors that bring their own history to my painting. Their history is perfectly suited for my on going heritage/cultural art. But most recently, I find the surface of a canvas to allow me to express delicate transitions between painted masses and to accentuate a possible glow found behind a colors with grace.
I also, love glass painting and find the relationship between glass, the paint, and the viewer to be continuously active. The energy of a glass painting placed in a window will comes a live through a glow of being back light, to the true painted image at night, to the reflective surface of glass it self. While creating this work I became aware of the interconnectedness of actual objects and the air that floats between them.
JB: What recent piece of scientific news excites you the most?
MK: “The Kinetic Theory of Matter,” I realize that this is not a recent scientific bit of news, but it does excite me. I should say that I am an artist who is excited by creating imagery that evokes thought, emotions, and the challenges proposed when introduced to new materials and concepts. So, in creating my art I have found that science is an integral part of so many aspects of my creative process. When I heat up cooper rods, solder copper plumping pipe, mix powder pigments, or heat and blend resin, wax and pigment for encaustic painting, I am playing chemist.
But something different is happening with in the context of the reverse glass paintings. It isn’t the preparation of the medium, it is the desired message in the imagery itself. When I stumbled on “The Kinetic Theory of Matter” I could see direct connections between the progression in my art work. The first works, “A Hike in the Woods,” are a series of impressionist paintings with colorful dots that represent the air’s movement (gas particles) and their interplay with the trees shrubs flowers, and the viewer. These painting evolved into work’s where the whole painted environment was 97% pointillist (particles). I was playing with the idea that everything is made from the same thing (atoms, matter, particles), and variations of color that play off of each other. In the painting The Brooklyn Clock Tower I have painted lines to reflect buildings and filled them with colorful dots that seem to push beyond their boundaries and in some areas the energy of the solid forms are beginning to have a phase change. The latest images in the series, “Beyond Our Sight,” are a colorful dance of pointillism. To me they have broken down the barriers that separate objects. They contain a freedom and energy that passes in and out and around objects, people.
MK: “The Kinetic Theory of Matter,” I realize that this is not a recent scientific bit of news, but it does excite me. I should say that I am an artist who is excited by creating imagery that evokes thought, emotions, and the challenges proposed when introduced to new materials and concepts. So, in creating my art I have found that science is an integral part of so many aspects of my creative process. When I heat up cooper rods, solder copper plumping pipe, mix powder pigments, or heat and blend resin, wax and pigment for encaustic painting, I am playing chemist.
But something different is happening with in the context of the reverse glass paintings. It isn’t the preparation of the medium, it is the desired message in the imagery itself. When I stumbled on “The Kinetic Theory of Matter” I could see direct connections between the progression in my art work. The first works, “A Hike in the Woods,” are a series of impressionist paintings with colorful dots that represent the air’s movement (gas particles) and their interplay with the trees shrubs flowers, and the viewer. These painting evolved into work’s where the whole painted environment was 97% pointillist (particles). I was playing with the idea that everything is made from the same thing (atoms, matter, particles), and variations of color that play off of each other. In the painting The Brooklyn Clock Tower I have painted lines to reflect buildings and filled them with colorful dots that seem to push beyond their boundaries and in some areas the energy of the solid forms are beginning to have a phase change. The latest images in the series, “Beyond Our Sight,” are a colorful dance of pointillism. To me they have broken down the barriers that separate objects. They contain a freedom and energy that passes in and out and around objects, people.
JB: What are you working on right now?
MK: What I am working on now was sparked by a trip to Alaska. Walking on a glacier, I was overwhelmed by the 360-degree vista. Deep down inside, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that I was made of the same stuff as my eyes were beholding. I pulled out my zoom lens and all of a sudden, I felt my body relax. What had appeared to be mountains of ancient ice and vast bodies of water became beautiful forms of graduating color, flowing shapes and captivating fissures. Did this somehow hold the key to the interconnection I was seeking? Excited, I wanted to be able to zoom in another 300 times and possibly a 1000 times. What would I see?
Right now I am excited to be using a microscope to explore my world. I am collaborating on this project with my cousin a fellow artist. This project grows out of all that I have shared here. One thing that is clear to me is that I follow a flow in my artistic process and allow the pieces in a series to inform me on which direction to go next. Then after I can explore what they have created.
MK: What I am working on now was sparked by a trip to Alaska. Walking on a glacier, I was overwhelmed by the 360-degree vista. Deep down inside, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that I was made of the same stuff as my eyes were beholding. I pulled out my zoom lens and all of a sudden, I felt my body relax. What had appeared to be mountains of ancient ice and vast bodies of water became beautiful forms of graduating color, flowing shapes and captivating fissures. Did this somehow hold the key to the interconnection I was seeking? Excited, I wanted to be able to zoom in another 300 times and possibly a 1000 times. What would I see?
Right now I am excited to be using a microscope to explore my world. I am collaborating on this project with my cousin a fellow artist. This project grows out of all that I have shared here. One thing that is clear to me is that I follow a flow in my artistic process and allow the pieces in a series to inform me on which direction to go next. Then after I can explore what they have created.
You can view more of Myra's work at http://www.myrasight.com/home
