Here is an update for my solo exhibition at The School of Creative Arts at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne Indiana.


The Veiled Narrative:
Drawings and Paintings By
ARMIN MERSMANN

January 23 – February 28, 2010
Opening Reception January 23, 7-9
John P Weatherhead Gallery
Mimi and Ian Rolland Art and Visual Communication Center

University of Saint Francis
2701 Spring Street
Fort Wayne, IN 46808

[link]


Lecture by Armin Mersmann January 14, 2010 at North Campus Auditorium - USF



Looks like I will have about twenty drawings and seven paintings in the show, if you can make it great! It would be great to put some faces on all the DA people who I get a chance to communicate with.

Armin

Some might of read this earlier but since its starting this Wednesday ill post it again.

This is an interview that I recently did for ArtPrize a major international exhibition in Grand Rapids Michigan September 23 – October 10. I’m not sure how many DA artists are exhibiting in this show but it would be great to know. So far I know of just one Todd Burroughs a great painter. [link]

First prize $250,000 that kind of money has never been seen in the art world.

ArtPrize link: [link]


AP Since both your parents were artists, how have they influenced your career and your work? Did they always encourage your talent to become your career?

Both my parents were artists and they each saw the world from a unique perspective. The main lesson I learned was that I could communicate my feelings and ideas through my own artistic language. I learned that I didn’t need to internalize and bottle up the difficult feelings I struggled through as a teenager and young adult. By the time I was 10 years old, I was painting the backgrounds of my father’s oil paintings for $50 per piece and was teaching art to kids five years my senior at the local YMCA.
My parents also made me aware that a life in art doesn’t come for free; it takes a great work ethic, passion, desire, and a consistent drive to learn and grow. They stressed that you need to have a good technical foundation, an imagination, the love of process and the willingness to sacrifice menial relationships and material things in order to make time for my art.
Time is the most precious gift for an artist.

AP When did you start drawing portraits?

When I was a kid it was hard for me to draw faces so my dad “suggested” that that’s all I should draw for a few years, I would sit in his studio at my own drawing table and draw from life and photos until it was second nature. I found portraits to be a great vehicle to translate my thoughts and feelings.

AP How did these first portraits and also those from when you were working as a portraitist in Chicago influence and evolve into your narrative portrait series?

When I was in art school, my goal was to make a living from my art. I thought it would be wonderful to get up in the morning and just paint and draw even if that was commission portraiture. I started to get lots of drawing commissions, at first just in here in Michigan, and then Chicago. So my wife and I packed our bags and moved to The Windy City. “ ortraits Chicago,” a very exclusive agency for commission portraiture, represented me. I started making great money, and for the next two years I was never without work. But I was miserable!

Art, my sanctuary, the very thing that gave me such pleasure, was now reduced to paintings and drawings of corporate ‘bigwigs” wanting to look important in clichéd poses, pipe in hand, arm on an overstuffed chair, and so on. I had very little input into the creative side. I was told to make the subject look younger and thinner and then I would “rake in” the cash. Soon I started cutting corners in my work: the faster it got done, the more money I made. I lost the will to improve and my work actually started to suffer, and I found I had no energy to do “fine art” in my spare time.
I had to get out of this. I told Portraits Chicago that I was no longer available for commission portraiture and got a job in an art supply store. In the evenings I started to work on my art again, painting every night and the enthusiasm came back! I was experimenting with abstraction, which I love, but after a few years I realized it wasn’t my natural language; the work was very derivative and I slowly started working with the human figure again. I chose the model, poses and concepts, and every portrait, no matter who I was drawing, became a self-portrait.

I have nothing against making money from my work but I don’t need to make a living off of it. I never want to lose that artistic freedom that I enjoy now. Art is so precious, and I almost lost it.

AP Although you have dabbled around with oils, it seems as though graphite is your most common material used. How does this contribute to your overall style you wish to be portrayed?

Actually, I spent many years working in oils and recently I started to work with them again. These paintings come from another place; a place where romance, hope and beauty reside, a place that’s devoid of politics and social issues.
The oil paintings read kind of poetically, about small ideas, like the segmentation of color, dappled light and subtle abstractions. The graphite drawings are more akin to a novel telling a story, usually a somewhat dark story, or descriptive allegory of the subject I’m drawing. Both are equally important to my well-being as an artist and for my creative language.

AP How did you select these works to be shown for ArtPrize?

My main concentration is the Narrative Portrait and I feel I have made some great strides in drawing with pencil in the last ten years. The three works: “Beyond the Pale,”, The Waking Edge,” and ‘Blues for Mama,” are each an incredible journey that each took about a year to draw. They were major undertakings, to say the least, and I hope viewers can feel the passion I put into them.

AP Although you respect the viewer's "story" that they take from your work, what do you hope to convey in your portraits?

To represent the everyday non-glamorous person as a catalyst to tell a particular story. But the “story” doesn’t need to be illustrative; it can and should be hidden among many veils and have a sense of mystery. It’s more important to open up the imagination of the viewer than to dogmatically rant about a particular political, religious or social view, yet that’s the catalyst that gets me into the work. If the viewers stand in front of the work and all that they notice is technique, then the work is a kind of failure. Then again, if the technique draws them in and they get an emotional reaction out it the drawing even if it’s different than mine, then it’s a success. I believe it take two to produce a work of art: the artist and the viewer. When the viewer translates the work into their own personal vision, sparking their imagination, then a work of art is created.

AP I have read about your passion for artistic freedom, is this your personal driving force to be continue as an artist? What is your greatest pleasure from being an artist?

What’s it like not to be an artist? I can’t imagine that really Even the few times I wasn’t creating art I was thinking about it, new concepts, new technical methods and so on. Right or wrong, I define my life on this planet as being an artist (and father, husband, sure). I think about it first thing in the morning and the passion for it hasn’t waned. I still am thrilled by the smallest compliment and somewhat irritated by apathy and take criticism with a grain of salt. My wife Valerie Allen shares my world and is a great artist in her own right; she understands how I feel because she feels the same way. Being an artist is all I ever wanted and it’s the life I live.for my art…

ArtPrize start September 23, 2009

Armin Mersmann is from United States and in time, experience filled his spirit, but his drawings are talking for themselves. After we met Lama Khoja and Jose Carlo Mendoza I considered that we should know from one of the best, more details about this style and about the fact that talent most not be wasted. The talent should mantain creativity at the highest levels.

First of all, what made you choose this style? Where from this passion for drawing?

I love abstract art, I was and abstractionist when I got out of art school, but not a good one. I am a drawer and draughtsman at heart that’s how I think and it’s my natural artistic language. Today I’m still influenced by abstraction in a conceptual and emotional sense but stay true to how I choose to represent my personal vision.

What are you trying to catch and what’s the importance of the portraits?

Life, a thought, a moment in time wrapped around boundless passions. I use symbols both personal and universal; I try to transfer a seed, a starting point for the viewer to begin their journey that for a small moment is inspired by my drawing. I do not however have any interest in passing my exact concept to the viewer not in the way an illustration does. I am much more fascinated by what a person feels, sees and reacts to with just the title as a hint of my thoughts.

Many people see this as copies of photos. What do you think? And is it more than that?

I think my work makes more sense by seeing the original drawing and not a copy on a monitor, the pencil mark remains king, you see marks in a very un-photographic like manner yet appear photographic form across the room. They are drawn from a combination from life, from hundreds of reference photos, from a mirror, memories and my imagination. A photo is taken in an instant but when I work a journey takes place through the models character. I spend hundreds of hours analyzing and translating, I find the clues within the face that I than reinvent on paper changing even the likeness to suit my concept. I am aware of photorealistic techniques I am also very careful not to use a lot of them, photorealism doesn’t interest me in the least realism does.

Why do you think that artists like you choose to draw such realistic images?

I don’t know of whey others do it. In the beginning just being able to draw in this manner was very exciting lots of ooohs and ahhs, yet that got old very fast I quickly came to the realization this is not art but more akin to technical masturbation! I had more to say then hay I can draw, I wanted to build onto my technical knowledge and try to use it in a more personal and interesting manner. Details are of great interest to me; I love complexities and pattern I am intrigued how light and shadow works to capture an illusion. Within this technical prowess I must be able to share ideas, feelings and emotions in what some conceder a dead “ism” that is way I do it.

Do you need a certain mood for drawing or you can draw anytime?

Nope anytime, anywhere…it’s all about a great work ethic which is more important than talent, whatever that is.

Are you choosing a specific size when working or you have it depending on the model?

The work has gotten larger in the last five years, when the face becomes five times or more the size of a real human face there is a surreal feeling within its reality, they grab the viewer from across a room and when standing in front of these large drawings you feel curiously small, they can be unsettling.

And about the compositions… they’re so much like etchings. You also use symbols. What are they meant to be?

Compositions comes from my love of abstraction. Symbols, for instance take the light bulbs; they harness energy, a symbol for life, once broken they are swept away not unlike an old ancestor and soon will be forgotten. Yet it’s unlikely that’s how they translate to others, and that’s fine. Most backgrounds are to some extent symbolic they also feel very industrial and add to the tension of the work.

Is there a favorite piece that you created?

I don’t really some grow on me some don’t, I never live with my own work other than when I am working on it. Once it’s done I don’t like being influenced by them, I like seeing the work in exhibits or if they sell I like seeing them in someone else’s home. When I am not showing or they are not in galleries they go to storage. The drawing of my Mom called “Blues for Mama” is the only one I won’t sell yet I can’t even live with that one.

How does it feel to be able to work with such details and also have this ability to create and play with the ideas,Cause most of the young artists that started this style of drawing are only reproducing other images?

It feels like a challenge to work in an art form that by its very nature can be rather useless (why not just take a photo). This fact invigorates me into saying more, trying to go in different directions then a camera could, beyond a photo, translating and transforming an image where the photo can only play a small part. I stopped reproducing from photos a long time ago but don’t regret learning from this process.

And do you have any advice for them?

Don’t work from someone’s else’s photos for the art is done for you, just work from your own, it’s better to use mediocre photographs because it makes you invent more than just copy. Say more about larger topics or small intimate things not just that you can draw; for many here at DA can draw very well. Try to work from life at least some of the time, if you don’t reference photos will become a lifelong crutch. In the end your goal should be to create art and not another copy of Angela Jolie or Johnny Deep this kind of drawing misses that mark, unless of course you can get them to model for you in person than you might haves something

[link]



Create your own visitor map

This is an interview that I recently did for ArtPrize a major international exhibition in Grand Rapids Michigan September 23 – October 10

[link]



AP Since both your parents were artists, how have they influenced your career and your work? Did they always encourage your talent to become your career?

Both my parents were artists and they each saw the world from a unique perspective. The main lesson I learned was that I could communicate my feelings and ideas through my own artistic language. I learned that I didn’t need to internalize and bottle up the difficult feelings I struggled through as a teenager and young adult. By the time I was 10 years old, I was painting the backgrounds of my father’s oil paintings for $50 per piece and was teaching art to kids five years my senior at the local YMCA.
My parents also made me aware that a life in art doesn’t come for free; it takes a great work ethic, passion, desire, and a consistent drive to learn and grow. They stressed that you need to have a good technical foundation, an imagination, the love of process and the willingness to sacrifice menial relationships and material things in order to make time for my art.
Time is the most precious gift for an artist.

AP When did you start drawing portraits?

When I was a kid it was hard for me to draw faces so my dad “suggested” that that’s all I should draw for a few years, I would sit in his studio at my own drawing table and draw from life and photos until it was second nature. I found portraits to be a great vehicle to translate my thoughts and feelings.

AP How did these first portraits and also those from when you were working as a portraitist in Chicago influence and evolve into your narrative portrait series?

When I was in art school, my goal was to make a living from my art. I thought it would be wonderful to get up in the morning and just paint and draw even if that was commission portraiture. I started to get lots of drawing commissions, at first just in here in Michigan, and then Chicago. So my wife and I packed our bags and moved to The Windy City. “ortraits Chicago,” a very exclusive agency for commission portraiture, represented me. I started making great money, and for the next two years I was never without work. But I was miserable!

Art, my sanctuary, the very thing that gave me such pleasure, was now reduced to paintings and drawings of corporate ‘bigwigs” wanting to look important in clichéd poses, pipe in hand, arm on an overstuffed chair, and so on. I had very little input into the creative side. I was told to make the subject look younger and thinner and then I would “rake in” the cash. Soon I started cutting corners in my work: the faster it got done, the more money I made. I lost the will to improve and my work actually started to suffer, and I found I had no energy to do “fine art” in my spare time.
I had to get out of this. I told Portraits Chicago that I was no longer available for commission portraiture and got a job in an art supply store. In the evenings I started to work on my art again, painting every night and the enthusiasm came back! I was experimenting with abstraction, which I love, but after a few years I realized it wasn’t my natural language; the work was very derivative and I slowly started working with the human figure again. I chose the model, poses and concepts, and every portrait, no matter who I was drawing, became a self-portrait.

I have nothing against making money from my work but I don’t need to make a living off of it. I never want to lose that artistic freedom that I enjoy now. Art is so precious, and I almost lost it.

AP Although you have dabbled around with oils, it seems as though graphite is your most common material used. How does this contribute to your overall style you wish to be portrayed?

Actually, I spent many years working in oils and recently I started to work with them again. These paintings come from another place; a place where romance, hope and beauty reside, a place that’s devoid of politics and social issues.
The oil paintings read kind of poetically, about small ideas, like the segmentation of color, dappled light and subtle abstractions. The graphite drawings are more akin to a novel telling a story, usually a somewhat dark story, or descriptive allegory of the subject I’m drawing. Both are equally important to my well-being as an artist and for my creative language.

AP How did you select these works to be shown for ArtPrize?

My main concentration is the Narrative Portrait and I feel I have made some great strides in drawing with pencil in the last ten years. The three works: “Beyond the Pale,”, The Waking Edge,” and ‘Blues for Mama,” are each an incredible journey that each took about a year to draw. They were major undertakings, to say the least, and I hope viewers can feel the passion I put into them.

AP Although you respect the viewer's "story" that they take from your work, what do you hope to convey in your portraits?

To represent the everyday non-glamorous person as a catalyst to tell a particular story. But the “story” doesn’t need to be illustrative; it can and should be hidden among many veils and have a sense of mystery. It’s more important to open up the imagination of the viewer than to dogmatically rant about a particular political, religious or social view, yet that’s the catalyst that gets me into the work. If the viewers stand in front of the work and all that they notice is technique, then the work is a kind of failure. Then again, if the technique draws them in and they get an emotional reaction out it the drawing even if it’s different than mine, then it’s a success. I believe it take two to produce a work of art: the artist and the viewer. When the viewer translates the work into their own personal vision, sparking their imagination, then a work of art is created.

AP I have read about your passion for artistic freedom, is this your personal driving force to be continue as an artist? What is your greatest pleasure from being an artist?

What’s it like not to be an artist? I can’t imagine that really Even the few times I wasn’t creating art I was thinking about it, new concepts, new technical methods and so on. Right or wrong, I define my life on this planet as being an artist (and father, husband, sure). I think about it first thing in the morning and the passion for it hasn’t waned. I still am thrilled by the smallest compliment and somewhat irritated by apathy and take criticism with a grain of salt. My wife Valerie Allen shares my world and is a great artist in her own right; she understands how I feel because she feels the same way. Being an artist is all I ever wanted and it’s the life I live.

This was an interview I did a few years ago with “encil Club” I posted once but only for a very short time and I need to put something else in my journal so here it is.


PC, After going through your gallery, studying each portrait, painting individually, I must say you never do the same thing twice. The stereotypical question about inspiration is something that blows my mind when I look at your work; what inspires you?

AM, Inspiration comes from so many avenues, from the music of my favorite bands such as, Metallica, Jethro Tull, Seether, Tool, BAP and so many more. It’s the way the music is constructed, the energy and craftsmanship of these band and sometimes the lyrics. I rarely get influenced by visual art these days but as a younger person I certainly did, especially Durer, Da Vinci and some local mentors, especially Larry Butcher and Russell Thayer. I must say some of the work on DA that’s completely different than what I do is also an inspiration.


PC, Without giving away any of your secrets, what is your usual technique to make your drawings take on a life of their own?

AM,Understanding and developing the observational process, learning to see and deconstruct my vision to simplify and then rebuild it with my own artistic language. Also staying away from “classic” photo-realism and trappings of intellectual realism that often deadens the final work. I concentrate on the natural aspects of what I am reacting to and then recreating the image through my eyes.


PC, Did you study with professionals when your first started out, or is most of your talent cultivated by yourself?

AM,Yes I did go to art school and had a few good teachers the best of them shared the secret that you can only really teach yourself how to draw. Most of what I know I figured out or invented for myself.


PC, Which piece of yours took the longest and which one is close to you emotionally?

AM,As far as pure working time involved “Occasional Angel” and “In the Name of the Father” took a long time, so did “Forty-nine Trips Around the Sun”. Emotionally a drawing called Transplant is the closest to who I am.


PC, Photo-realism, or Naturalism, is something today's artists lack (including myself) with the digital art and anime crazes, do you work from photos? Your imagination?

AM,I work from both, the concept and sketches are from my imagination, to get the natural look I am seeking I commission a model and work from life and take my own photos. The series, Neo-Fossil and Gate, is just out of accidental processes that inspire the imagination and then I run with it.


PC, How do you deal with people who accuse you of using digital means instead of drawing by hand?

AM,I don’t deal with them at all, if they want to play games I don’t have the time to give them. I have told them to go to a gallery that sells my work and check it out, if that’s not enough screw em!! They are of the same ilk that think aliens built the pyramids, like human don’t have it in them to create greatness. Saying that though I have seen fakes here at DA, and my opinion it’s just laughable to think someone would do something so moronic and useless, but that’s their affair. I don’t sweat the small stuff.


PC, For some artists, they need certain things to gain inspiration (for there to be no distractions, or a big bowl of Oreos next to your HB pencil) what things do you need to relax to make your art a success?

AM,Depends on my mood, a morning beer buzz is quite nice (but not all the time) music, books on tape, and the history channel, that’s about it. I have two, three hundred disk turntables set on shuffle, and it does the trick.


PC, If you could meet any artist, living or dead, who would it be and why?

AM,I have met him several times, he actually owns one of my paintings and we have had dinner together a few times as well, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. Other then him Paul McCartney, Leonardo Da Vinci and Vincent Van Gogh.


PC, I was once told, to become a better artist, you need an ego. You have to think you're the best. Do you know that you are the best?

AM,I always believed art can’t be measured as far as “best” is concerned, not like a sport where the clock or number of goals shot make you unarguably the best. And yes I do have an ego, and I know, God willing I could be amongst the best drawers, but the best? It’s just too arbitrary to think in those terms.


PC,Any words of wisdom you would like to tell the younger artists out there?

AM,Don’t make money your main goal, don’t be into art trends, don’t make yourself the art, (very cliché, passion helps, talent is a farce, don’t let your ego stop you from learning, look around you, look at the world, embrace humanity, draw, draw some more, draw all the time. And then if the stars align, the Gods smile on you and you live long enough you will have a fighting chance at making it, what ever that means….but enjoy the trip, I am.

Armin Mersmann