Interview with Dino Valls

NOXA-2006(Courtesy Dino Valls)


q)Well, first of all please tell us a little about yourself.

a)A little? I try to get accustomed to exist, to ask me what I do here.

q) Had you always planned on being an artist [or had you other hopes]?

a)I have always liked to draw and paint. Being an artist is not planned. Being a professional of art, yes, but this came much later (I am a graduate in medicine, so it is clear that initially didn't intend to dedicate myself exclusively to art).

q) Do you have a preferred medium to work on? Why?

a)Successive oil glacis on an underlayer of tempera on panel, for their bright power and their chromatic and pictorial qualities.

q) How would you describe your style?

a)A symbolic intellectualized figurative and not realistic projection of an unconscious content (that I perceive that coincides with the collective).

q) Do you go through any certain processes while trying to produce your work?

a)There is a germinal idea, very fuzzy, or an unreal image loaded with numen (I don't work with models from "real" life). This is the beginning of a process of obsession on it, that leads to the projection of this darker side of human being into figures more or less likely and verisimil. Through the subsequent work of composition, in which I weave a content of "rational" and cultural awareness, I realize small sketches (sometimes several dozens) until the final composition, that then turn to perform on the canvas or panel.

q) What are you working on at present?

a)In the same painting ever. I evolve with it and I start it again in another new work.

INITIATIO-2005(Courtesy Dino Valls)

q) What about recent sources of inspirations?

a)The most recent are increasingly old. Perhaps the paleoencephale.
q) What are some of your obsessions?


a)The duality, the conflict between the physical and psychic, life and death, the rational and the irrational; definitively, the human being.


q) Which galleries have you shown at and which galleries would you like to show at?


a)Although my production is laborious and therefore rather limited, I have already made some 100 exhibitions (some 20 individual).


q) If people would like to contact you, how would you like to be contacted?


a)In my Web www.dinovalls.com there is a mailing address for contact.


q) Do you have any suggestions or advice for artists that are just starting out?


a)Work, work, work, patience and work.


INTROITUS I - II - III-2000(Courtesy Dino Valls)

q) Who are your favorite artists?

a)In some cases I am not interested in the artists but in their works, others I am interested in artists and not in their works. In some cases, only interests me the contents of the work and in others just the form, the way of realization. So the list would be very diffuse...


q) What books are on your nightstand?


a)In this moment, an essay about psychology, a History of the Music and I think I am going to re-read the Carrol's Alices.


q) To what weaknesses are you most indulgent?


a)With the weaknesses that are stronger than oneself.


CALAMI-2004(Courtesy Dino Valls)

q)….your contacts…

a) www.dinovalls.com

Interview with Julie Speed

q) Well, first of all please tell us a little about yourself.

a)I’m not sure what I could say that would explain anything.

q) Had you always planned on being an artist [or had you other hopes]?

a)My earliest plan was to become a caveman. When I got old enough to understand that not everything I wished for was possible then I decided to become a pirate instead. I didn’t get realistic till about age 6 or 7 when I settled for third choice, artist.

q) Do you have a preferred medium to work on? Why?

a)Anything that smells or gets my hands dirty works for me, mostly oils, gouaches, pencil and ink drawing, etchings and collage, both two and three dimensional. The oil paintings are very slow, involving layers and layers, even a small painting takes at least a month or two so switching over to something faster lets me work out compositional ideas that I want to try….plus working with tools and gluing and/or screwing it together is just flat-out fun.
So far I’ve not been attracted to anything that doesn’t involve hands-on.

q) How would you describe your style?

a)Pararealism. Alongside realism, but not quite. Abstract underneath. Figurative on the surface. I think about it like drawing the bones before the skin.

q) Do you go through any certain processes while trying to produce your work?

a)You would be bored to death if I actually answered that question in all its many moving parts but the basic idea is that it’s a learning process where I try to keep my brain out of it as much as possible. My job is to work out the technical stuff and paint as well as I possibly can, THEN simply pick out a thread and follow it. There’s a lot of chatter to cut through, both from inside and out so being able to concentrate is the main thing.

q) What are you working on at present?

a)Right now I’m on a binge of triangles, back and forth between paintings and collages that led to large graphite and gouache drawings and back to oils but all involving triangles. The collages have the triangles more out front and the paintings and drawings have them more underneath. A physicist passing through town said that I’m working on “the three body problem”. I didn’t know there was a name for it but I always figured there was math attached because you can hear a definite little “click” in your head when one line or shape resists another exactly.
The shapes have resolved into nekkid men fighting each other with pink sticks, interiors with figures and pink cakes. A cake is about the size of a human head so I start with an abstract underdrawing of circles which later become heads or cakes, (really it could be anything the right mass) held at odds by lines which later become armbones, legbones, sticks, etc. These have circled back into water paintings inspired by “The Adventures of Hamza” that I’ve worked on before and now am going back into using what I’ve learned about triangles.

q) What about recent sources of inspirations?

a)I’ve been looking at Australian Aboriginal paintings again, especially the work of Gloria Tamerre Petyarre .
The pink sticks were all inspired by the winter leafless pecan trees outside my bedroom window. One morning at dawn I opened my eyes and the gray bark had been turned blatant pink by the rising sun. It hasn’t happened again though I keep waking up to check.

q) What are some of your obsessions?

a)Time. I need lots of work time and I’m very selfish about it so I try and keep a schedule. I guess I’m obsessive about that, also detail. For many years the advice I’ve most often been given is that I should paint larger with less detail. Being perverse, that has only encouraged me to paint every hair. It makes the already satisfying even more so.

q) Which galleries have you shown at and which galleries would you like to show at?

a)I’m taking a vacation from all that right now.

q) If people would like to contact you, how would you like to be contacted?

a) juliespeed@gmail.com

q) Do you have any suggestions or advice for artists that are just starting out.

a)No .

q) Who are your favorite artists?

a)Bill Traylor, Lucien Freud, Kasimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters, Piero Della Francesca, Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon, Hans Memling, Agnes Martin

q) What books are on your nightstand?

a)“The Master and Marguerita” by Mikhal Bulgakov (the Mirra Ginsburg translation)
“Getting Mother’s Body” by Suzan-Lori Park

q) To what weaknesses are you most indulgent?

a)Tequila .

q)….your contacts…

a) http://www.juliespeed.com
http://www.assisipress.com
http://www.flatbedpress.com
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/spejul.html
http://www.galleriurbane.com
http://www.gpgallery.com