Interview 20 // Renata Janiszewska

Welcome to this ongoing Techspressionist artist interview series. Today is October 6, 2021. My name is Michael Pierre Price and I'm a Techspressionist artist out of Phoenix, Arizona. I specialize in abstract, algorithmic, and surrealist artwork. And today I'm really pleased to be able to share some time in conversation with Renata Janiszewska. And before we actually start speaking with one another and learning more about Renata, let me share a brief bio. Okay. So Renata Janiszewska is a professional artist and designer. Renata was born in London, England and grew up in Toronto. She did her studies in fine art, both the University of Toronto and Ontario College of Art and Design University with a concentration in drawing and experimental art.

Michael Pierre Price

Renata shot sites as influences the Northern Romantic painters, the Bauhaus and some Keeper and the music of Giuseppe Verdi. Interesting combination of things which I want to definitely get into and talk about. Renata has lived both in France and in Belgium as well. Renata has been painting on electronic canvas since 2010.

Michael Pierre Price

Her paintings are meant to be viewed backlit as they contain heavily saturated colors. She employs the formal traditions of painting and the tenets of modernism while using cutting edge tools to express her aesthetic. She's had a solo show of her digital artworks in 2013 that was favorably reviewed in Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. One of her public artworks was featured on national Canadian broadcast CTV.

Michael Pierre Price

Recently, she has had an outdoor public art installation for two years in Toronto's downtown. She has recently become an animator producing short works for which she composes and records original music. Renata has spoken of her work at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Toronto's Canadian Art Museum. She has also been a member of the Toronto Public Library and in the Rodark Gallery in Norbud. She joined the Expressionist movement and community in the spring of this year, 2021.

Michael Pierre Price

So Renata, that's an interesting background in which to begin. And you have some influences which, like I said, I'm very interested in finding more about. So before we get started too much more about your work. Specifically in looking at examples of it. How about you fill us in a little bit more beyond what I just read and tell us more about where you live, the artwork you're doing right now. And any influences like growing up and family and background and that kind of thing. So welcome. You have you have the floor. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. I'm really happy to be able to share. Some more about my work. Having been a member of Techspressionist and since May. I have really felt a lot of support. From the community, and I feel an affinity with many of the artists, because when you work digitally in this time that we live in. You don't always know where your tribe is located you don't know where your peers are. Because cyberspace is so vast.

Renata Janiszewska

And often there aren't physical manifestations of the work the work just lives on the screens. And so it's harder to have it coalesce around a particular place. But growing up, I had a lot of different varied influences, both from Canada and from Europe. The Bauhaus was an influence, because I have a graphic designer father who studied in London, England after the war. And many of his teachers were directly influenced by the work of the Bauhaus school that was taking place in Germany.

That's fascinating. Wow.

That's cool.

I was fortunate in order to learn all those things before I even really got to school. So having a direct lineage.

How cool is that? Yeah.

And we went to the Art Gallery of Ontario every Sunday, practically. In the winter. Maybe not so much in the summertime. And so I saw a lot of Inuit art, which really spoke to me because it's so it's so it's it has a formalism and a simplicity that are timeless. And it's so powerful because the spirit of the people is embodied in the sculpture. And so many of the sculptures deal with their.

Renata Janiszewska

The shaman or the animal spirits. And their printmaking is really exemplary also. So I had a big. I had the good fortune to live in the largest city in the province where the biggest gallery is housed and has the best collection of those works. And I also worked there when I was a student. I worked in the cloakroom of the art gallery. So I got to go around to see the art. I got to see every show that came. And my friend and I would run through the Turner exhibition on our lunch break. Oh my gosh. Whatever was came and we did get a lot of traveling shows from Europe's, you know, bigger galleries. And then I worked at the Royal Ontario Museum, a bit later, after I graduated from university, I had a very number of jobs, and one of them was working in the gift shop at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Renata Janiszewska

And again, I got to go through the whole. The whole collection. Every time I had a lunch break or a coffee break. And so, those things, perhaps not as powerful as the big museums in New York or in London, or in Paris but nonetheless, it was nice to be able to come face to face with actual carvings actual prints, things that you as an artist you absorb that better than you do a slide or. Yes.

Yeah. Wow, that's really intriguing. So, your other influences in your bio that I read are very interesting for me. And now that I'm hearing a little bit more about where you were lucky enough to work and see art firsthand, and also family connections to the Bauhaus. The Northern Romantic painters and then also Anselm Kiefer with the Bauhaus kind of in between from a time scale standpoint. There's obviously a very heavy German influence through that. And for those who don't know about Kiefer's work, I mean, obviously post-World War II artist who did a lot of his work in response to the Third Reich and, you know, Hitler and what happened in World War II.

Michael Pierre Price

I find those influences in seeing your work and getting to know more about your work highly intriguing because for me, the Northern Romantic artists, whether it be like Kaspar Friedrich and others, there's this very elemental atmospheric quality to their work. And Kiefer had that in a kind of... When I first ran into his work, I was repelled by it to begin with. It took me a while to try to come to grips with it. And for me, from my personal family, with having had my mom and my grandmother in the south of France under occupied control of the Nazis, that, you know, there's that kind of mixed in for me as well. But to see that struggle of his as an artist was very liberating in one way, but it took me a while to... And so seeing that, him as one of your influences, I'm really impressed. And I'm really intrigued to find out kind of a little more about that, if you don't mind kind of delving into the whole thing, because to get to understand other artists, which I always like to do, I like to know what draws them, either negatively or positively, because it's part of your story.

Yes, I have something in common with you, in that we both have parents who, who lived through World War II. My dad is actually a Holocaust survivor. I don't talk about it a lot, because I don't think he really was able to come to terms with it in his work.

Okay.

And I think that it was such a trauma. And it was so hard for me to grow up with that in the house. My mom is Hungarian, so she was actually in Budapest during the war, and they were being bombed. So my dad was almost near the end of the war, but it wasn't as harrowing as being in a camp.

Well, of course.

So fast forward a little bit. Of course, German art. And I go back farther when I say Northern European painting to Lucas Cranach, Bosch, Van Eyck.

Okay.

Those Northern artists. Artists, they somehow, I have that Polish ancestry that, you know, Slavs are part of that, they have the same climate. And the German artists, both before and after the war, struggled so much to express some kind of reckoning with what happened. And there are a lot of them, you know, Kiefer is probably the most dramatic of them all because his installation work is so large scale.

Renata Janiszewska

But I think his mind is large scale as well. And I, you know, I have traveled to go and see his work. And the one show that I saw at the AGO, I think I went 13 times to it. And I had a little camp stool because they give those out of the cloakroom, if you want, you can sit down. And I had my I had my iPod touch and I drew. In the show every time I went because I could just feel the energy.

Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

And I guess, you know, I'm also fond of France and French culture and the French painters to my mind, they're just they have a different temperament than the Europeans. And it's, it's stunningly beautiful work. But it's, it's always a bit lighter somehow in tone.

Very much so. I think the Mediterranean, even even, you know, as you go further north in France, I think there's, there's just this influence of the light. And I know heading down towards the Mediterranean, it really does change dramatically. But it seems to that influence seems to have. Especially more modern times has I think influenced overall but yes, yeah, there's definitely a very different.

Michael Pierre Price

Yeah, the North Sea, the whole, you know, northern region, it, the atmospheric quality is there, you can't deny it. The lights different, you've got all the water, you know, the water influences very different than the Mediterranean water influence. It's, you know, it's a completely different set of circumstances.

And you have the Gothic. Yes. Yeah. That starts in the Middle Ages, and it carries through. Yeah. There's one piece that I will show you. I just completed an animation called Prokofiev's Cave, and the imagery in it is straight out of a Caspar David Friedrich paint.

Awesome. Yeah.

And it will be, it will be screened in November, when the wrong Yanal begins. Good.

That's awesome. So, how do you think you were drawn to Techspressionism?

Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I fit in with a group. Because for my whole career as an artist, I've steadfastly avoided the collective, the group, the group show, the anything where I have to kind of have the same ideology. I just haven't felt like that was what I wanted to do with my myself. But it's really helped me as an artist to have the salon every two weeks, where I get to see the work of art. And I get to see other artists and hear them talk about their process, their influences.

Renata Janiszewska

And the community is very supportive. And that's something that I'm not used to. I'm not used to having that. And so, in six months, I've probably done more work, just physically than I did in the two years prior. Wow. Just because I feel energized by having an audience. And being able to work with them. And being able to learn from others.

That says a lot about you, but also about this community. Absolutely. Yes.

I think it's of interest to an artist to meet other artists who are working at least a little bit in the same manner. Yeah. You know, you have everything from people who collect art. Garbage on the ground. And photograph it. And then treat it digitally. They make collage. To people who are using completely AI-generated imagery.

Renata Janiszewska

Who are making video and still images that way. And then you have people who do these great hybrid things, where they use mechanical drawing on top of a hand-painted oil or ink wash. Yes. And so, it's just... It's just... It's made... I guess the technology is there now. And having Zoom has made it a lot easier to visit other people in their studio. And... Yeah. You know. I had a great time preparing for showing my work. And I look forward to showing my work six months from now. And... Yes. You know, the evolution is really interesting to watch, isn't it?

Yes. And it's... I think we all recognize something in each other. There's really a depth of sharing. It's not surface. It's not all about technique. It's philosophy. It's spirituality. I mean, there is technique, obviously. But... But you can tell that... The genuine artistic inspiration... There's a lot of inspirations in people. And I find that very inspiring.

Michael Pierre Price

The creativity... Just... Yeah. We... I think that salon every two weeks feeds us as artists. Because I know I get such vastly different sets of inspirations. It might be what somebody says or the way they approach their work. Or it might be... It might be a stylistic thing. It might be somebody's color palette. You know, it's hard to say what I get from being part of this community. But it's very enriching. And I... That has totally surprised me as well.

You have a collective where you live?

Yes. Yeah.

And how many members are there?

There's a dozen members in our group. I'm the one who... One outlier in a lot of ways with respect to use of technology. I would say everybody else in the collective is fairly traditional. Whether they're printmakers, whether they're photographers or sculptors. Yeah. But it's a nice collective. But... But it's different for me with the expressionist group where I feel very at home. And I haven't had that feeling ever before.

Michael Pierre Price

And so for me, that has been the attractive quality to this. And I think it speaks to... Yeah. I think it speaks to... I think it speaks to a need. You know, I was thinking a little bit about this, Renata, when you mentioned that the Bauhaus was one of your influences. Because this almost feels... I mean, this is like 100 years after the really burgeoning of the Bauhaus movement.

Michael Pierre Price

And I almost feel like this is Bauhaus too. In some ways, you know, it's a... Although we don't have, you know, like a central core aesthetic necessarily. But the utilization of technology for the benefit and for that expressive quality is not tied to one mode of being. And I do think that's where... That this is a rich core from which we all are served. And which we all feel like we can contribute to. Which I think is... That back and forth, I think, is very powerful.

You know, I've never done a collaboration before. But I'm going to do one for the third collab show that Davonte is organizing. And I really relish the thought of passing a file back and forth with another artist. Because I can trust the people.

Yes. Yes. And that's... That's something I think we do share collectively. Is... I think we're all experimenters in our own way. I think that needs... I think creative people tend to have that experimental or that explorer quality within them. Not everyone maybe. But I see that in everybody in this group. I... That's one thing that I think is a core. And one of the things that I think is a core quality that I really respect is that sense of looking at how to create art in new ways that you're trying out. And I think from a collaborative standpoint, that makes it easier to do.

Michael Pierre Price

Because there's an openness to say, well, you know, like, whatever happens, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be something new. Yes. And yeah.

Also, I feel that there's an inclusivity to the movement.

Yes.

Where, you know, mental health issues are discussed. Feminism is discussed. Yes. Sexual politics are discussed. Yes. People are welcomed with open arms, no matter what their ability.

I agree.

And that's something, you know, maybe... Maybe some artists who are on a particular career trajectory. Would think, oh, well, I don't want to be with people who are just not at my level. That sort of... You know, there can be those kinds of attitudes out there. Sure. Sure. But in terms of nurturing one's creativity, it's good to have that inclusivity.

I agree. I agree.

Somebody who's just been doing it for a couple of years has so many good examples around to learn from. And I learned from people who were perhaps... Perhaps just starting out. I learned things from them. Yes. You're right about that experimental quality to it. People... I think we always are looking for a new way to express our work.

Yes. Okay. So... Before we take a look specifically at your work, which I think we should do pretty quickly here, I did want just to hear a little bit more about... And if you need to share your work as doing this, but I'd like to understand a little bit more about your process, what you do. Kind of... What I've seen this year of your work has been very fascinating, and it almost has seemed like over the last few years... I mean, it's been a while. Because I've been thinking about this for a few months. You've gone through several distinct phases, or at least your output has gone through several distinct phases. And I'm intrigued to understand a little more about that. So if this is a good time to share work while you talk about that, have at it. If not, I'm just really kind of... I don't want to see the work in absence of kind of knowing a little more about the behind the scenes of getting it done.

Michael Pierre Price

But I'm just wondering if you've been able to get it to a point where it's finished work.

Well, I would have to say I started making digital collage for a show that I was in February. And then I realized the potential of making it move. And I taught myself how to make these little animations. And I needed music for them. And I started to make them. And I taught myself how to make the music for them. And then they started to get more elaborate.

Renata Janiszewska

And there was more of a narrative quality to them when I discovered a new kind of style of depicting not realism, surrealism, if you will. Whereas I had mostly been working in abstract modes before. And I love abstraction. But sometimes I think... I don't know. I think it's interesting that artists love abstraction. But the general public wants a story.

Renata Janiszewska

And I'm not the kind of artist who says, hmm, you know, I want to sell a painting. So I'm going to paint some flowers inside somebody's living room with their dog so that they want to buy it.

I think you and I share that.

I do. I know. I do it for myself. I think that's what artists do. And damn, you know, damn the consequences. If somebody loves it, they love it. And if not, that's okay. I'm just going to go on creating my work. But I do find, for example, I put a piece of work up on social media. And I gave it a really banal title.

Renata Janiszewska

And it was a personal title. It was called I Work 925. Uh-huh. Because I had the letters 9 and 5 in the work. And wouldn't you know it, the people went crazy for it. You have to give them sometimes something that they can hang a story on it. Okay. Or even just, oh, it makes them think something about, oh, this artist has this, you know, particular thing going on in their life.

Renata Janiszewska

We just, I mean, I read a lot of fiction. Why do I like fiction? Because it's telling me a story. I think we all need stories. So what I'm going to show you today is what I would consider certainly more narrative.

Okay.

Than what I was doing back in February. Cool. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

All righty. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

So we are in a room here. And one of the sort of issues that painting has been dealing with since the very beginning is the issue of perspective. The issue of the picture plane. The flattening of the picture plane. The going back into perspective. And so here, I've really tried to just, by positioning things a certain way, make you wonder, are they flying in the air? Are they stuck on the wall? Are they coming out of the wall? The elements in this sort of illustrative work here don't necessarily adhere to regular gravity. Principles of gravity. Principles of perspective. They're kind of a mashup of some realism and some not so real.

Renata Janiszewska

And I show this because this room has a lot of potential. So here's another version of it where I put the room inside a room. And I use some elements of my own. And I use some collage elements. Like this hand is definitely from a painting. And this is from another time. And not my own drawing. It's just a cutout. And then the colored bit on the right, the top of it is actually from a work by Paul Clay. And then the one that it's attached to is my own drawing. So my drawing is organically growing a Paul Clay out of it itself.

Renata Janiszewska

And again, I'm trying to get the viewer into a sense of, you know, I'm trying to get the viewer into a sense of what I'm drawing. And it's just a dilemma of like are these things hanging. Are they floating in the air? Are they actually touching the floor of the room? There is a dimensionality and there's also a flatness going on.

These are very dreamlike.

Yeah. There are elements. I think you probably recall I was making a lot of what Roz Dimon calls the font drawings.

Yes.

So I also, because I have these different ways of making animation, this is the room animated. You can see the A on the left-hand side there. Just make out the form of it. And it's also got these elements that I pasted in on top of all that activity that's going on. I don't really know what to do with this work. Because it's different from all of the other ones.

Renata Janiszewska

It doesn't have, it's not part of a body of similar works. It's just, I really love still, you know, just to work with color. Because color is so expressive.

Renata, are these, are you seeing these as completely digital works? Not to be like printed or?

That's a very good question, Michael. It's a really good question. I think that all of them could stand up to being printed. I just recently printed on Dibond aluminum for the first time. Ah. And with a gloss finish. Uh-huh. And I haven't seen it because it's still being made.

Oh, gosh.

But I think that they, everything I make now is very, very high resolution. These are very large files. They're usually somewhere around, up around 250 megabytes. So 4K resolution. Okay. So they would stand well to be printed. But by a fine art printer. You know, I don't have one of those Epson printers like you and some of the other artists have. And I don't know much about calibrating them. Okay. I think that's, you know, that's really important part that has to be learned. Sure. So I tend to go to people who specialize in printing fine art on different, on paper and on metal and so on. Right. So I just started working with this new printer.

Renata Janiszewska

They're located on Denham Island, just off Vancouver Island on the West Coast.

Ah.

Yeah. So, but on the other hand, I also always envisage my work being shown on a flat screen. You know, a large, really large flat screen backlit in a dark room.

Okay.

That would be the ideal probably because the color stays really true that way.

So do you, it's interesting you said that you're not sure what you want to do with these. Do you think this is, you know, do you think this is, you know, do you think this is, you know, this is a good idea? Yeah. I think this is part of a working out of ideas and concepts in your mind leading to something else. And maybe you haven't thought that far yet. But I think, I mean, I know I've gone through some phases where it's like you're climbing up the slope and you experiment and you try things out and you learn new stuff and you keep going. And, you know, I think sometimes we have sort of intermediate works that we can find interesting, but they're a step along the way, if that makes sense.

Yes. Well, this is actually an animation. Yeah. That's called The Still. Then I put collage in these three shapes that you see in the upper left in the middle and then the upper right. They were pasted onto The Still. Ah, cool. This is a still also from an animation that will also be in The Wrong. It's going to be part of a pavilion called The Art Substitute. And it comes from a quote. Art was only a substitute for the internet, which the curator has, he has the key to that quote. I'm not about to go into depth on it, but it's being curated by Andres Manist. He's working out of Montreal. And this is the opening frame of the Red Beret.

Renata Janiszewska

I like this. Thank you. It has a kind of medieval quality to it for me because of the and because of the eyes, the eyes look Byzantine, the ear also, the little tiny ear. But you see, I like to mix and match in a way because I put the elements at the front, those geometric elements that I'm using to contrast with him.

Yeah, look, it looks like this could be like a cardinal or a bishop or yeah, this really does have an old world feel with a completely modern take, which I just I like that juxtaposition.

Oh, thank you. Well, I know you like this one because you made it so

Out

Of keeping with my other work. But you know, it's again, I experimented by, by pushing those geometric shapes really far. And I put the eyes and the mouth on, and the nose was just there organically.

These are beaut? These are really beautiful. I love these.

Oh, thank you. Glad. Again, you're giving people a chance to tell a story to themselves. Yeah. You know, who is he? What is this? What is this? What are these shapes? Where is this taking place? It was the background? Is it? Is it sky? Is that a cave? You know, there's the people I think like to figure it out. You know, it's that it's of I don't know, it's that it's you know, oh and make up a story about it no that was that's a quality that

I really liked about renee magritte yes is that there was so much to look in and see it was clever but there were these you could imagine all kinds of stories and these are giving me the same kind of vibe or feel in a very different stylistic quality and kudos I just think this I think you're onto something here I don't know what you're going to end up doing with them all but I like it well

These are the animations that you're going to see in the wrong because I actually have made 16 different little films I don't know where they're all going to end up but I do know that nine of them are in the art art substitute pavilion oh oh oh! Neat so except for the man that I just showed you the other the other one with the boy and this one as well are going to be in the wrong this one is kind of about it's about a feminist polemic if you will there's the figure is androgynous and you can't really tell if it's a male or female there's a third eye on top of the building there if you look closely yes flag that's actually a cut out from another film I made another animation I made called the eye twisted and this character here is you know in the night and she or he or you could say they have a kind of dreaming wistful look on their face but they're facing challenges so there's a flaming ring in one of the scenes that goes around and threatens this or the hero here or the heroine who wears a coat of armor like joan of arc yes

And

Joan of arc was a character who had to disguise her feminine side in order to achieve her goals and I you know always find that she's really you know she's really you know she's a figure that inspires a lot of just you know people wanting to think of fearless fearless bravery eternal youth a mystic who heard voices that mystical quality about her and I put I put an initial r on her chest again with a modern that's a modern element somehow the shape on the left that comes off the cap is from eronimous bosch from the garden of earthly delights so that gives it a medieval reference and the tree on the right is like a tree of life but it's in winter so it's a kind of anarchical yearning tree that the fire isn't actually coming out of the tree it's coming out of the ring the ring moves around so it's this is the one I was telling you this is another animation this is prokofiev's cave and in this I have this every man in a bowler hat but he has a really strange body with strange kinds of medallions on it and he has a hole in his chest where his heart should be and on the right you can see there's again very medieval looking scale like feet like a dragon and what is this man's chest is coming out of the foot of the dragon so you know in surrealism well you know if you look at eronimous bosch's work you have people being born out of eggs and things coming out of things that you wouldn't suspect it's a juxtaposition of disparate things right put them together and the surrealism is a kind of a!

Renata Janiszewska

The surrealists traded in this very heavily yeah the tree on the left is the casper david friedrich you know northern romantic stark and I made the clouds in the sky I worked for a long time to make those clouds just so because it all goes by really quickly it's I think this animation is something like one minute 40 seconds long and it's the only animation where I have a soundtrack that was done with one of my collaborators I have a musician friend who plays the trumpet as a he has horn solos on a couple of my animations

Oh okay but

But for this one he actually recorded a soundtrack for me he

Didn't

He didn't want any extraneous things on it so he sings in a language that he made up for this piece yeah prokofiev's cave watch for it at the wrong so

And then sorry before you show anything more I have one question so are these stills that you took from the animation or do you see these as finished pieces along with the animations well

That's a good question sometimes they are one or the other and sometimes they are both so in the case of this one hard press to remember if you even see this in it but it's got all the elements that are in the animation but the composition here is very formal okay and I have posted a few screenshots from the animations where there's a lot more imagery going on so yeah this one was made to be just viewed as a as a as a painting

The this set that you're showing are very strongly psychological in my opinion that there's a yeah they feel very dreamlike but they feel very like they're coming from a very core place in the human psyche and I just I think that adds to their power so well

Thank you very much it's always nice to feel that you're reaching people with your images and this one uses some of the characters in some other animations I just made this kind of as a I don't know just showing the juxtaposition of the characters with the elements because I call those geometric shapes elements ah you can manipulate them and they appear in different ways they I don't know when I'm going to get tired of them because I really think that there's there comes a point where you have to switch gears but you never know when to do that it just unfolds organically I think and this is the last image I'm going to show you and it's from an a video or an animation called the candy pain inn and people say you mean candy cane in no it's the candy pain inn because the panes of glass in the animation they become multicolored like candy the windows of this inn this strange place in a strange landscape.

Renata Janiszewska

And these elements again, the ampersands, the big and in the foreground and the small and that's hanging on the sign of the inn. Again, this is a kind of liminal space. It's not real. It's obviously, you know, stuck down on a piece of paper. It's just it's like it's like a character really this building.

Yeah, and I think Renata for me, this is where the psychological dreamlike qualities come in because you're creating at least in these still images, you're creating a landscape or you're creating a venue. To look on, but you're not filling in everything. So you leave it up to the viewer, like you said, to figure out what's going on. You know, who is this? Where is this? What does this all kind of mean? And that and I think that's what a lot of abstract works can do for people. But I get your point where people like to be able to hang. I mean, most people tend to like to see things that have some familiarity. Even if it's in a very unfamiliar setting, it gives them a starting point. And that's why I think these are so cool is that it's not you haven't given every detail to fill in. And I find that very attractive about these works.

Thank you. This inn is starting to become part of like a series at if you will. Because yeah. I made this one after I made the one that you just saw and I got a lot of people reacting. I think the idea of it being submerged in water is a bit scary and also the background is very weird because it doesn't look like anything normal. It's just kind of acid green. Yes. And I also made it look like there were fires or something going on behind the windows.

Renata Janiszewska

I put that orange and red there just to suggest that there was something going on inside the inn. But you can't really visit it because it's surrounded by water. So it's a character. It's I mean there are a lot of there are a lot of books there are a lot of works of fiction where a place like an estate or a mansion are almost as powerful characters as the human characters. And so that's why this candy pain inn is going to probably continue to have a story.

So my question is for these works was it how what were you what were and I realize a lot of these are animations so the question may be like this I'm just going to make it just a little bit more difficult to understand. So you're going to have to look at the house you're going to have to look at the house and it's not like you're going to have to see the house and it's not like you're going to have to see the house you're going to have to see the house. So you're going to have to see the house.

Michael Pierre Price

So you're going to have to see the house. So you're going to have to see the house. So you're going to have to see the house. Conscious decision on your part and then my follow-up is how did you determine if you did what was important enough to put in there because this is fast to me I love these because they do feel very dreamlike they do feel very surrealistic in their qualities I

Think that's the way that I make compositions and I've done this for as long as I can recall so I used to do a lot of pen and ink drawings and I always left a lot of blank space in my work and I was actually it was a criticism when I was in art school oh interesting but it wasn't everybody it was just pointed out to me that there was a lot of space around my fate my figures and my shapes so it might just be a little bit of a criticism but I think it's a criticism of my art school and I think it's like a personal thing where I need that breathing room okay

You're

Giving you have elements in your compositions but you have to give them space to breathe yeah and maybe for you that becomes part of trying to put a narrative to it and it is there is a psychology at work yes

Very much so at least for me yeah they almost they almost feel like raw shocks at on some level like what is it you're seeing and I like I like the blank spaces I like the way you're thinking about that because to me it doesn't set it as a static here's everything and I think it's a nice way to come back and look at something again and then maybe see some different things that you didn't see before and then you're filling in a different manner so I yeah I just I like it to me it is a distinctive quality in this set of works that I've been very attracted to so I would not discourage it at all I think it's working okay

Maybe I should print them up in to the next slide or not

But there's a lot of good stuff that's going on for this I don't know if you're being kind of one-by-one with this but there's a lot of good stuff that's going on for this us so but there's a lot of good stuff that's going on for this us so but there's a lot of good of like little scenarios that they ask people to interpret what is it you're seeing in this.

Michael Pierre Price

Well,

That's everything that I am working on. I'm still making animations. I just finished another one yesterday and there's still places to send them. It's still an ongoing thing with me. I'm more interested in the combination of the movement music. Enjoy making the music okay

And

I enjoy putting it away at night and waking up first thing in the morning and playing it back and you always see it differently so it's going well I feel happy with the way my work is the direction that it's going in that's awesome that's really awesome so

Do you have beyond okay so you've got the wrong that's coming up and that's going to debut what is that november december november

1st and it will be online until march the 4th of 2022 okay so I'm in two different pavilions one is ross diamonds devotion pavilion 10 digital divas there are 10 10 women artists and she calls us digital divas oh that is so cool and I didn't even know that was happening oh that's yeah so that's going to be unveiled on the first and then the other one I have the more numerous works more video work and then the other one is the art substitute pavilion okay and then I'm looking to put a show together of my animations and I'm going to pitch that to the artist run centers that exist all across canada so in every province we have artist run centers and it's possible to approach them if you have work to show so that's actually what we're doing and then we're going to be doing a lot of work on the art substitute pavilion so I'm going to be doing a lot of work on the art substitute pavilion because I do want people to see these and ideally I'd like to see them on a monitor in a

Dark room fairly

Dark and then I have the issue of the sound because you don't want the people sitting in the gallery to hear it over and over again all day so then maybe I could somehow put an app with it so people can listen with their earbuds right that

Would that was an issue that I ran into with my exhibit as well since since the ar that I had in that exhibit that just ended at first I wanted to have all the ar with sound and then I realized that if people came and didn't have earbuds to listen privately you'd have all these competing sounds so that's where my friend david did a soundtrack for me and we just had that playing in the background and that solved the problem so I think that's really important for us to have that's really important for us to have that's really important for us to have that was a nice addition and a good another good collaboration which I was grateful for okay so where do you see where would you like to see your work going in the future and where do you see the future of Techspressionism and or the future of art going.

Michael Pierre Price

And then we'll just kind of wrap things up here.

Sure. I would like to continue a combination of still and digital works. I'm interested in AR and VR, so I might try to get myself an Oculus Rift and go that direction. There's a big learning curve, but I'm up for it. Just the idea of walking through one of them. Paintings is really exciting to me okay and imagine if I had those somewhat realistic elements in that in that force in that space yes then it would be even more of a psychological phenomenon and Techspressionism I'm really happy to see that we keep adding new members I'm always really impressed by the website it's so detailed and every time I look at it there have been new things added so I'm looking forward to taking part in exhibitions continuing to meet with people people either one-on-one like on Zoom or going to the salon every two weeks and maybe taking a curatorial role at some point in the future, putting something together.

Renata Janiszewska

I really like the international aspect of it. It's really exciting to know that we can reach artists right around the globe with our movement. And so I'm very, very happy that it's there and that the structure is already there for us. We just need to apply ourselves to it.

So as an artist based in Canada, have you felt that the expressionism movement and the community is ity? Because obviously as a US artist and with the vast majority of artists being in the US so far right now, it's wonderful to have that global reach. But so I was just kind of curious as a Canadian artist or at least an artist based in Canada. Like you said, with the technology we're global artists. There's no way getting around it anymore just because of the Internet and everything else. But I was just kind of curious from a standpoint of living in Canada how your perception of Techspressionism and being part of this community has felt to you.

Well I'm really happy to have met so many americans because I haven't traveled in the u.s for quite some time 2016 was the last time that I was there I was in new york it's really marvelous just to be able to talk to people on both coasts and you know your can-do spirit yeah and the spirit of entrepreneurship is very strong yes

Whereas

I find in our country there tends to be more of a reticence and more of a dependent on for example government grants are very okay you know common here but I also feel in contact with the french artists with the ones in england right german ones I feel like I can reach out to those people really easily because we all share okay

Yeah that makes sense actually I get that yeah any last minute thoughts that you have that you didn't get to talk about or share I really appreciate this opportunity to interview you and I'm really I'm really grateful that we've had a chance to chat on our own at you know various times as well but it was a real honor for me to share this time with you renata so thank you very much I know your work will be well received this new work and it's I'm looking forward to see what people think about what you've had to share today so

It was my pleasure michael and I too very much enjoyed being able to speak with you again and I look forward to another one another time oh yeah for sure all

Right well we'll wrap this up and call it a done interview at this point then so thanks renata thank

You michael