Artist Interview Series | Alexander Churchill |Contemporary Painting Collections

Linus Galleries, Fine Art Gallery

2014 Artist Interview Series

Alexander Churchill

Linus Galleries, a fine art gallery based out of Los Angeles, presents The Artist Interview Series. This series is a new blog featuring Linus artists from a variety of different practices and backgrounds. The blog aims to be an enjoyable read, sharing insight into the artist’s creative process and workspace, as well as their view of the world around us. This week we feature Alexander Churchill and his striking paintings, some which were featured in our contemporary painting collections in the Haunting exhibition.

1) Please tell us your name, artistic practice of choice, and location in the world.
My name is Alexander Churchill, I am an oil painter and I currently live in Norwalk, Ct.

2) Are you self taught or did you formally study art?
I did graduate with a degree in fine art and painting from Green Mountain College in Vermont, but since I was a kid I have always been drawing and painting trying to teach myself.

Los Angeles art gallery — A view of the artists’ workspace

3) This is a difficult choice for many visual artists, but what is your favorite color?
My favorite color has always been green, but if we are talking about favorite color I use in my art, then I think it must be Van Dyke brown.

4) What subject matter appears most in your artwork? What do you love about that subject? What do you dislike?
The subjects I explore most often are the underlying feelings of anxiety and subtle mistrust everyone has towards each other on a person to person level. These emotional cues have been evolutionarily successful for our self preservation instincts and can be a powerful thing to mess with. What I love about this subject matter is the tension of conflicting feelings it brings to the viewer. The image of an innocent child can evoke feelings of sympathy or can trigger a protective instinct but when painted with a slightly disturbed or dead face and when put in a vaguely ominous setting, the child becomes something unsettling and subtly menacing. As a human being whose brain only wants to experience nice things, I like to use visual stimuli that I DON’T like to get the right “creepy” effect. So the things I don’t like about these paintings are exactly the things I do like.

contemporary-painting-collections-05 — A detail of a painting underway

5) What is difficult for you about your chosen medium? I think the most difficult thing I can think of about my medium is the fact that I get wet oil paint everywhere. It’s all over the house, my non painting clothes, my face, in my mouth, on my dogs and places yet to be discovered. Other than that I love it.

6) What artist would you want to have lunch with?
I would have lunch with different artists for different reasons. Edvard Munch to talk about the psychological factor of art, Ad Reinhardt to talk about the Art factor of art, Picasso because I feel like he would make something really good to eat, and Wayne White because I think he would be fun to hang out with.

7) Which describes you: Beach, Forest, Desert, Field, or City?
Forest surrounded by desert.

8) What musical artist/band are you currently listening to when you are creating? Today it was Ray Lamontagne, Andrew Bird, Nick Drake, St. Vincent, and Courtney Barnett. Also WFUV in NY.

9) What do you see as the future of your chosen medium and fellow painters? Alot of abstract painting of the future is going to likely be something that looks accidental and would go unnoticed as art when seen out of context. I am really finding the “new casualist” paintings to be super interesting. Also loving representational painting that’s out there today and I think it will continue, as it is, with exploring multi-dimentionality, rudimentary and child-like styles, and incorporating abstract imagery as a defining factor.

10) Any parting advice for budding artists? Constantly create your art, whatever your medium. And when your not doing that, think about doing it, and think about Art itself as a phenomenon. Go to museums and art galleries. Explore it chronologically and then backwards and then do it again. Also there is nothing wrong with shameless self promotion.