Interview With Liz McKay
By Adam Szrotek & Sylwia Banasiak
Do you remember your beginnings as an artist?
Age 3. I had a colour in t-shirt. (Apparently I decorated the walls of the living room first).
Your formal education list looks very impressive.How do you think it influenced your style?
Film & animation really makes you want to create a story within a painting, interaction between the characters.
You are also trained in traditional and computer animation. Are you currently working with these techniques?
For the wish of more time! I’ve got a stop motion animation project I’ve started on… but mostly I paint.
What are your favourite forms of expression?
Art, music, stop-motion, animation, film, theatre, dance, puppetry, words…
Which one is harder: to come up with the idea or to materialize one?
It’s choosing which one to do…
Where do you work? Do you have a studio at home?
I actually started in one room, but now pretty much the whole house is taken over…
Many of contemporary artists are more interested in alienation and loneliness. The product of our times seems to be so different from the one you show. You choose closeness, warmth, love; things that seem to be vanishing these days. Is this how you see things or just perversity?
Life is short. If you could choose to be happy or unhappy, would you choose unhappiness?
Do you use your own experiences in your art or rather imagination?
I usually use my imagination, but occasionally there’s some reality slipped into the works. Some of the paintings have words and characters from stories, life, myths or history added into them that only the person who has bought the painting will know of. I like the idea that art can be visual but also be something that could be a talking point and it’s own story.
How much do you think, we can read from someone's face?
Everything of feelings and nothing of thoughts.
The situations you portray, do you ever wonder how they end?
Yes always, the best stories and movies leave you with some element of interest, a slightly incomplete ending, they leave you thinking about them. I think art is the same.
How important is the role of music in your life? Do you listen to it while working? If so, what kind?
I love music, my favourite music at the moment would be… Cinematic Orchestra, Fourtet, Manitoba, Greenland, Phillip Glass, but then I love jazz and old 1930s/40s music, and occassionally listen to crazy accordian gypsy music… and lots of other types as well… I have been co-writing an album…
The album is instrumental. It is being co-written with Leon Kelly, a member of the Sydney based band "Greenland".
Think early Amon Tobin mixed with Phillip Glass & Fourtet, that would be the closest comparison; But it is really quite different to all of them. Release date for the first ep (small 5 track cd) is expected late 2006.
How do you think, is it possible to "paint the music"?
Definitely, but there’s so many ways one song could look.
Do you like to interact with people or rather just watch them?
People are fascinating; I like to interact with people.
Movies are great to watch though, I find they are quite inspiring, as they are set in locations hard to visit or in a year which you never lived or experienced, especially when the story is unique and original. (Some of my fav’s are by the French duo Caro and Jeunet - City of Lost Children & Amelie.)
Do you try to advertise happiness or just an illusion of it?
I genuinely love to be painting so I guess that's bound to come out in my work.
Is there the end of happiness?
Who knows what tomorrow will be…
Liz McKay
Interviewed by Adam Szrotek & Sylwia Banasiak
