Kiersten Essenpreis
was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago.
She later moved to Brooklyn, NY to attend art school at Pratt Institute.
She graduated in 2004 with a BFA in Communication Design and a minor in Art History.
Inspired by ghost stories, B-horror movies, candy, cheap toys, and her family, Kiersten now lives and works in the ghetto parts of Brooklyn.
Kiersten Essenpreis online:
Inspired by Ghost Stories
Interview: Kiersten Essenpreis
By Adam Szrotek & Sylwia Banasiak
Your paintings contain huge element of child nostalgia and innocence. Why is it so important to you to preserve these memories?
I recall my childhood quite vividly and it appears in my work a lot, because growing older is somewhat of a mystery to me. Even though I live on my own now and have finished school. I still feel like I'm a kid in some sense. I mean my humor hasn't changed, I eat too much candy, I buy stupid toys and I like cartoons. it's too good to give up. I think it's important to preserve my childhood memories because they are great ones and thinking about them is a comforting way to keep things simple and in perspective.
Animals play important role in children's imagination, there is something almost magical about them. Then, as you get older this magic is gone. What role do animals play in your artworks?
I actually think that animals still play a similar role to me then they did when I was younger. Like almost everyone, I grew up on kid based TV shows and read children's books all with animals playing the main roles.
It's funny how much of this becomes real and believable to a kid, it's like an excepted thing that you don't think twice about. It's like, OK, yes that bear is real and he can wake up and make breakfast on his stove and he lives in a tree
. And that's how things are and you never think to yourself that these things couldn't really exist. Children become used to certain animals playing certain roles, like wolf = the bad guy, etc., and as an adult it seems that these associations still exist. I started to use animals in my work to help identify the role/position of a character subtly, without the distraction of extra movement or facial expressions from the character. By doing this, the viewer is able to extract information based on their own prior knowledge of these animals and they can apply these associations to the piece without me having to fully provide this background information directly to them.
When creating, do you rather focus on your real life experiences or rather on your imagination?
Both. I'd say it's almost 50/50, often within the same piece. I've become really interested in the exaggeration of childhood memories and I often try to recreate things that I remember, often not as they actually occurred. It can be interesting how you can think that you remember something so clearly, only later to find out that it wasn't exactly that way. These memories may contain some truth to them, but it's a child-like exaggerated truth. I've found that things were bigger and better to me as a kid. Have you ever gone back to an old childhood place like a house or vacation spot? Things always seem to be smaller or not quite as you remembered them. I like that strange element of evolution in memory and I tend to use it in my work often. Memories and imagination have often become blended to me and trying to recreate these experiences for my work sometimes changes them even further. When I think or analyze something for a period of time, it seems that I start to remember all sorts of details and I can never be sure if they are the truth or just my imagination.
Do you remember your dreams? Do they play any role in your artistic life?
Yeah definitely. Ever since I was little, I've had very realistic dreams that always left me thinking the following day, as if I just saw a strange movie or something. Most of them are kind of generic - I always have someone or something after me and I'm always lost in some sort of large abandoned place - but they are always similar, very detailed and very realistic. This type of atmosphere carries through into my work, even if there is no actual background space. You know that short span of time that falls between a dream and being fully awake? It's that kind of unsettling feeling that you get when you wake from a dream that I'm interested in and I try to incorporate that into the work I do.
Masks appear in many of your paintings; what is hidden behind them?
I sometimes use masks or unhuman heads on human bodies to help the narrative being told. They can exaggerated the mood of the piece or the character in focus in an uncomplicated way. Without other distractions such as unnecessary movement or characters, the viewer can focus on what is actually happening and extract the main idea of the narrative being told. I also use them to add an element of child-like fantasy to the work. A kind of dream world where strange things may exist together with other normal everyday things.
You were born in Midwest, now living in Brooklyn. Has it cha nged your artistic approach in any way?
Yes, it really has. In the Midwest, there are these vast areas of very flat farmlands as far as you can see. These flat sections of color and texture may contain a single farm or line of trees here and there, but overall they seem endless, quiet, and kind of creepy in a way. I guess it's the isolation that's created between the stretches of fields that I'm drawn to, or at least the mood that it creates. A lot of my paintings only have one or two main colors to the background, much like patches of land plotted right against one another. I've been in Brooklyn for a little over 5 years now and a major influence that has changed my approach to my work has been other artists living here in Brooklyn. I have a lot of extremely talented friends that are all working artists, illustrators, and designers and seeing how they approach their work and talking with them about it is largely motivating. It has also made me more aware of my own work and how others may view it. Being surrounded by such creative people really pushes me to experiment with my work and it is a great way to meet other artists to collaborate with.
What is your favorite medium? Do you only paint?
I most often use acrylics on wood. If I'm painting, I hardly ever use anything else, except maybe silkscreen over a painting. I'm kind of a control freak, so I never got into the idea of oils never drying and my brushes not cleaning easily. I started to work on wood because I was always broke and it was easy to steal scraps from the garbage. Once I got used to working on it, I couldn't go back to painting on paper. I loved being able to sand it down again and again and it was great for hanging shows. Instead of matting and framing, which I'm terrible at, all I have to do is nail a hanger into it and I'm done. I also still do a lot of drawings, although they're nothing great. I'm part of a weekly drawing club that some friends I started a while back. We used to meet every week, but then everyone moved around to different cities, so we do it through email now. We get a word of the week, do a drawing, and then email it to everyone on the list. It's a lot of fun.
Please tell us about the company you founded with your brother.
My older brother, Justin, and I formed the small collaborative company, Half Empty-Half Full (I'm the half empty side, he's the half full) a few years back. He's a really talented graphic designer (he's the one who did my website) and works out of Chicago. We share a similar sense of humor and have always gotten along really well. Since I know practically nothing about computers and design and he doesn't really draw or paint, together we make up each others losses and form one whole well-rounded artist. We mostly do small projects like websites, CD layout, t-shirts, etc for other artists or bands. We've been working on finishing up a children's book that Justin wrote and I illustrated, and it would be fun to do another one sometime again. Eventually, perhaps when we live in the same city, we'd like to open and actual studio and take on larger projects, but until then we're happy to do small things here and there.
Do you have any formal artistic education? If so, did it shape up your style in any way?
After high school I moved to Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute and decided to major in Communication Design with a focus in illustration and I minored in Art History. Although the work I was interested in doing was mostly conceptual, it was also slightly sarcastic and not exactly fine art enough to please my instructors. Illustration just seemed more exciting to me, it was less uptight and it gave me the freedom to have fun with my work. Almost as soon as I started classes, my work began to change. With 8 classes a week, there was a huge pressure to produce work quickly and after a semester of sleeping only 3 hours-a-night, I soon lost my desire to paint realistically. I decided I really wanted to try something new and the next semester I worked only with flat color and line. After some time and two really great instructors, Chang Park and Jordin Isip, it soon evolved into a kind of a middle ground between flat color and obsessive detail. And I guess I've worked that way ever since.
How do you feel about tendency of showing tragic situations in a funny way?
I don't always intend for my work to come across so dark or tragic, but when it's all grouped together it can certainly appear that way. When I start to do a new group of paintings, I usually have a set idea or theme in mind, and that usually involves things I think about, find interesting, or think are funny. I usually try to create a mood for the piece though the background and then I place a narrative on top of that. Most of the time that narrative comes from my influences, including things like B-horror movies, murder mysteries, cheap toys, music, landscapes, childhood memories, dreams, my family, things like Halloween, etc. I suppose when these things come together, a sort of tragic sarcasm is bound to occur.
As an artist what role do you think you play in today's society? Is there any message hidden behind your images?
That's not something I've ever really thought about before, at least in reference to myself. I think artists in general contribute so much today. From fashion, design, ads, TV, movies, galleries, artist's work is everywhere, it just depends on where you're looking. It's kind of a cool feeling to know that the work you do can be seen by so many people, in so many places-through books, ads, magazines, whatever-and they may never know or care who you are or what you do. It's sort of a random behind-the-scenes way of contributing to people's lives visually without the spotlight right on you. Most people day to day don't consciously make an effort to look at or pay attention to artistic things, but that doesn't mean that they don't absorb or appreciate them. There can be a lot of drawbacks to doing art for a living, lots of ups and downs, but there are also a lot of freedoms that make it all worth it. So far it's been a great way to make a living, to be able to wake up late, hang out with my boyfriend, drink coffee, and then just paint and draw all day in my studio. It's definitely something I'm going to try and ride out as long as I can.