Alyss Estay

I have been thinking an exorbitant amount about surfaces (as goes with any exhibition that lends a variety of sexy surfaces) but with these there is an insinuation of a screen or a barrier that exists in a in between space of viewer and object that is either referencing a LCD Screen or a fence or a window–– this is all throughout the show which brings me into differences I feel in yours…... 

Julia Monte: In your work I feel like it's our own eyelids in the way, like the blur of an image between squinting lids, or actual phosophones in my eyelids creating shapes of broken light. These are readings I am getting and are subjective, but the exaggeration of color and light is still a common denominator here. Is there an invisible barrier or screen you push your images through to create these blurry scapes?

JM: Continuing to talk about materials, is there a method to your application of material or color choices as you work that is systematic? Or does it primarily come intuitively?  

AE: Sometimes there’s a method… haha, I’m very experimental, lazy, or intuitive. It just depends on my mood, to be honest. Even if I have a grand idea of what I want a painting to look like, through the process of painting it will certainly change. As far as color goes, I try to sort that out in my references before getting started on the painting, and it’s a little hard to talk about because I play around with the color digitally until I get the colors to do what I think they’re supposed to be doing for that particular image. My colors tend to be punchy because I need the viewer to feel a certain sense of unreality to the image they’re taking in.

Alyss Estay: That’s a great question. It’s not true for every piece that I make, but I typically am taking photos that I subsequently translate into paintings. So often, I am using my phone screen or camera lens to capture the beginnings of my paintings. If I can, I will also try to obstruct the lens somehow. In one of my paintings in the show, I shot a photograph through a crystal I have hanging in my car, creating the faceted and fragmented view of the sun. I went further with that image by digitally manipulating the exposure, hue, and saturation to get an image I felt compelled to paint. The photos I take are often happenstance and in the moment, but I go through that last step oftentimes to intentionally set in this feeling I’m constantly trying to convey through my paintings.

JM: In  addition to treatment of surfaces, I am curious if you only work with airbrush and if the idea of not touching the surface of the painting plays any kind of significant role for you as you create your work? 

AE: I love using an airbrush to create a certain atmosphere! Using an airbrush as a tool is fairly recent for me and I’m constantly changing my approach and process to my paintings. And really, sometimes it just depends on the painting I’m working on and what I feel the image demands. Recently though I have declared that I am not after “perfect” airbrushed paintings. I use paint brushes to create an underpainting in which the strokes do bleed through after being airbrushed over. In one of my paintings in the show I used a combination of airbrush, markers, and paint brushes to get it done! Touching or not touching the surface isn’t really part of my concept in making work. Though I am more and more trying to make sure that my hand is visible in my paintings.

JM: What is your relationship to the screen everyday, whether for entertainment or as a tool, and how does it affect your work, if it even does half of the time? 

AE: Oh man, I wish I could say I had a healthy relationship with the screen. I work in front of a screen at least 40 hours a week, not to mention all of the social media, texting, and reading I do on screens. Then I am also into the screen as entertainment. I love watching movies and I have a guilty pleasure for a certain genre of television… All of that to say that I don’t really think having a screen in my face so much affects my work, except for in the obvious ways when I use my computer to manipulate the photos I take, etc. I feel that my work is much more influenced by photo lenses and the ability to view life through a piece of glass.