KIERSTEN ESSENPREIS interview

KIERSTEN ESSENPREIS >>words & interview: Jack | paintings & drawings: Kiersten

Kiersten Essenpreis paints what you have forgotten about. She was there when you thought you were alone; those twilight/early morning hours when you think you see things, or the when the strange seems perfectly acceptable. Remember bedtime stories? She does, but not like that. Like Phil Elvrum’s deceptively naive Microphones songs, or Chris Ware’s understated comic book epic Jimmy Corrigan, her subtle colours and soft lines brim with innocence and youth, and at the same time speak with darkly comic tones about death, failure and angst. With all the subtle humour of Gary Larson’s Far Side, each painting is a snapshot of something irrefutably surreal - animals in quiet conversation, little girls with mouths leaking indoor floods – yet every scenario feels familiar and poignant. Kiersten answered my questions over email.

Do you hope to convey a certain type of emotion with your work, or do you leave it to the viewer to extract their own meaning? Each piece is created with individual ideas, not always serious or compelling, but different all the same. I think people are usually able to pick up on the mood I'm trying to create but not necessarily the exact meaning of the piece, which is to be expected with any kind of art. People are going to have their own interpretations with anything you do, depending on their own experiences or feelings with the subject matter you present. I like to provide a specific tone for the piece, hopefully to guide the viewer in the right direction, but everyone is going to have their own conclusion. Why the idea of youth and animals reoccurring? I recall my childhood so vividly that it turns out in my work a lot, although in a much more exaggerated kind of way. It wasn't all that long ago, but most of the things I remember literally seem like they happened yesterday or last week. Although I'm 23, I seriously still feel like I'm 9. I still have the same sense of humor and stupid ideas that I did as a kid. I don't think I've really identified myself as an adult, and I think I'm probably avoiding it in some sense. The theme of youth is not something I purposely meant to reoccur, but I suppose it happened because these are the things I'm still interested in, things that I still think about, things I still think are funny or repulsing. I use animal heads to help identify the role/position of the character subtly, without the distraction of extra details like unnecessary movement or facial expressions. By using the animal heads, the viewer is able to extract information based on their own prior knowledge of animal hierarchy and their association with it. This way, I'm allowed to have a basic understanding with the viewer that gives me the freedom to focus on the main scenario and not have to worry about the back story. When you start painting, how clear are your ideas of the final outcome? Do you find you stick quite close to these ideas, or think about how that painting might fit into your body of work? I usually have a pretty clear idea of what I'd like to do before I start a painting. I tend to knock around a few ideas in my head for a while, weeks or months even, and they slowly develop into more finished compositions. I hardly ever do sketches, I never really have, unless it's for a job and it's required. I guess I just don't like spending time on them, probably because I'm not that great at drawing and it can be very frustrating trying to work out and exact finish before even working on the painting. A lot of the time I have an idea of something I want to do and it just develops as I'm working on it. I feel like if I have to draw it out first there's always the chance that I'll fuck it up and ruin the original idea, or I'll lose interest in it by the time I finally finish it. Why is your website called You Fail? A few years back I made these silk-screened zines out of old test booklets that I stole from my school's Art History department. On all the covers, I had this bird drawing with the line "you fail" written underneath it. I started to use this drawing all the time, making stickers and whatnot. Eventually that summer, to the disappointment of my mom, some friends and I took up tagging and "you fail" was soon seen stencilled all over the cement overpasses and parking lots of my hometown outside of Chicago. When I finally decided to do a website, I didn't really want to use my name and figured that no one would be able to spell Kiersten Essenpreis anyway, so it became youfail.com. ...so would you say your a pessimist? It's kind of funny that you should ask this, because it's something that always seems to come up. I don't think that I initially come across as either, but as people get to know me they always seem surprised that I can be quite the pessimist. Not in the sense that I think everything is terrible, but I have always had the tendency to look on the sarcastic, not-so-bright side of things. I guess that I've always felt that if I prepare for the worst, I won't ever be that disappointed and maybe sometimes I will be pleasantly surprised when something good comes along. My brother and I have a small design company called Half Empty-Half Full, and I'm definitely the Half Empty side and he's definitely the Half Full. I would have to say that my outlook on things is represented quite a bit throughout my work. This is not completely intentional all the time, but I would say that my childish sarcasm and immature sense of humor is present throughout. How much does your environment have an effect on your pictures? My environment, past and present, plays a very significant role in my work. I grew up in the Midwest where there are these vast areas of flat land, like sections of color with an occasional farm, house, or line of trees. I always thought these endless stretches of land were kind of creepy in a way, because everything seemed to be so isolated and quiet. I use this type of setting in most of my work, because it can provide a mood without being distracting to the foreground characters and scenarios. After living in Brooklyn for a while, I've started to become interested in some of the buildings here, especially the old abandon ones. They give off the same feeling as the flat landscapes; vast, quiet, and a little disturbing.   Do you have a preferred medium to work on? Why?   I mainly work with acrylics on wood. I used to experiment with other things like illustration board and canvas, but I was always broke and couldn't really afford to keep buying them. So while I was in school I started to sneak into the industrial design department and steal their old scraps of wood. It turns out that it worked out great for my paintings, because it allowed me to paint in smooth, flat layers and I could sand it over if I fucked up. It also found that it made for a very easy final presentation for shows, because instead of matting and framing (which I'm horrible at) all I had to do was nail a hanger onto the back and I was done.

Do you find painting a form of escapism? In a way, yes. I don't paint to escape my own reality or to create a new one to live in. I don't take myself that seriously. It's more like storytelling by way of a badly drawn picture book. While I'm doing the actual painting, I tend to zone out the entire time I'm working. It's kind of like sitting in front of the TV late at night and not realizing that you've been watching shit for 6 hours. What motivates you to create this kind of art? A combination of hundreds of things. Really bad horror movies, cheap toys, music, old junk, landscapes, Giorgio De Chirico (and most of the other Surrealist movement), kid shows, Unsolved Mysteries w/ Robert Stack, favourite stories, my family, contemporary art, outsider art, my friends' artwork, Halloween, etc. I'm also part of a weekly drawing session with some friends so that helps when I've come to a dead end. We have different themed nights and a huge jar of random words/sentences that we pick from and draw. My favorite so far was, “haunted houses” where my friend Kate drew an ant farm with tiny ghosts in it. Fucking brilliant.

Your work has a kind of vague quality, like I recognize something in it that I might have seen in a children's book as a kid and stored it away subconsciously. How much do you find your own memories and experiences have an affect on your pictures? Practically every piece I do is somehow connected to my own personal memories and experiences. I don't think I could avoid this if I tried. I like the way that sometimes I think that I can remember something with such clarity, only later to find out that it wasn't exactly so. That maybe pieces of it contain a reality but the rest is a childish exaggeration, bigger, brighter, more important. It's interesting how certain, perhaps insignificant, moments can be remembered as if they were huge turning points. Small things like school experience or camping trips have become these embellished milestones for me. I really am fascinated with how life and memories evolve and I think this is an important theme in my work. So what about the “waste time” section of your site? Particularly the animal costumes, it's that sort of thing that really gives this quality of old photographs/hazy memories... It's basically just a collection of photos that I've taken and thought were funny or strange. There's an old one of my brother and dad taken before I was born that I really liked. And there's a black and white one of an old neighbour of my family's that was taken of her and her brother at a magic show. That one is just amazing…really creepy and surreal looking. I eventually hope to expand this section to include more pictures, some animations my brother and I have worked on, and crap that I collect for no reason. It really is just a section to 'waste time' if someone is bored. I look at this kind of stuff when I'm bored or need some inspiration. Do you have a favourite place? Since there are six people in my family, we didn't take vacations very often. We always went camping though and one time we went up to Wisconsin and went to this museum called “House on the Rock”. It's basically this maze-like house set upon a cliff that contains thousands of collections. Everything from half-clothed mannequins hanging from the ceiling to rooms of instruments that are hooked up to play by themselves. It's insane. I've gone at least once a year ever since.