I am an Artist: Eric Reinemann

1. Why are you an artist?

It helps me to break the mold preconceived ideas I build up, allowing me to see the world with fresh eyes. It is a fascinatingly transformative process. When I came across painting twelve years ago I enjoyed it so much that I decided to devote my life to it. My temperament and the process of thinking with color are really nicely matched, there is no other job that I would ever be satisfied devoting my time to.

2. Is there a concept behind your work? If so, please tell us about it

All my work is done from sitting in front of a still life and drawing information out of it. My drawing process embraces movement; this makes it impossible to create a proportionally static composition. I have to intuitively decide how to organize fluctuating shapes, what to edit out and what to rebuild. I’m interested in exploring the intake of visual information and allowing the nature of the mind to order that in a rhythmic manner. I work in small groups off of the same still life set up at a time. Although I draw my information for the same set up each day, my mentality is a bit different each time, leading to unique expressive choices and different dynamics to the compositions. I’m trying to attain a pictorial space which exists where the mind and the physical world collide.


3. Why do you use the medium that you use?

This year I switched to acrylic paint, it’s a water based quick drying paint with funny uncontrollable properties to it. Since then the process has become more about drawing than painting. I work on panels so that I directly draw on the surface with a colored pencil or marker. The physical resistance to the drawn line is necessary for me to believe that I am actually cutting a shape out of real space. With oil paint I would spend two hrs mixing color systems on a palette before working on the painting, in acrylic I’ll spend those two hours or less restructuring the visual information of the painting through drawing, and then maybe paint in a few shapes at a time.



4. How do you choose your color palette?

Compositional dynamics. I often respond to colors I see by giving them verbal identification, then build a color based off of the name I gave it and see what it does on the surface. Eventually the responsive element does not matter anymore and the colors get constructed based off of the energy of the composition. When the temperature of a color shape changes it has the ability to greatly alter the visual movement of the overall composition. In order for the painting to be resolved, each element needs to work in a specific way. This leads to a lot of altering and restructuring of edges, which creates new and previously non experienced color fields. In a strange way I am making color through redrawing edges, rather than coloring shapes, a completely opposite form of color building then mixing systems of oil paint on a palette.

5. What is the inspiration behind your work?

Curiosity

6. Your art and process seem to be metaphysical; would you agree? If so, how do you think this effects your audience?

It’s transformative; it allows me to enter states of mind that are not accessible any other way and still productively think and work. The only aim I have for the paintings given an audience is for the compositions to be able to engage the imagination of viewers. If that happens than dialogue emerges, people start sharing stories of what they see. Hearing the imagination of others is my favorite part of having shows.



7. What is the role of the artist in our society? and in New Mexico?

Artists introduce new ways of looking at life and experience while on focusing on aesthetics. It is the same in New Mexico as it is in New York. I think that art is one of the fields which can be on the periphery of exploring new systems of communication, thinking, and perception, among many other elements which can offer social change.

8. What are your ultimate goals as an artist? , Where do you see yourself as an artist in 5 years?
I’ve struggled for a long time to try to understand and articulate the need to work from direct observation and the resulting abstraction. This idea I will keep exploring and hopefully will be able to express my ideas clearer in the next few years. I hope to be able to write more about the process, get reputable shows, and gain some recognition on a national level for the paintings. I would like for the paintings to open some awareness, or raise more questions about, our perceptual understanding of experience.



9. What does art mean to you?

Its soul cleansing.

Check out more of Eric's work at his website: http://www.ericreinemann.com/