Embodied Patterns: An Interview with Claire Zakiewicz

Steve Finbow interviews Claire Zakiewicz.

 

 

Claire Zakiewicz is an artist whose primary area of practice is painting, performance, video and installation art that explores relationships between drawing and sound. She also practices the Meisner Acting technique and contact improvisation which inform her painting and drawing process.

3:AM: What is your first memory of experiencing art?

Claire Zakiewicz: I grew up in South London with cultural diversity all around me. At home my siblings and I were encouraged to draw, make things, play musical instruments, listen to music and be expressive from as early as I can remember. I remember drawing a picture of my dad when I was three or four — a potato shape with stick legs and arms, a smiley mouth and eyes in the middle. I showed it to him and his response was: where’s the body? I remember having an “aha” moment about paying attention to the details — adding a sticking out nose, details around the eyes. It took me a while to realise that good drawing reveals the essence of things. That’s something that I’m still interested in: how art can be a practice of focusing attention on details while recording and archiving how we experience things thus shedding light on the cognitive processes that underlie our emotional relationship with art.

3:AM: Who were your first favourite artists? And who have been the biggest influences on your work?

CZ: Here’s a list of my early and big influencers: Andy Warhol, John Cage, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tracey Emin, Quentin Blake, Sun Ra, Cy Twombly, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Laurie Anderson, Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg.

3:AM: How has your artistic methodology changed from when you first started making art?

CZ: Drawing, painting, music and movement have always been central to my practice, but my methodology has become more focused. Understanding myself better and building my practice around my individuality has been key to developing my career. I studied printmaking at college for my BA but I realised that it involved a lot of stopping and waiting around, which doesn’t suit me. I’m very physical and I like to get into more of a flow state as much as possible. Also, while I’ve always been collaborative, as my network of fellow artists has grown I’ve been able to be more selective about who I collaborate with and ensure that their interests and outlook match my own.

 

 

3:AM: What is your favourite medium?

CZ: I make everything from postcard-size paintings to huge canvases that cover multiple walls and the floor. I work in layers with a lot of transparent gesso onto paper and canvas. I love oil-paint sticks, chalk pastels, paper, inks, watercolours, graphite and charcoal. My process of painting is very tactile as the paint is often transferred from my whole body to the canvas. When using oil paints I use lavender oil and orange zest as paint media which is less toxic than white spirit with the bonus of being fragrant as well. In terms of technique, I use dance methods such as contact improvisation and acting methods such as the Meisner technique, which help me explore physical and emotional balance, gut responses, focused attention, attunement, gravity and depth.

I also play saxophone, DJ and I make soundscapes with recordings such as the sound of drawing. I frequently work with other sound artists and musicians. My main area of research has been exploring physical and metaphorical relationships between sound and drawing.

3:AM: Do you consider yourself a painter, multimedia artist, conceptual artist or a combination of these?

CZ: I would say a combination, with some other types thrown in as well. There is a conceptual framework and visual language and logic that I work within, which is the foundation of my practice alongside painting and performance. Some aspects of my practice are more physical, immediate and felt, while others are more conceptual, reflective and considered. The body, gesture, physicality and movement are key features using the sound and aesthetics of the materials over time. I explore drawing as a consequence or a residue of a performative process and mark-making and traces are a visual expression of movement-based thinking. The work oscillates between contrasting concepts, such as process-product, tension-resolution, control and randomness, figurative-abstract, personal-universal, visual-sonic, considered-spontaneous. It is important for me that my work is both based on research and creates space for continuing exploration of the conceptual framework on which it is built.

3:AM: Do you use digital media in your working processes?

CZ: Not very much, but there are some digital processes that are essential in my practice. Digital documentation and sometimes post-production. I print photos of unfinished paintings and work over them to develop ideas. I also make animated films on a computer, although it’s usually stop motion with hand drawn stills.

3:AM: If you could travel in time, which artistic period would you like to visit?

CZ: I’d visit the Druids, the Renaissance period and perhaps the early 21st century but I wouldn’t want to be an artist at any other point in history. I think now is the most exciting time to be a female artist.

3:AM: Your work is sometimes collaborative: name three artists of any genre you would like to work with — dead or alive.

CZ: Laurie Anderson for her passion and experimental approach to music and performance; Trisha Brown, because I’d like to work more with dance and I love her approach to movement and John Cage because I really admire the aesthetic and humour in his works.

3:AM: How much of your work is spontaneous and uses chance and how much of it is theory and planned?

CZ: I aim for a balance that feels right. Realistically, there are times when it’s more one-sided than others. I love working in a spontaneous way, but it takes a lot of planning before and following up afterwards. If I am able to make large scale action paintings five days a week then I’m having the best time — but also living in a lot of grime and mess and it can be a relief to clean up and stay clean for a while.

3:AM: Interesting that you say that “I love working in a spontaneous way but it takes quite a lot of planning and follow up afterwards,” and you also mention John Cage. If I write using chance methods, as I did while writing Death Mort Tod — say the mathematical constrictions of Oulipo, such as “the elements in a text are moved around by a set of predetermined rules” — I found this liberating in that it generated material but also very hard work trying to form and match the paragraphs to construct a narrative. Do you use Cage’s “chance operation” theory for discovery, as in a pure aleatory expression or do you use a more “tychist” approach which preserves the necessary presence of chance but creates a spontaneity which is to some degree regular?

CZ: My practice is very experimental and I have developed a number of chance methods in painting. Some are more interesting and successful than others, but even the failures are an important part of development. In acting, dance and painting, I sometimes control or restrict movement, which can open up other ways of working. Drawing downward strokes with my attention to breath, setting a tempo for the movement and following the shape of the page are examples. I also develop strategies to let go of control and work by spontaneous improvisation. I sometimes make use of accidental marks: I might lay a canvas or paper on the floor while working on another piece on the wall. The floor work catches the fallen pigment, creating an accidental or incidental painting. Sometimes I apply paint to a dancer’s feet, asking them to focus particularly on the movements of their upper body so that the mark-making doesn’t have an intentional feel. I also like to produce paintings in response to musical recordings because they provide a set duration as well as a structured pattern that I can listen to and repeat over again to produce a series with a similar size, density and energetic quality. When drawing music, the tension and movements affect the mark making directly. My project, Embodied Patterns, which I am exhibiting in Venice very soon — in October 2022, comprises a series of automatic drawings produced in response to Steve Reich’s The Desert Music, which is approximately 48 minutes in duration. I worked in continuous motion without stopping to look at the drawings. I select the colours from a box of pastels without looking and change colours on impulse. I have been working on photographer’s paper and I am able to reach, stretch and move around on the floor. My movements are spontaneous and impulsive and I use acting and movement techniques in an attempt to explore primal and animal-like movements. I aim to lose track of time and space: to find a timeless moment. Improvisation in drawing involves the accidental and the incidental and improvised gestures have more of a visible sense of unity and flow than those made with conscious thought. As I work, I often wonder how much we can really escape the confines of our prescribed patterns, like the pathways of our brain synapses or unconscious muscle memory. Spontaneous, intuitive gestures involve a flow of pre-learnt embodied patterns. I know that control will only take me so far and produce a certain quality of mark-making. When I consciously try to control things, it seems impossible to behave intuitively. Philosophically, there is no consensus on the nature of free will, predetermination or randomness, so, I’m exploring how all of these process games around chance and randomness, structures, patterns and glitches can be visualised through our body in paint.

 

3:AM: You are based in London and NYC. Where do you think the centre of the art world is now located, or do you think art is truly global?

CZ: When I was living in New York, between 2013 and 2019, it seemed like the centre of the art world and it was inspiring and energising. A lot changed during the pandemic, for example digital platforms enabled a more global art world. Many artists moved out of New York. I’m not sure how many have moved back but the city has gone through a transformation, just like London. I’m not travelling much at the moment, aside from trips to Venice for my upcoming exhibition, so I have some difficulty knowing what’s happening outside of my bubble. Judging by the exhibitions I have seen this year there is currently more focus on contemporary art from Africa, South America and Asia. That’s obviously a great thing for art as a universal representation and expression of the human condition.

3:AM: What outside of art is the greatest influence on your work?

CZ: I’m exploring my own dream world as content for my work. That’s a fairly new way of working for me although I’ve always been interested in my own personal mythology and aspects of the mind. I’ve also been inspired by travel — so much of my work is inspired by different cultures, perhaps Japanese and Indian cultures in particular.

3:AM: Would you consider creating a Gesamtkunstwerk, an installation or environment which would include acting, dance, music, visual art and so on in a space designed purely for that event?

CZ: Yes, that sounds fun and not much different from what I’m already doing now in that my work is produced by a synthesis of art forms. It’s an ongoing inquiry into the phenomenon of how our movements continuously and subconsciously change, depending on what we hear and see, and also what we interact with and touch. I am always reminded through my process of painting how powerful design, architecture, sound, scent, movements, and our interactions with animate and inanimate objects are.

3:AM: Do you have a five-year plan?

CZ: My art practice and day-to-day life are interchangeable. While I’m a good medium-term planner and I know what my goals are, I haven’t laid out a specific five-year plan. Ultimately I want to be an artist who is increasingly prolific as I get older. I think it’s really all about continuing to make work, staying inspired and finding moments of resolution and discovering new problems along the way with a good team around me. The most important thing for me is always being able to focus on the work.

 

 

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Steve Finbow’s new project – based on Giorgio Vasari’s  Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects – will be published later this year.