Tuesday, June 09, 2009

NTERVIEWS WITH AMUNDSON, WALKER and FURNESS NOW POSTED ONLINE

Plus Gallery intern Dana Brancucci conducted interviews with Bill Amundson and Melissa Furness in conjunction with the current exhibition "Brave New World" and Douglas Walker has provided the gallery with answers to some typical questions relating to his phenomenal works. We offer a snippet of each here and encourage you to read the full interviews by clicking on the questions for the full blog postings:

 Bill Amundson: What is a typical day like in the life of Bill Amundson?


Jesus. The dullness would tax the interest level of a tree sloth. I get up around 6am. Try to exercise a little. Read the paper and watch about 20 minutes of the morning tv shows. From 8-9 I take care of business and answer e-mails, etc. Then I draw from 9-12. My studio is in the basement of our house, in Park Hill, so on a good day I don't have to go anywhere. I take an hour long lunch, try to read an article or 2 or watch the tape of the previous day's Daily Show. Then I work from 1-about 6 or 7, with perhaps one coffee break. Then Anita and I have a cocktail, make dinner and watch an hour or 2 of a movie and sometimes the local Fox News for the absurdity factor. Almost always in bed by 10. On weekends I try to work at least 4 hours a day. I like an established work schedule that I stick to, and after my years of work in radio, I'm a morning person, as they say. At my age there really isn't that much to do at night anyhow. The best way to get work done is to lead a fairly dull existence. Sad but true.

 
 
Melissa Furness: The image of water and figures swimming seems prevalent throughout many of your pieces, how does this connect to the idea of travel and exploration, and the unknown?

Water is a substance that can take on many forms and that is symbolic of different things. Water can be used for healing, for sustaining, for ritual and spirituality, for cleansing and rebirth, and as well can consume and drown and cause great disaster. I am interested in these polarities of expressing life and death, happiness and tragedy in a single work. The unknown is what comes before and after this. Water also represents bodies of water, which separate large groups of people and which also brings them together as we find ourselves often traveling to destinations that contain water.

Douglas Walker: Why only blue and white?

In the blue and white series I am describing a world of my own making. Its a world where I have total visual control and can make up anything. Ive created buildings, objects, flora, atmospheric phenoma and peopled it. Color would confuse that sense of another world, it would bring it back to earth. The blue and white series moves off of this planet, it is 'not here'. It doesnt seem strange that many of the paintings have a science fiction feel. I've been blogged a lot and Ive often noted the descripiton of my work in one form or another as ' another blue world' and I'm happy with that.