Who Are Your Artistic Influences?

I think whenever artists are asked this question it’s like the questions you’re asked on a first date that’s heading south: there can be no right or wrong answer, but you’re being judged all the same.

I think problems arise when the questioner mistakes admiration of a particular artist, art style or art work with being influenced by that artist, style or work. Here’s an example: I love, love, love the paintings of pre-Raphaelite/Neoclassic artist John William Waterhouse. I think the way he wove mythology and and romance into his work is inspired, and I covet the sumptuous feel of his oil paintings. I think that if eating fine chocolate could stir a visual response, we’d all see Waterhouse paintings whenever a Callebaut truffle touched our tongues.

Penelope and the Suitors. Oil on canvas, 74 x 51 in. 1912. City of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums Collection, Aberdeen, Scotland.

But I don’t paint beautifully sculpted women and men from mythology on large canvases with fully developed backgrounds. The only thing I think one might argue that I have taken into my own work from Waterhouse is the desire to have my works tell a story and maybe that’s enough to say that this artist whom I admire has influenced my work… but I’m not sold on that arguement.

However, I do have a modest list of artists who I feel have influenced my art. I tend to divide the list into two parts: some names on the list are artists with whom I have studied in person (my “real-life” list), while others are those who I have studied from afar (my “fantasy art team” list). Here’s the names on my real-life list:

1.  Geoffrey Cowan: my middle school art teacher. Mr Cowan was the first art teacher Lestock school ever had – I mean real art instruction – not “Hey, let’s cut a pumpkin out of a piece of construction paper!” - but composition, value, perspective, etc. It was during a class on value that it suddenly occurred to me that this, this art thing, was actually real and someone might make a living at it.
2. Richard Nostbakken http://www.nostbakken.com/ my high school art teacher. Richard is a teacher at Luther College High School and works as an artist in Regina, Saskatchewan. Richard was the first person to treat me as a fellow artist, as an equal. I know many of the students in his classes were there because they thought it would be easier than gym class, but for those of us who showed any interest, Richard was a challenging, thought-provoking teacher. He never came flat out and told you you were wrong, but he had a way of questioning your opinions and assumptions that made you work to defend what you had done. I don’t think he taught his students so much as he lead them.
3. Leesa Streifler http://www.artsask.ca/en/collections/themes/humour/leesa-streifler my drawing instructor in university. My drawing style was influenced by Leesa, who was huge on gesture drawing as a way of capturing the way a subject felt or moved. While I never did loosen up entirely to her suit her taste, my current drawing technique relies heavily on gesture to capture my subject.
4. Jack Cowin http://www.collectorscovey.com/jackcowinbio.html was my printmaking instructor in university and everything I know about printmaking I learned from him. Trained as a medical illustrator, Jack had an eye for detail and a sense of patience for the process that I admired. But I think the thing about his work that influenced me the most was his connection to his subjects. Jack’s fish, birds or dogs weren’t just any fish, bird or dog, but a specific animal; an animal he could, and did, talk to us about.
5. Marsha Kennedy http://www.mysteria.ca/Marshapg.html supervised my final graduating exhibition. Even then, in a place where “fine art” did not include wildlife or animal art, Marsha recognised that animals were the means by which I told my stories; probably because she uses animal imagery in her own art. Granted, she did push and challenge me to go beyond merely pretty pictures and think about why I wanted to included animals in my art.

Well, that’s it for my “real-life” list; next time, I’ll tell you all about the names on my “fantasy art team.”