Truthfully, I think that Ottawa generates a different breed of creative person. We have a huge abundance of talented and ingenious creators, and there’s good reason for the art scene to be hugely competitive. Strangely, the Ottawa art scene generates this very real and supportive sense of community. Everyone is open to a dialogue and new ideas. It’s also close to other major cities with their own unique arts environments, so you’re able to branch out with reasonable ease. It really brings out the entrepreneurial side of any artist, which I think is a crucial part of the equation if you’re planning on being a business person and a creator.

I love working with my hands. If I hadn’t decided so fervently early on that I wanted to be a painter, then I think I’d be working in carpentry or furniture design. There’s a huge amount of gratification in being able to make a thing from scratch, have it express something that you may not be able to in words, and perhaps have it resonate with someone else. Beyond that, I think that the landscape of contemporary art and its complexities are interesting to see intermingling. Artists are pulling from a wealth of resources, ideas, and shared experiences on a new scale. Watching that unfold tends to stoke my own creativity, and I think that making art is a very communal experience in that way.

The very easy and quite possible cliché answer that I can’t help but give is that I never want to stop painting. I won’t go so far as to say that I can’t live without it, because let’s be real; there’s always lying on your back trying to count the spackling dots on your ceiling. More seriously, it takes a lot of commitment to your craft, made with the full understanding that you may never make any money doing it. This is where the next part comes in, and I can’t stress it enough. Most emerging full-time artists need some form of external support. It can show up in the form of a grant or a loan, but in a lot of cases, including mine, it meant hunkering down for a few months in a make-shift studio at my parent’s home because “I just need to focus on my art right now”. The people I love were incredibly supportive, and I owe a lot of my current success to the support they gave me when it was otherwise recommended that I focus on getting a “real job”.

I considered this question for a long time, but I think it comes down to two things. Firstly, the majority of my work is interlaced with my personal history. My own experiences with grief, illness, and loss resulted in a search for a sense of place, which ultimately manifested itself in my work. The result has me combining the delicate and fragile with the unnerving and disquieting, while exploring memory and its place in my identity. Secondly, and more practically, I take real joy in finding new ways to challenge my way of thinking or creating. There’s always more to learn, and there are always ways to better your craft. Part of this involves a deeply rooted interest in the history of art and other things. Currently I’m identifying with Dutch vanitas paintings and the Rococco mastery of opalescent skin . Key artists that I’m always connected to in some way are Cecily Brown and her absolutely lush paintings, the deathly portraits of Marlene Dumas, and the iconic portraiture of Lucien Freud.

Gen: I can’t say I don’t find inspiration in other artists’ work, often from past and contemporary masters, but it can also come from a friend from next door. Music is a very important part of who I am as well, and it will often sway my thoughts and emotions, sometimes even creating a spark. Life itself, its nature, its existence, and the many forms it takes, seems to bring intense awe to me, and the marvels or goodness of humanity and society can move me beyond words. The thought of potentially bringing something to people pushes me to continue trying, to work harder, and to think of new ideas. It is imperative that I give to humanity what I have and think is worthy, and that I share what I can with the world in attempts to improve our reality. Plus being creative is fun. It’s like engineering an interesting answer to a riddle, like attempting to solve a problem.

Joe: An ever present pull to make order out of chaos. 

Joe: The way seeing someone's creative expression can  cause a visceral, sensory reaction of such a wide range of emotions - the full spectrum really. It's beautiful. 

Gen:  Short answer: I like what art can say or do to a person. Long version: I like that it gets inside your head and makes you ask questions and makes you think. I also like the diversity in art, it shows just how different every person is but it also shows that there are things that we can’t get away from. It really brings reality front and centre, for the artist as well as the observer. And I like the communication aspect of it; a piece of art says something different to every single person, including the artist, and the feelings and thoughts it may stir up are so astronomically big and abstract, they could never be adequately captured in a different format, like if it was written or if it was said.

Ottawa has a very lively art scene. What is getting attention form the press is the music events throughout the year, and some theatre performances throughout the year, but I find that the visual arts are underestimated. We have plenty of life drawing groups, the National Capital Network of Sculptors, the Ottawa Potter’s Guild, the Water Colour society, the Coloured Pencil Society, workshops from visiting visual artist like Kristy Gordon,  the print makers have an annual exhibition, we have some great photographers in town, we have the Ottawa School of Art at 2 locations where numerous courses are being offered. Ottawa has a lot of talent. Art is never perfect, but the journey towards perfect, is what makes it so engaging. And therefore it is satisfying at every level.

[Figureworks] actually hasn’t surprised me. I knew there would be an audience for it. Also, we are good to artists: we don’t charge commission and they have complete artistic freedom, with a minimal submission fee to pay for costs and the cash awards. 

What I am surprised about, is that it turns out to be difficult to draw the attention of the press. We are a group of volunteers trying to get Ottawa on the map as the figure capital of Canada. One should think that there would be more interest in following us. Maybe that will happen when we need to book hotel rooms for artists coming from far and wide to cash in their awards? Or maybe when we invite a music icon to take care of the music!

Learning how to render the human form at the Ottawa School of Art made me fall in love with the figure. That was in 2007. It was a therapeutic experience for me. It helped me to battle depression and gain self-esteem. I learned to accept my own body and its ‘shortcomings’, to accept the scars of time, and the lines of aging, and become non-judgemental to all the different shapes and forms out there. Beauty can be found anywhere, and that was a very satisfying discovery.

I learned about the various lifedrawing groups in Ottawa and that their sessions were always crowded with people who wanted to improve their technical skill, wanted to become or already were professional artists or just took on lifedrawing as a hobby. This popularity was not reflected at all in the galleries I visited in Ontario and Quebec. So I felt there should be a venue to show the figure, draped or undraped, that was independent of commercial success of galleries, but where the artist could show their work without any artistic limitations.

I see art as a form of communication and the human figure lends itself perfectly for that, as we are all humans. To me, there is nothing more stimulating then knowing I can still improve, that I still have things to say; it keeps me young at heart, and when that eagerness and passion possess you, anything is possible.  

My intention was to rise to the level of an internationally recognized competition for art of the human form. We are on the verge of that, as works are coming in from the US, China and Brazil. In the past we had works from the US, China and Germany as well. I always think you have to dream big; adjustments can always be made if it doesn’t work out the way you dreamt it. But at least you have a goal you can work towards. I imagined Figureworks as a competition that artists want to be part of, that acceptance in the show would raise their profile, boost their cv, and I dreamt of having substantial money prizes to attract the best and to keep everyone else on his/her toes to achieve something that the artist can be proud of.

Mark is the new president now and I think he will have to define how Figureworks can grow and how he can put his own stamp on it.

I think to be an artist you have to protect and maintain your interests in the world around you. You have to keep taking experience in and attempting to process it. This act of collecting is a fuel you can derive energy from.  I also think you also need to posses a certain degree of generosity towards yourself. You have to be able to forgive yourself for making bad work, for failing to capture a subject, for being self-obsessed and selfish, and for not working hard enough. I think that ability to forgive is what provides artists with the fortitude to continue their work over large stretches of time. 

I love that art provides a way of communicating that goes beyond normal means of expression. It can genuinely bring you inside someone else's world, into an alternative perspective. Sometimes that shift in perspective is momentary, and sometimes it can change you permanently. That profound form of empathy is difficult to come by in everyday life. Art can really make you feel less alone, and give you a break from your own point of view. I’m not sure what I’d do without that.

My creativity is fueled primarily by an interest in people and emotion, and a need to record what I experience. Nearly everything I make is some form of portrait. For me art is about empathy, about trying to inhabit and better understand a former or foreign experience. It is a way of engaging with the world around me, and it is how I try and understand things. Another major thing that supports my creativity is looking at the work of other artists. Lately I’ve become very interested in the connection between drawing and dance, so music has become important to my process.

Most of the creative communities I’ve encountered in Ottawa have been through school. There are so many artists in Ottawa who are very community minded, and I am always a little shocked by that. Its a wonderful thing, and there are a huge number people who are incredibly generous with their time and really willing to work hard to help out other artists, and to bring artists together. I haven’t really found a creative community in Ottawa that isn’t welcoming.