Connect with us

Supernatural Familiarity: An Interview with Angela Deane

 Obsessed
with the concept of freezing moments and saving memories, Miami-born artist,
Angela Deane sits down with CULTURE
so we can get to know the artist behind “the ghosts.” Amongst an

Published

on

 

creppy1

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap radius”]O[/dropcap]bsessed with the concept of freezing moments and saving memories, Miami-born artist, Angela Deane sits down with CULTURE so we can get to know the artist behind “the ghosts.” Amongst an eclectic handful of other things, Deane is best known for her ongoing ghost series. She trolls thrift stores and eBay in search of the perfect vintage photos featuring mystery people and then cloaks them in a painted white sheet with two small black dots for eyes. The end results are images that play with a duality of the familiar and the comprehensively unknown. All the photos seem recognizable in one way or another, like flipping through an old photo album at your parents’ house. There is a sense of wistfulness and sentimentality embedded in all of them. Simultaneously, the act of painting a simple “two holes in a white bed sheet” ghost over the people in each photo promptly makes the image elusive and mysterious. The two polar opposite moods play off each other and make for fabulously interesting imagery that’s hard to look away from. Sometimes the simplest things can be the most intriguing. Deane’s art, while uncomplicated, touches on profound concepts, yet she does it in a manner that almost emphasizes this fact.

creepy2

What inspires you?

Being alone is the first thing I’d say. I love the drama of being inside one’s own mind. Being alone in a city (I lived in New York for just shy of ten years) can become downright cinematic. Alone moving through a city is so beautiful. Walking, I encounter moments that I’m either a witness to or part of, or both—stirring seconds and events all shrouded in the joys and pains and support of humanity. Mystery and surprise and chance abound when one is quiet enough to both observe and absorb your surroundings. Also; abandoned derelict structures, the insane hues of flowers, the shades of green I saw when up in the Pacific Northwest, figurines, lanterns, kitsch objects, dancing, photographs, mountains, fog, horizon lines, looking into other eyeballs and sensing what is to find in there.

What are your thoughts on the medical cannabis movement happening in the U.S.?

I think it’s a wholly positive movement and I’m excited to watch some of the recent victories happening. Month by month, I feel like socially, cannabis is becoming more acknowledged and accepted. Great progress. It’s important.

creepy3

What are you trying to communicate with your work?

Well, I’ve always been obsessed with the idea of how to hold onto memories. In the movie Six Degrees of Separation, Stockard Channing demands while walking out on her life (which has become stifling in its pretense), “How do we keep an experience as something more than just an anecdote to tell at dinner parties?” I don’t have the answer, but I love thinking about that idea. These ghosts are the remnants or relics of moments. Basically it’s my appreciation for the nostalgia and importance of moments, for the nameless emotions behind the instances we all share.

Future plans for projects?

I’m currently working on a series I have in mind to turn into an art book by next summer.It will be a book of drawings of popsicles and other frozen treats in various states of reverie and despair. Some intact, some puddles, plenty of emotion in their little eyes and pastel bodies with golden stick legs. I painted about a dozen on paper in a residency earlier this year and they really grabbed me. There’s a sassiness and sadness to them that get me—their simple popsicle forms striking a great similarity to the shape of the sheeted ghosts I paint as well as some characters I called “thieves” in work from years ago. Simple forms can be very evocative and are always a good study for me in just how much the smallest arc of a line, the thickness of the paint, the slight adjustment to hue, can do to enhance the evocative nature of the work.

creepy4

angeladeane.com

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *