Priscilla Derven
Kingston, NY
Website
priscilladerven.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your art?
I described a group of these paintings with the title AERABLA, my acronym for Aerial Abstract Landscapes and my most recent paintings by the word Camber which has many meanings but I think of it as a vaulted ceiling, not in the sense of a cathedral but in the abstract sense of the universe.
What inspires you?
I am inspired by the magic I feel when I resolve a painting.
A book that I remember being very inspiring for me when I was in my early 20’s was Flatland by Edwin Abbott. I love the notion of the yet unknown, the unimaginable materializing.
Can you speak about your process?
I have most recently been painting with oil on stretched linen. I try to work as subconsciously as possible in the beginning and not impose any preconceptions at all on the surface. The only constant, as a starting point, is an awareness of my point of view. In most of my work of the last ten years, I imagine that I’ve left earth behind and am out in space, looking down at earth. In my most recent paintings I imagine I’m beyond space. I’m on a new journey each time I begin a painting. I’m walking on a path without direction or a map. I go through different emotions: excitement, familiarity, comfort, suspicion of predictability, frustration and despair over feeling lost. I try not to judge in terms of good or bad and have faith in my process that I will get there in the end. I never know what I’m in for or how long I’ll be working on it, whether days or weeks. I eventually turn a corner and have arrived. That sends me to the moon.
How did you become interested in art?
Art was there in my world with my earliest memories. My mother was a painter of everything she saw. I am the fifth of six children and I think we were all making art throughout our childhoods. Working on art in the public school system was a killer of creativity in my experience and succeeded in squelching the art impulse in me while there but at home, possibilities for it were always on hand. We also had neighbors who were professional painters with galleries in New York City and I was always interested in their worlds. When I was fifteen, I started painting with oil on canvas in high school art and got clear that I wanted to be an artist for my life’s work. I never equated it with making money or a career. I always viewed it as my real work and not my job work. When I worked for money, I always worked in creative jobs first teaching, then doing maps and information graphic design and textile designs and did my real art around that.
Do you have any favorite artist, movies, books or quotes?
Favorite artists, i.e. influential in my progression: Russian constructivists, Sol Lewitt, Tom Nozkowski, Claire Seidl, Joyce Robins, Gerhard Richter, Max Bill, Martin Puryear and more….
Favorite movies: La Dolce Vita, A Great Beauty, The Lives of Others, all the Ingmar Bergman movies and more…..
Favorite books: anything by William Trevor, Dickens, W.G. Sebold, J.M. Coetzee and more….
What advice do you have for younger artists?
I wished I had learned as a young artist how powerful and destructive the inner critic can be and how important it is to face it, understand it and expel it from your psyche.
