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veng
hometown: new york, ny
website: flickr/veng_rwk
Albus Cavus: When did you start painting?
Veng: I've been painting since early childhood and started to paint with spray paint around 1995.
AC: Is spray paint your primary medium now? How did you get into it?
V: With studio work it’s just a mix between oil, watercolor, acrylic and spray paint. It depends more on the feeling at the time towards the work which medium is in the forefront of that piece.
AC: Tell us about your characters.
V: The ideal behind my characters is to have them understood by the viewer in the sense of having realistic features yet placing them in unnatural juxtapositions by out of proportion arms or other body parts in an environment that is a semi mesh of real and unreal concepts.
AC: That's very relative though. For others the wall is very real barrier to get through, but for you wall-obstacle is unreal and rather the world of your characters is what represents the reality.
V: For me the wall is part of the idea. When giving the chance to work within a concept that can also work with the make of the wall. It adds to the picture. We all have looked at walls and seen stuff that we thought was a hindrance to our design of it but I'm finding more and more it adds to the picture.
AC: Who and what inspire you?
V: Many artists inspire me from the art of the Northern Renaissance, Dutch painters of the 17th century to Chuck Close and fellow writers… In addition it can be something as subtle as a dream, a walk around the city or a mistake from another ideal.
AC: So again it's a mix of real experiences from your everyday life in urban environment and unreal wanderings in your own world?
V: Yeah, for instance I just was in the terminal at the S.I. ferry boat and saw they had fish tanks and thought it was great to see, then while looking through an old sketch I had in my book of a elephant with that saddle-device where people sit on them and somehow came up with the ideal of putting that on a fish with a character of mine going up a ladder to the top.
AC: Favorite gallery show?
V: I can't honestly pick one. Each show has and hopefully will have its own fond memories, whether it's a show I'm in or close friends.
AC: Any interesting upcoming projects?
V: There is one book through Carpe Deim out of Greece hopefully dropping this
summer along with a book out of France based on designing a can of paint. Along with some ideas Col and I have been working on this coming summer and year hopefully will be good and busy.
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