Katie McGuire – Happy Accidents
My work deals with chance in a couple of different ways. I walk around Los Angeles and take pictures of the people that I paint. When I get a good photograph or a good character, I make the image into a painting. How I find these people to paint is completely up to the fates or chance. I just walk around, and whoever comes across my path that I would like to paint, I will paint.
My work also has to do with chance or happy accidents because I let the process of painting and intuition take over my work when I am doing it. If a drip happens with the spray paint, (I don’t plan it), I just use it as a part of the painting or layer of the painting, and then see what the next layer will bring.
The work has to do with people that stand out to me, and as a body of work, the characters fit together as a whole. The characters also fit together by chance. I am including some more writing about my work so you can understand it more.
Who are you? What do you do? Why do you do it?
I am a teacher, and a painter. I have been a painter all my life because I love looking at paintings and trying to understand them and want to create my own.
My work is always about human life: portraits, full figures or partial figures. I usually paint psychics, gypsies, musicians or homeless people. My work is done in unrealistic colors. I work from photograph, and use my imagination, intuition, and fantasy to embellish the painting. I want to create an image of a mystical person in a mystical world. I aim to create a world oscillating between dreams and reality. I want to paint the person’s aura, soul, energy, or situation in life. My pictures are both light and dark showing both the light and dark aspect of the person and their relation to the world. I am influenced by Tarot Cards, Surrealism, Expressionism, Bay Area Figurative, Beat Artists, and Abstract Expressionism.
What is the relationship between creativity and synchronicity?
Synchronicity refers to events that appear related but have no connection. I guess it seems more like fate, chance or accidents. Creativity is related to synchronicity, partially because when I paint, I use spray paint and it drips, and I use accidents to create the picture. The accidents are not planned, and I leaved them on the surface and use them with other layers to create the final piece. I also use my intuition to create the painting. I work from photograph with an image in mind, but let intuition flow through my body to create the image. That is somewhat synchronicity.
How does synchronicity guide you in life?
If something happens in my life that has to do with synchronicity, like I find an item on the street or the beach that I could use in a painting or a collage I use it. If I meet someone by accident that I want to be friends with, that is synchronicity. If I am walking, and I see something that I might want to paint, I take a photograph of it, and I use it as an image to paint from.
Find Katie here: KatieMcGuireArtwork.weebly.com
