Artist Interview with Chloe Vallance...

  Chloe Vallance, Tied With String, 2010,

colour pencil on plywood, 30 x 60cm.

What inspires you and where do the ideas for your work come from?

People inspire me. The ideas for my drawings stem from my observation of people, close friends and family, and are developed from photographs, and life.

My art is influenced by Robert Frost’s ambivalent imaginative poetry, the work of artists such as Micheal Andrews, especially by his intimate painting, Melanie and Me Swimming, an image that instigated my interest in human interaction. The work of Gerhard Richter, and David Hockney helped me to understand the potential of working from photographs as well as the limitations. Edgar Degas’s compositions and his application and control of colour are also another strong influence on my work.

What is it that you are trying to achieve with the works in this exhibition? What message or ideas, if any, are you are trying to convey?

Developed in response to the experience of travel in relation to the nature of being, this work considers the role of the individual in the society, the figure and its various contextual relationships.

The medium of colour pencil and the plywood surface have been chosen to signify the particular and the general. The nature of the wood grain can imply the illusion of another space, or suggest an alternate reality, while coloured pencil implies specificity in terms of application, mark-making and in terms of the conventional association of the particular nature of pencil. Equally both medium and surface also imply focused moments and generalised (or out of focus) spaces.

The images have been drawn from photographic reference to define various contexts, situations and individual realities as difficult to pinpoint beyond the perception of a moment in time.

Why do you make art?

To connect with what I see.

For me, to draw a passed moment can relay an unfixed reality, validate an experience, and allow you to feel closer the people and places captured in that moment.

Chloe Vallance is a Melbourne based artist and the 2010 winner of the Pleysier Perkins Emerging Art Prize. Her work can currently be seen at Artereal as part of our group exhibition +/- (Positive / Negative) which runs until the 31st October, 2010.