Art Writer’s Wednesday 1 - Tumblr Artist
Loui Jover | on Tumblr (Australia)
“I paint, I draw, and I do it everyday.” Loui Jover is a self represented full time artist from Queensland, Australia. His artwork involves drawing in ink over adhered-together vintage book papers. Loui has held three solo exhibitions and has been included in numerous group shows. Leslie Seuffert interviewed the Artist for Artchipel’s Art Writer’s Wednesday #1.
Leslie Seuffert for Artchipel : You’ve recently joined Tumblr to share your art with the community. Who is Loui Jover? Tell us about your educational background and your creative style.
LJ : I did a number artistic training including studies in contemporary art, advanced visual communication and commercial art at Melbourne Art Institute, Gold Coast Tafe and at a visual training institute in Sydney. I joined Tumblr to look at the world it presents, where all are invited to contribute, where there is no exclusion, where there is an amazing diversity and freedom. It is vibrant and vigorous, bold and random and most of all inspiring. The inspiration is one of the most important things any artist needs to tap into.
LS : Why drawing, as opposed to another outlet?
LJ : I think drawing came naturally, it is immediate and visceral. I learnt music for a number of years, I tried and still enjoy doing some writing. I also studied painting but always come back to drawing in ink, pen and brush as this is what I get the most satisfaction from. It is the medium in which I am the most “free” to express. It is my primary method of self-expression.
LS : You draw almost exclusively on sheets of vintage book paper. Why and how this choice of material is performed?
LJ : The use of old vintage book pages is the advent of a number of reasons. Firstly I needed paper and I glued these sheets I had from an old ruined book. The decision became entrenched when I looked at the aesthetic result of that first drawing. The idea that damaged and unwanted books could be saved and reused appealed to his ideals about re-imagining and recycling things from around his local environment. The works seem to make an indirect reference to the fact that books themselves are seemingly dying with the advent of the ebook and technology.
LS : What are you trying to express through your drawings?
LJ : I am not always sure what it is I am attempting to express, that’s why I do so many differing forms of drawing and visual work. I make cartoons to show my more flippant comical and sarcastic side, I make large drawings of faces to express a more emotive facet, I also create more experimental work such as mixed media drawings and digital collage to try and extend my forays into my expressive discoveries. But in the end it is the pure joy of drawing itself that propels my need to create artwork.
LS : The women in your painting often appear quite gloomy. Is there a reason or is it coincidental?
LJ : I do try to express the feeling of melancholia, it is my main motivation to illustrate a collective sadness or reflective nature. I personally think these drawings are a direct visceral reaction to the prevailing “sad” state of the human condition itself. In another way, they are my own answer to the blue period by Pablo Picasso that inspired and burned its way into my artistic psyche at a very early age.
LS : What is your favorite piece?
LJ : I do not have a favorite work as I am on this journey where if I was to become completely happy with a work, I would be at its end. I think for most artists, if you make the perfect drawing, you are bound to start repeating yourself. If you end up repeating yourself as an artist, it’s time to re-evaluate why you are making art in the first place.
LS : If you had to sum up what your art means, what would it say?
LJ : Art tempers my spirit, it gives me direction. Without art I would most likely be a psychopath. One can spend a lifetime looking at the world but seldom do they “see” anything. My art helps me to “see” life around me, without art things seem brutal and pointless.
[more Loui Jover | Art Writer’s Wednesday with leslieseuffert]
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
romaincrisis
snowghoul
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
