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| | | Britt Ehringer Interview
Britt Ehringer's paintings strike that uneasy balance between order and chaos, structure and randomness, figurative and abstract. What at first appears to be a dense, accidental arrangement of magazine images and photographs rendered in paint, looks on a closer examination to a be highly thought out collage of pictures, colliding like fragments of a dream.
Residing on a fifty acre ranch in the San Bernardino Mountains of Yucaipa, California, Britt has no formal art training but manages to produces works with an astonishing technical grasp and a unique conceptual outlook that leaves the viewer both impressed and curious.
Jason: Tell me a little bit about growing up; were you a creative child?
Britt: I can't remember a time when I wasn't aware of being an artist. It was never a career decision for me, but more of a compulsion. My dad was a Sunday painter and one day when I was still a toddler, I escaped from my playpen and got into his oils and made a huge mess. I guess I've been making messes ever since.
Did that experience determine your decision to work in oils? Why not use acrylics or even digital media?
More like scared me away from them! There's nothing like having your whole body wiped down with turpentine to teach you a lesson. But the truth is, although I like the speed of acrylics and I do work quite a lot with digital media on my other projects, neither has anything like the visual depth of oils.
What did you study at school?
As far as art training, I didn't really go to school.
There's something about your later works that reminds me of pop artist Richard Hamilton. Is he an influence at all? Who else has influenced you?
Sure. I've been taking a fresh look at his later work recently. I like it's dreamy quality, but always with a wink, like a realistically painted roll of toilet paper in the corner. As to other influences, I have to say that I've stolen something from every artist after the sculptor of the Venus of Willendorf. I voraciously absorb anything I can get my hands (or eyes) on.
 You mention in your brief online biography that you are unable to work in the bustle of city life: do you get more inspiration in the San Bernardino Mountains?
No, it's more about gaining perspective, shutting myself off and filtering down my experiences.
Have you always lived out in the country? What drew you there?
Originally it was the cheap rent, but I grew to love it... except for the rattle snakes.
The biography also claims that you are investigating the layers of perception in search of what is real. Has your art brought you any closer to finding out what reality is?
Maybe it has - at least I am clearer as to my own version of reality.
Your more recent work seems more complex and yet strangely more ordered than your older work. Is this a deliberate development?
Yes, it's funny you picked up on that. It's a little hard to tell on the web but the earlier works were more about surface. What I'm more interested in now is primarily a pattern-making process rather than a specifically narrative one. The patterns that emerge from the chaotic bombardment of imagery in the paintings is reflective of what we are all subject to every day.
What triggered the change? Is it simply a case of refinement and personal development?
There was definitely a process of refinement at work, but also the fact that I wasn't seeing anyone else doing this kind of work, and since I wanted to see it, I finally just had to make it myself.
Your later work also displays an interest in eroticism, fetishism and Asian women in states of undress. What's the reason behind this direction?
They are meant to operate as triggers; near-archetypes that open onto a whole sphere of imagery firmly entrenched in the collective subconscious. There might be something about fetishizing the Other, but as I myself lived in Asia for a time, I personally don't regard those images as being so much about otherness as being simply about life.
Where in Asia did you live and what brought you there?
Most of the time was spent in a little village called Qu Yang about 4 hours south of Beijing where I was working in the marble quarries.
How the heck did you end up in a marble quarry? That's not your ordinary course of events for an average American!
In Qu Yang they've been carving marble for thousands of years. At first buddhas and Foo dog statues...then with the coming of the cultural revolution, giant statues of chairman Mao. The thing was they were not so good at designing products for the western market. So, I was sent there to design items in marble and insure some sense of quality control. For example they would carve a beautiful copy of the Venus de Milo, but the eyes would be chinese in shape...of which I would have to gingerly explain that there was nothing wrong with that ...but if you want to sell this in the west you might want to make the eyes a little rounder.
I was designing things like giant carved fireplace mantles, bathtubs, columns etc.
There must be over 500 little factories there... I can still hear the clinking of all those chisels.
How do you see your work progressing from here?
I want to loosen up a little, develop the language and deconstruct the work more profoundly.
Do you think your work fits into any particular genre of American art?
I'm sure that graphically it owes a lot to the avant-garde in illustration, underground comics, that sort of thing. For decades those artists and publishers were the only progressive guardians of figurative painting in America. But then again, there's a lot of academic, stylistic and art historical influences in my work beyond that idiom. I think part of its strength is the difficulty of easily categorizing it.
How would you describe your art?
I would prefer not to. If it were up to me, I'd rather have people just look at them.
When starting a new painting, what's your approach? Is the idea there first or does it emerge once you start painting?
It's actually both approaches. I begin with the images that have taken hold in my head, combine them into a new whole, sketch them out onto the canvas and then as the painting progresses I start to layer in new areas.
Where do you get your source imagery?
Everywhere I can, that's the whole point of them - the internet, personal photos, old girlie magazines, art books, dreams.
The source imagery in of your work, such as Six Days in Yan Fu, look like they've had some kind of filter applied to create the water effect. Do you use Photoshop as a compositional aid?
Yes, I like to initially sketch things out on the computer. I then use the printout as a preparatory drawing.
Do you sell your paintings? Could a regular guy like me afford them?
I guess we will find out. I've got a show of the new work scheduled for May 14th. The prices are reasonable. I'm not interested in hanging on to anything.
Interviewer & Editor: Jason Arber
This interview is used with kind permission from © Pixelsurgeon.
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