On Creation, Stability and Refining Your Voice: An Interview with Aimée Everett
Every year, bbatx curates a monthly residency highlighting the work of 10 to 15, Texas-based women and nonbinary visual and musical artists that create work and perform in our programs. As we move to take our programs online, we’ve partnered with Bumble to launch a digital version of The Residency. From now through November 1, 2020, you can tune in for weekly mixes, visuals and workshops from 16 women and nonbinary artists and DJs.
Today, we’ve got an interview with Austin-based contemporary painter and artist Aimée Everett. In conversation with bbatx committee member A’nysha Aileen, Aimée talks about her adaptability to her respective medium, finding and refining one’s voice, and her advice for up and coming artists.
ABOUT Aimée Everett:
Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, Aimée is a visual artist whose work employs abstraction and figurative work to explore communication, gender, race, psychology, and social commentary. Aimée M. Everett lives and works in Austin, Texas.
Aimée is interested in exploring and asking the question, “What lingers in the silences we hold between each spoken word?” She believes this is where our true emotions live. She aims to examine these silences, the ones that have been handed down generation after generation and the ones acquired as we maneuver through the world. As women we have been conditioned to bear and grin the challenges we face. As a woman of color, that silence is compounded and extends beyond misogyny. To explore these issues, Aimée attempts a new way to interpret the unsaid, attempting to reach viewers in ways words cannot.
Aimée has been refining this style and language since 2012. The exploration of this nonverbal language begins with her confronting and questioning her silences in writing. Aimée confronts experiences, feelings, and thoughts from life and those that have been shared from other people’s perspectives. Employing expressive minimalism as her vehicle; line making, atmospheric color, and texture, Aimée invites the viewer to investigate the unspoken silence that lingers between words.
Can you tell me about your background, and how it impacts your art?
I am originally from New Orleans, Louisiana. I think the vibrancy of the city impacts the way I see color and texture, which in turn influences the way I approach my work.
What do you want people to take away from your work?
I think that’s a question that should be answered by the viewer. I want the viewer to make a connection that is personal to them.
Do you have any favorite mediums? And are there any mediums you have yet to explore?
I don’t approach work that way. I create with the medium that I believe is going to help me deliver the message. Right now I am working with wood, oil, acrylic, and watercolor because it’s working for me at the moment. So, I guess I will evolve to another art form when I’ve exhausted all the possibilities with these materials. When I first began painting, I strictly painted with oil on canvas. I had a commission a few years ago that was last minute. Once I finished, the piece would need to be shipped out to New York. I was like “Well, I can’t do that in oil, it takes too long to dry”. That was when I made the decision to start using acrylic paint in my practice.
Let’s talk commissions. Beyond your own personal bodies of work, what have been some of your favorite client pieces?
I created a piece for a group show honoring the Little Rock Nine at the Sheen Center in New York. This was the show that introduced me to acrylic paint. This piece was important to me because I was asked to honor one of the nine Black students that integrated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. Segregation is something that my Mom and other family members have gone through. So for me, it was a way to connect to her and them. It was a way to connect to the people that allowed me to move about the world freely, and it was something that I could not pass up. The piece is called The Pursuit of Equality.
Do you have any advice for up and coming artists?
I would say, first and foremost you should just create. Create without looking for any awards or accolades, just create—and you will find your voice. Secondly, I am an artist that works in the “real world.” (I call it my civilian job.) I think that helps to keep the balance. I would say to keep your feet in both worlds. Have that stability, and then also have your art life. The art world can be a very strange world to navigate. Having a regular job gives me a reprieve from the art world, so it’s good to transition between both. It’s also good to have a steady paycheck.
Who/what inspires and informs your work?
Everyday people inspire my work. My work is the translation of words because I feel like words only measure so much of our emotions and our communication, which is why it’s great to have verbal and nonverbal communication. I am attempting to find and examine the residual feelings or emotions that our verbal communication cannot capture. For example, If we can only offer words as a measurement of our emotions, and find that there are still feelings that are left unsaid due to the lack of vocabulary, I am examining a way to bridge the gap by employing line, color, and texture. All of my work is derived from thinking “What do those words actually look like? Or what is left after all has been said?” How can you impact that statement even more? My visual representations are my way of attempting to answer that question.
How have your projects grown and changed since you started?
I think I am refining my voice. I have realized that less is more in my practice. The painting doesn’t have to be this bombastic thing that has a multitude of lines and colors. It can be one color and one line and one form. It doesn’t have to be so much, and sometimes it does. So I am learning how to turn my voice up and down when I need to.
Can you describe your creative process? What is the first thing you do when you start a piece?
The first thing I do is look at words and our use of language. I write a lot. So, I write out what I want to say, and then I go into creating the composition. Everything comes to me in words first. From there I start working on the piece.
What comes to mind when you read about our current themes: reset and revitalize?
I think every day I revitalize in forms of communication. Words are one of the oldest forms of communication that we have and I am actively trying to dissect and revitalize the way I communicate. With our communities being so multicultural, we have so many nuances when it comes to the approach of language and word usage. I find that color and texture is something that transcends all languages. Your tactile senses are more primitive than your understanding of words. I am attempting to revitalize how I’m speaking to my audience, how I’m speaking to my community. I try to use connections that are similar to us all.
