Interview | Briahna Wenke

I think this definitely depends on where you live, as different regions seemed to be hit much harder than others, and regional political climates oddly dictated responses to the pandemic as well. Overall, it is clear that the pandemic ripped open a lot of hidden wounds, in so many directions. There were moments of utter selfishness and tunnel vision, but there were also moments of human compassion and hope. People generally come together in crisis, in the most remarkable ways. The rawness and vulnerabilities that the pandemic exposed were not without pain, but I feel there is a blatant honesty we were meant to revisit, as a species.

I’ve always been fascinated by the parallels and antiquity of the human story, the patterns we seem to ride and how the themes of our stories tend to cross-pollinate. The pandemic certainly heightened this for me, it was clear that we were all in a very similar boat (speaking for first world scenarios), we all were feeling a desperate need for connection. We all were forced to take a very hard look inward. Our facades were no longer valuable, honesty finally felt like a method of survival and not something we could continue to push to the backburner.

Every artist has to experiment and fail and experiement some more.  Over the years I feel I have developed my own vocabulary that I can pull from and use as I work through each piece.  Particularly the heavy, raw palette knife strokes.  It’s crude, it’s blatant, it marks a moment in time that I’ll never get back.  I’m fascinated by contrast, and I’m exploring the harshness of the thick, impasto paint alongside the softer realism of brushwork, particularly on skin.  You cannot have any one thing without its contrasted counterpart, that’s how anything is defined, is it not?

We all wish each day could be perfect, of course this cannot ever be the case.  But damn it, we can try!  An ideal day would consist of a 15 minute meditation and breath work right away after I wake up, to begin to reel back the monkey mind and prime it for some clarity.  After coffee, a run would be next, or a Grit Box workout, because tiring the body has always contributed to quieting the mind.  There also this sense of capability that rewards you post-workout, and this is crucial in acquiring the confidence to sit in front of the easel each day.   I have journals and notecards next to my bed, in my studio, in my backpack, in my car, etc to always be able to write down notes and ideas as I read them, hear them in lyrics, think them, etc.  The human brain can be unreliable at times, you have to write this stuff down as it comes.  Sometimes I like to do small quick palette knife sketches to loosen up and activate that part of my brain, sometimes I dive right into the larger works in progress. I’ve tried to muscle a strict routine around my days, but I’ve learned that each one will be just a little different, and that is okay. That works for me.

Sometimes the shifts are very subtle.  But a recent piece that I think marks a new direction for me is ‘the escorts’.  I’ve always admired the work of artists such as Andrea Kowch and Mitch Griffiths, who have wildly different styles, but they produce a narrative within their work through symbolism, multiple elements, etc.  I believe ‘the escorts’, with the Ravens and subtle gestures, is my transition into telling more of a story within my paintings.  It’s still about the portrait, and where I choose the focal point to be on the face, but there’s a bit more to the story now.  I want the viewer’s eyes to wander and create their own connections.

Andrea Kowch is fascinating.  Her work has this subtle lonely nod to Andrew Wyeth, in palette too, and she paints a raw, crude narrative within each piece.  Lynn Boggess is a landscape artist that I’ve admired ever since I saw the work here in person in a Charleston gallery.  The deliberate, coarse, yet unbelievably accurate palette knife application baffles me to no end.  The photography of Lee Jeffries never disappoints.  He captures the most interesting subjects with such heightened contrast and integrity.

It is true, we absorb our surroundings and experiences without ever realizing it, our entire lives.  It’s quite impossible to create anything within a void.  It always comes from somewhere, mixes with your unique set of stories, timing, and perspective, and is pushed back out through your own unique filter.  This is how I view creativity.  When I first learned about expressionism, in which poets and painters opted for a distortion of reality in attempt to convey emotion, this gave me a sense of permission to be more vulnerable in my work. I also remember standing in front of Monet’s  massive work at L’Orangerie in Paris, baffled at the mess up close, but how the whole visual came together when you allow your eyes to soften.  Trusting your first impression, as the impressionists did, I aim for this level of confidence in the studio.

This is a tough one, because social media is precisely what the user makes of it.  It can be completely toxic and impair mental health, or it can be a remarkable tool to connect and reach people like never before in the history of humanity.  For an artist, it can be disappointing to realize that such a tiny percent of people will ever view your massive paintings in person with the naked eye, but instead, thousands will see your painting on a 3×3” screen.  And never before has an artist had so much control and power over their own audience and platform.  I think to stand out in the sea of content, one has to remain authentic, and limit the amount of daily consumption.

Well, I’d go with….James Baldwin, Sally Hemings, Charles Bukowski… and Ghengis Khan.

I’m currently working on a large body of work that will exhibit this fall in Charleston, it will be a collection of both live installations and paintings, and it will be my most ambitious endeavor yet. Then I’d like to exhibit overseas very soon, in England, France, or Italy. I’d like to purchase a home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I will sip coffee in the morning, red wine in the evening, run endless trails, and paint in my studio every day. I’d get rid of self-doubt, think of how much I would get done if that was no longer part of me…