Leslie  Graff is a prolific painter with an intriguing collection called the Organic Series. She lives and paints outside of Boston with her husband and three sons. Graff says, “My organic works explore growth, connection, and our social experience. Drawing on the inherent metaphors of rooting, branching and fruition, these pieces represent the energy and yield that comes from our efforts, as well as our relationships and connections with others. It uses repetitions of small shapes and visual busy-ness to show the vibrancy of life, power of potential and the almost imperceptible, yet real, nature of change and growth.”

You color choices are bold and striking. What are your thoughts on color? I joke I use color obscenely, I have no palette modesty. Other people can do limited palettes but I love the full spectrum. Its hard for me to do pieces that are even confined to an analogous range. Its always instinctive for me to “cross the (color) wheel”. Its probably the element of design that captivates me the most. It’s probably also why I have a very big wardrobe (acquisitions mostly from the thrift shop) as l love pairing colors. You can create so much mood and feeling with color. I have loads and loads of colors of paint, as only certain lines make certain colors and I appreciate the subtle properties of color a lot. You can use color to just be flashy, but there is a lot of nuance in color, the subtlest shifts in intensity, or color make all the difference in nailing a piece with good color harmony. Color and flavor always have a relationship for me, I cook a lot (because I love to eat really good food) and paintings for me have a similar dynamic each piece, like a recipe is influenced by all the ingredients.

What’s the most gratifying part of being an artist? I would rather paint than eat or sleep and I very frequently give up both of those to paint. I often force myself to bed at 2 am. It even comes on vacation with me. I absolutely love the act of creating. Artist life is a perfect fit for me, both in purpose and structure. I love to inspire people, to share ideas, to help them feel powerful, deliberate, and valued. I see the work of art is to relate and inspire, to awaken people to deeper understandings of the world, to slow down, to notice, to feel, to capture the essence of things, but mostly to connect us. I love having others in my studio, and I think people can recognize it’s unique energy—or maybe they just like my playlists and treats. I thrive in an unstructured environment it makes me insanely productive. I am very “flavor-of-the-week”, always falling in love with new pieces I am making, and there is this constant crush energy—only its infatuations with ideas, colors, and patterns. Creating art in very psychologically intimate for me, part of my personal thoughts are embedded in every piece, there is always some thought, emotion, or meaning in my work I hold back only for myself and don’t share with others.

I am a very connecting social person, but I also love the solitude of painting, it’s process and experience. I usually have one of my many playlists on or audiobooks, podcasts, movies. I zone in and out of paying attention to them. I find I have developed a deep self-awareness as I spend so much time in my own head tapping into thoughts and feelings. It allows a unique awareness of the nuanced flavors of emotions and energies. It gives time to explore the deeper parts of human experiences, tensions and bigger existential conflicts. For me creating is energizing but also very calming in almost a meditative way, It lets me make more sense of life’s complexities.

Visit Leslie Graff’s website.

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Cristall Harper is a prolific painter and lover of flowers. She once wrote, “I inherited my love of flowers from my parents. On vacations, they take more pictures of the local flowers than their own family, something I’m now guilty of as an adult. I like the artistic challenge of taking something traditionally feminine and fragile, like a flower, but redefining that femininity with strength and confidence.” She was profiled previously on The Krakens for her series of dog paintings. Harper lives in Utah.

Talk about your soap venture. It’s so funny to me that you asked about my soap venture. As if I didn’t have enough to do already being a full-time artist, I also make my own soap. I don’t know, I just love making things with my hands. I decided one day to take a lotion-making class at Thanksgiving Point. The lotion making was a bust but I sat by a lady who has made her own soap for decades. After class, she taught two of us how she did it and I was hooked. I make enough soap to keep my family supplied and to sell to friends and neighbors. It’s all just word-of-mouth. I made a blog for my soap sales venture and it’s www.harperandcosoap.blogspot.com – maybe some day I’ll have an Etsy store, but for now it’s a wee operation out of my kitchen that makes my house smell amazing and makes my friends and neighbors happy.

What’s next for you? My 2016 is totally booked, and my 2017 is quickly filling up. I’m so blessed. I have my first big show at my Park City gallery (milestone!) booked for the summer of 2017. I’m marinating on the idea of entering a couple of new markets. There are areas of the country with a strong art scene I feel my work would fit into nicely. First, I need to acclimate my business and my production to the two new markets I have recently entered (Sun Valley, ID and Jackson Hole, WY). I have the mindset that I will be as successful as I choose to be.

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Ryan Muldowney is a teacher, painter, and creator and is currently an assistant professor of studio arts. Muldowney received a BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and an MFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  He lives in Virginia with his family and has also had works of fiction and non-fiction published. His series unraveled was profiled previously on The Krakens.

Describe yourself as an artist. I am something of an artistic omnivore. My interests in art are various and I like to allow myself the freedom to explore any and all avenues of creation in the execution of my work. As a young artist I would often hear to my chagrin that it was important to consolidate your interests and develop a characteristic style, but this never sat well with me as I was unwilling to lay aside the sometimes-incongruous battery of artistic interests that continually held my attention. To this day I have never yet been able to settle down, and every time I stumble across something new that I like, I do it over and over again, refining and experimenting until the body of work no longer holds any mystery for me and then I move on to the next thing.

You once wrote, “I seek for mastery, not of process but of understanding.” I see mastery as one of the most important ideas to which we can cling in this life. It is an all-governing principle. I seek for mastery in all aspects of my life including my art. But I have unfortunately found mastering a process to be an unfulfilling shadow of true mastery. I have come to feel that possessing a superlative technique in painting or drawing or some other process is ultimately a dead-end as technical mastery only leads to the elimination of possible outcomes. I prefer to work inexpertly and with uncertainty so that by my struggle I may gain understanding of the intrinsic qualities of new tools and new materials, and by my experiments I create little worlds of possibility that are new to me and that allow me to understand a little more and see a little further into the darkness, into the great “mystery”. Mastery of understanding can only be purchased with the coin of inquiry, and I prefer a practice that is fundamentally questioning rather than being a master of process who can do nothing but make statements.

Visit Ryan Muldowney’s website.

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