We recently connected with E. E. Kono and have shared our conversation below.

Erin, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

I graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor’s in art history and a minor in museum science. My degree gave me a broad perspective on the world and some limited conversational German, but very few career paths that didn’t include grad school (something I longed for but couldn’t afford). Luckily my bad art history German was just good enough to get me a job as a flight attendant for United Airlines.

I ended up in San Francisco during the tech boom, earning barely enough income to pay for a shared studio apartment. But, the job allowed me to experience the world in ways that I’d never imagined. I hiked in New Zealand, antiqued in Kyoto, swam beneath the skycrapers of Hong Kong, and regularly picked up trips to London just so that I could visit my favorite paintings in the National Gallery.

All the experiences, combined, gave me a unique perspective on how the world and its peoples are connected. Ultimately the job allowed me to determine what I do and do not value, pointing me towards a creative career.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I’m an artist. I live and work in both Iowa and Los Angeles. My practice explores the fluidity of culture and time by reflecting on the connections between stories, symbols, and archetypes; across cultures and to the natural world.
Growing up, my family split their year between a diverse international community and small-town, middle America. This nurtured my life-long interest in how stories and symbols create interwoven meanings, transcending cultures and offering a connection between diverse viewpoints. Initially, this inspired a career in children’s literature, writing and illustrating picture books. I’ve published over a dozen books with major trade houses. Now, my practice favors a slow, meditative process using natural materials chosen for their layered significance.

Each of my paintings begin with a fully rendered metal point drawing on traditional gesso ground. I’ve chosen this method to acknowledge the key role that precious metals have played in the foundation of western culture as the catalyst of global trade, capitalism, and colonialism. I paint primarily in egg tempera. The medium uses ground pigments, sourced from across the globe and chosen for their specific historical and geographic significance which are mixed with egg yolk and water. The paint is then applied in hundreds of semi-translucent layers using a slow meditative process that connects directly to artists of the past.

While used for thousands of years, egg tempera is most often associated with the early renaissance, an era that formed the foundation of the modern world. It’s a period that parallels our own when the introduction of innovative technologies led to wide-ranging social disruption. By returning to the medium, I hope to highlight the cyclical nature of time and our roles in shaping the coming age.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

There was a time when I unnecessarily self-censored my work. Even before an AD would critique a project I’d try to anticipate what I thought they wanted to see. I’d reject the more obscure ideas or illogical tangents in a project simply because they didn’t conform to the expected outcome that I’d been hired to perfume. That was a mistake. It kept the work predictable and mediocre. It’s the quirky, unexpected ingredients that make any creation interesting and memorable.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is living a life shaped by curiosity. I’ve learned over the years to define success by process and work rather than subjective opinions or uncontrollable outcomes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eekono.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/e.e.kono/
• Other: https://www.eekono-illustration.com/

Image Credits
e. e. kono