Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ayin Es. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Ayin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
My work is project-based. All of them hold important meaning. They depict personal themes, environmental, family, mental illness, disability, gender, LGBTQ+ topics, and existential dilemmas.
Recently, I began a series of paintings that are based on old family photographs. It’s been a little challenging because I am looking for candid shots that are mostly unposed. As I revisit these photos, I’m trying to recreate them as paintings with a different point of view–the one I have in the present day, looking back into a time when I had a limited lens. Now that I live my life freely as a transqueer, nonbinary person, I can see my past more clearly and the way I viewed my childhood thoughts, confusion, points of view, and experience on an array of different topics. Creating this work is a type of transformation for me. It is also a change in visual style, something where I’ve been wanting to venture into and take risks with.
Ayin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
As an artist, I make whatever I want, whenever I want. I bring my ideas to life through whatever media I choose. I’m self-taught and don’t pay attention to boundaries.
For the most part, I make paintings that hang on walls. I got serious (trying to pursue a fine art career) in my late teens. I promoted myself to galleries, friends, strangers, or anyone who would help feed me. I was determined to live my life as an artist to the fullest extent. Truthfully, I’m not sure how I got started in art. I think I’ve always had a calling.
Over the decades, I slowly built an art career. I began gaining collectors by creating newsletters and zines. I created a lot of mail art. It just picked up. I showed anywhere I could, joined co-ops, participated in my community, and eventually got into commercial galleries. Now I have many loyal collectors, show in galleries, and have my work in prominent museum collections.
My main medium is making oil paintings that are thick and colorful, but I work in many other media as well. Depending on the media, I will create different genres. It seems the media dictates what kind of work I will do. I make illustrative watercolors, raw drawings, abstract art, Book Art, mixed media collages, silly soft sculptures, and sometimes video where all things collide.
It’s taken a long time to develop a kind of voice, so despite the fact that I work in many styles, I leave a distinct mark that I feel is my own. Though I never purposely tried to do this, I am very content that this has come about naturally. I’ve been told my work feels authentic.
Once the Internet came along, I began creating an online presence through my website, esart.com, which is built on top of a relational database that houses all my work and archives.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
It took a while to define my goals. I learned that this is not exactly an easy task, as simple as it may appear.
My goal is to make art that is meaningful to me to my own satisfaction (hopefully happiness) and for viewers to connect to it in their own personal way.
This sounds simple. Maybe even too short of an answer, but I am an advocate of not giving my viewers much information about my art so that they can come away with their own interpretations and narratives.
I think that’s very important. Art should pretty much speak for itself.
I see a work of art having two lives: the one that lives with the artist and then the one that lives with the viewer. Once an artist is finished with a piece of art, it almost no longer belongs to them. Their private world with that art is in the past. Most of that experience may not translate to the viewer, but some of it can if the work is successful. Perhaps not in the same way the artist intends, but as long as there is some form of connection between artist and viewer via the artwork, then it is a success. That is my basic view.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Sure, I can tell you a few things…
My family didn’t think I would ever amount to anything, that I was unimportant, and that no one on earth would want to buy or look at my paintings.
I left home at 15 and tried with everything I had to pursue my passions despite what anyone thought or said. I may have starved, but I was laser-focused, determined, and resourceful. Now I am a full-time artist for the last 25 years. I’ve been making art my entire life.
Throughout that time, I’ve received grants and awards. I applied for the Pollock-Krasner Award six years in a row before I finally won a fellowship from them. Before that, I collected stacks and stacks of many more rejection letters from everyone under the fiery sun. I went through incredible disappointment and depression. But I just kept trying anyway. I felt I had no other choice. I think it’s a combination of blind tenacity and resilience. or maybe even dumb ambition and perseverance because there is so much rejection along the way.
Continuing to apply for the same grant over half a decade is one story, and selling my first painting is another. My first painting sold for six dollars, and this was enough for me to buy a Happy Meal at Mcdonald’s and put a couple of dollars of gas in the car I was living in. I’d have to wait many years to sell a thousand times that and more, but it came around eventually. I’ve worked hard through mental and physical disability, no formal education, no family support, and various other obstacles. I live to inspire other artists and wish to help them succeed as much as I can. Support is more important than we know. 
Contact Info:
- Website: esart.com
- Instagram: @Ayin_Es_Art
Image Credits
All photos courtesy of the artist.