We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Krista Swisher. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Krista below.

Krista, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I am the youngest of 4 daughters. At no time did either one of my parents make me feel like there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do just because I was a girl. I always felt like I could do anything I set my mind to do. When I told them about beginning my creative endeavors in addition to my “regular” day job, they were absolutely thrilled. They supported me all the way – including times I began to doubt myself. While I’m not at the stage where I can leave my job to focus exclusively on my art, my situation has improved greatly due to the generosity shown to me and the confidence they instilled in me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I began painting 6 or 7 years ago, and it continues to keep me sane. I use acrylic paint because it tends to be more forgiving when I make mistakes. I tend to paint more abstract works with little imagery because I can use color choice, brush strokes, paint thickness, paint application, materials, tools, etc. to show my emotions, passions, or enthusiasms at the time of creation.
I often don’t have a particular subject in mind but at times have a color range in mind to use and color creations at hand in order to not waste paint. When I do have particular subjects in mind, they will be influenced by what’s happening in society and will often be reflected in the painting titles.
Materials I use include brushes and pallete knives, but I also use rulers, the tops of prescription drug bottes for various-sized circles, stencils, and the end of chop sticks or dowel rods dipped in paint. I also use drip methods and flicking thin acrylic paint with an inexpensive plastic pallete knife.
I will reuse canvases from previous works I feel do not have a lasting impact and want to try something new in order to not waste the canvas.
Artists I love and who have been influential include Willem deKooning, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.
My goal is to make people regardless of background more comfortable with art and with discussing art and with creating art. I want to be a safe space!

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I have never studied art, I was not an art major in college, and I did not begin my creative endeavors until 2016. It All Began with Jackson Pollock’s Mural for Peggy Guggenheim’s Townhouse

I was an English professor in a past life. One of the classes I taught was an Introduction to the Beat Generation literature class. Throughout my research and studies, I began to see Jack Kerouac’s (author of On the Road) name linked together with Cedar Bar encounters (in Greenwich Village) with the name of Jackson Pollock – at times friendly…at other times not so friendly – and always with alcohol involved! Both men, sadly, worked for years in obscurity, and, when fame finally arrived on their doorstep, they were inadequately prepared to deal with it.

But, let’s go back to Jackson Pollock. When I began to see his name cropping up more and more in association with the authors I already respected, I decided I needed to learn more about this artist that seemed to turn the art world on its tail beginning in the late 1940s. I began with the Oscar-winning movie Pollock starring Ed Harris as the titular character and director and Marcia Gay-Harden as the Best Supporting Actress winner as his wife, Lee Krassner. You can go to Wikipedia to see the basics about Jackson Pollock and Peggy Guggenheim, but when Peggy Guggenheim offered Jackson Pollock a monthly stipend, part of that stipend included painting an 8’ x 19’ 10” mural for Peggy Guggenheim’s townhouse in New York City. This work was before the drip paintings that would put him on the art world map – basically no drips to be found in Mural. The portrayal in the movie of how the actual work was completed isn’t entirely accurate (oil paint doesn’t dry overnight), but it makes for a good scene, and you can see the finished product. It astounded me. I had never seen painting like that; it was painting that seemed to break all the rules like the Beats seemed to break all the rules in literature.

Through further research, I learned that this work was proverbially in my neighborhood – at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA! When Peggy Guggenheim decided to return to Europe, she gifted Mural to the University of Iowa’s Art Department; at the time, they were at the vanguard for appreciating so-called modern art. Again, Google and/or Wikipedia can fill in the details of the association and how the Figge ended up with Mural. So, I made the road trip west on I-74 across half of Indiana, all of Illinois, and to the banks of the Mississippi River in the Quad Cities to see it. Seeing Mural in person absolutely took my breath away – not only for its immense size but for the colors, the patterns, the seemingly never-ending flow of it.

Mural was recently restored by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and I cannot recommend more this documentary on YouTube about how the work was created, the restoration process, and its recent world tour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXzHJlf86x8&t=2665s

Mural is now back home in Iowa City, I’ve been there twice to see it, and I will absolutely return!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

We all need to learn how to not respond quickly and without thought to something new and to something perhaps beyond our experience that makes us uncomfortable. There IS room for different points of view. Even if the art a person creates isn’t easily understood, they still deserve your support in their process when projects aren’t selling.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kristaswisherspaintings.com
• Instagram: @kristaswisherpaintings
• Facebook: Krista Swisher’s Paintings