We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rebecca Farr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rebecca, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I went to college with plans to be a Biologist . I had always loved art and it came easy to me …It felt too fun, too easy and too scary. I could not see it as path.. Only when I pushed it away and began studying science did it come roaring in like wildfire. My dorm room walls were covered with portraits and figure drawings. Every free moment I would find myself sitting at the kitchen table drawing and didn’t understand why no one else wanted to hang out on Friday nights by candlelight and pull out the pastels. This rupture of creative need was so uncomfortable and unavoidably happening that I dropped out of school the second year and moved away to a small town to sort it out. Nine months later I returned with a new declaration as a fine artist and honestly have never looked back. No matter how difficult insecure and hard this path has been I feel a trustworthy pull that began that freshman year of college and I am very grateful I have never teased myself with the idea of quitting since that early commitment.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a oil painter and ceramist. I have been painting for 35 years. My paintings rise from the concept of body through philosophical, and historical (mis) understandings. Paint glides between intuitive free mark making and classical impressionism in works that freshly express color line and texture. My conversation of embodiment and the abstraction of meaning are at times a gritty wrestling match of thick paint and at others, light strokes in search of beauty. Mythic and religious motifs populate my queer feminist sorting the historic drama of figure and the natural world. My paintings record the exploration of collective and the personal splits, reunions and integrations of physical presence and consciousness. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, and currently residing in Los Angeles. I have exhibited in Los Angeles at Five Car Garage, Klowden Mann, in Seattle at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, along with presentations at multiple art fairs throughout the United States. From 2015-17 I was a faculty artist in the education department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, overseeing multiple public projects. Her recent residencies include Kaus Australis in Rotterdam, Netherlands and Les Laboratories Aubervillers in Paris, France and NADA house on Governors Island, New York.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I have had to unlearn that success is out there rather than in here! I have had the experience over and over that some dream or goal feels soo far away and then little by little when it comes close enough to achieve, it feels wonderful but at the same time intimate and somehow less huge than I thought it was. That is not a statement of cocky confidence, it is a statement of real labor, attention and care building inside myself the capacity to achieve something. The bigger the wishing for something is the more it lets me know I have not created enough energy for that goal to actually become my reality. Bringing a goal towards me means honest vulnerable work and sometimes that is unbearable and it is easier to keep something a dream. And sometimes the desire is hiding fear and insecurity and that is so important to know about. At times I long for a dream I don’t even really wan but is a narrative from society , family patterns or something outside my true heart desire. Thats great to make contact with as well… because it allows me to let go of outdated energy that is holding me back.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The reward is in the act itself. I am so grateful for canvas, pigment and oil!!!! The studio feels like a strange haven full of magic powers and communications. Painting catches me, reflects me and challenges me. Over the years my relationship to making has become much more playful but I love that paint will express every shade of the human heart. It is big enough! A bigger field than anything I could muster to bring to it. I never will complete the task and I love that I am apart of a long journey of artists mushing mediums and paint around for 1000’s of years from caves to kingdoms this old human longing has pushed and pulled with surface and paint. I am rewarded to be apart of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rebeccafarr.com
- Instagram: @R_F_A_R_R
- Facebook: Rebecca Farr
- Linkedin: Rebecca Farr
Image Credits
photos taken by my wife Lisa Romerein.