Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Skye Silver. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Skye, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?

I’m going slightly off prompt here and skewing this response – I have consistently felt mischaracterized and misunderstood in my non-art full-time corporate job whereas my art and my business is the safe haven that shelters me from any such sentiment.

In the workplace my quality standards and expectations of others are very high, and sometimes my directness and assertiveness can be mischaracterized as insensitive, pushy, or mean. At the end of the day, all I want is for the project to be performed efficiently at a high quality, within budget, and on time – so that I can maximize my personal time and time devoted to painting.

With my business and art, it’s an individual pursuit that is dependent solely on my own discipline and output – no one else’s. I love this aspect and enjoy self sufficiency. I have struggled in my full-time job because I don’t like to depend on others. I can pour my soul, OCD-ness, and knack for 99% perfection into my art. Feeling like you have to monitor every word that comes out of your mouth or walking on egg shells is a sh*tty feeling. Art for me is a free space where I am fully understood and free to express my most raw, authentic sense of self. Without it, I would lose my mind for this very reason.

Skye, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Studio Skye Silver is a multi-media fine art & home décor brand specializing in vibrant figurative naturescapes, portraiture/human figure, and non-representational abstract minimalism.

Skye’s bodies of work portray her infatuation with colors and textures of our natural world—exerting heavy influence from ocean/surf culture and forest flora— while portraiture and nude figure series capture the feminine in its most divine, purest form. She sees trees—her favorite subjects—as living, breathing individuals no different from the human counterparts she paints.

Skye’s product lines are a curated blend of original oil paintings, giclée fine art print reproductions, and digital design illustrations.

Studio Skye Silver is a female-owned small business based in San Diego, California. All pieces are conceived, painted, designed & executed from start to finish by Owner & Artist Skye Silver out of her studio at Art on 30th in the North Park neighborhood.

A COVID-induced lay-off was the catalyst to conceiving Studio Skye Silver in March 2020. During her year-long span of unemployment, Skye devoted her time and energy to nurturing her business from the ground up—establishing stockist relationships, participating in art fairs and makers markets, exhibiting original paintings in gallery exhibitions, painting commissions and murals, as well as selling work through her direct-to-consumer channels.

Skye has since returned to full-time employment and shows no sign of letting up the positive momentum and recognition the brand has already received two years in.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Always diving into a new piece with a mapped out plan. Up until a year ago, I always had painted with a step by step plan of the composition, layering, and color choice, always referencing a photo as the source of truth.

When I stepped into painting abstract, you have to break and unlearn these habits. Abstract is all about starting a painting with perhaps a general vision, but no real nitty gritty plan. You have to loosen up and just play at first, start slapping down random gestures, mark making, texture, and color.

After a few layers of “surface activation” they call it, you can begin to identify a plan and strong areas of the composition to build upon. Your plan gathers from there once you are already many layers in. It’s nerve racking at first to completely let go and “paint like a kid,” but the unintentional movements and unconscious decision-making lead to major light bulb synapse connections and ultimately very strong, original works of art.

: Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Environmental preservation motivates me to paint the subject matter that I paint. I’m completely infatuated with the natural world and get so damn worked up seeing it degraded and destroyed on a regular basis, spearheaded by our very own species.

My goal with many of my paintings is to portray Mother Nature in all her glory and hope it ignites people to step it up and be a steward of our environment and planet in the face of plastic pollution, unsustainable agriculture and farming, overpopulation, deforestation, to name a few. Materialism and consumerism has corrupted us and there is so much pleasure and bliss if we break things down to their most basic, natural forms.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.studioskyesilver.com
• Instagram: studioskyesilver
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skyesilver/

Image Credits
Surf Picture – Lila Hasson