| When viewing Esao’s work, one immediately longs to get another glimpse of his paintings. This kind of art—work that keeps you coming back for more—is what great art is all about. The young, talented artist has marked himself as one of the most unique and talented artists that New York has to offer. I spoke with Esao, asking him about his diverse subject matter, how he and his work evolved and especially about his current mix of strange creatures, mysterious females and dark fairytale worlds. |  |
Esao Andrews – Victoria Mayer
When viewing Esao’s work, one immediately longs to get another glimpse of his paintings. This kind of art—work that keeps you coming back for more—is what great art is all about. The young, talented artist has marked himself as one of the most unique and talented artists that New York has to offer. I spoke with Esao, asking him about his diverse subject matter, how he and his work evolved and especially about his current mix of strange creatures, mysterious females and dark fairytale worlds.
Victoria Mayer: How would you describe the main themes of your recent artworks?
Esao Andrews: Shoot, I guess I’ve always tried to let my artwork speak for itself. In my more recent stuff I’m trying to get further and further away from my usual work, I’m afraid of becoming labelled. I’m young and I’m early in my career, but things have been picking up, and I’ve become obsessed with this issue. Like, I don’t want to be known as one of those people that paints wide-eyed girls. I’ve been trying to diversify my subject matter and not necessarily always include funny elements like I usually do.
VM: But, if I were to put your images in one room, I could tell which ones belong to you, since they all have something in common, whether it’s the subject matter or the brush strokes.
EA: Cool, I guess that’s the goal. The goal eventually is to be able to paint anything, sculpt anything, in any medium and still have it be recognizable as having been done by the same person—I don’t know if I’ll ever achieve that, but I think about it all the time. So, maybe if I grow old it’ll come natural.
VM: Do you have any major influences, idols or mentors in the art world that inspire you in producing your art?
EA: Sure, they are constantly changing though. In school, I was a big fan of Shiele, Klimt, and Joe Sorren. I also liked comics. A lot of my friends are into comics, so that kind of influenced me. Other forms of creating are always healthy. I didn’t consider myself a painter until recently. I’ve always liked to experiment in a lot of different mediums, although nowadays I don’t as much as I’d like to.
VM: I know you went to the School of Visual Arts in NYC. When did you decide that you wanted to take your artistic talent seriously?
EA: Well, I guess I have always been interested in creating stuff and was always considered an art kid, but it wasn’t until I was in High School where they offered advanced placement art classes. The art teacher let me do what I wanted to do. I set up my schedule so that I had art class at the end of the day so that I could do my academic work earlier on and that freed up my nights to just focus on art-making. I did this throughout my Junior and Senior year and ended up having like a 100 pieces that I had to narrow down when it came to applying for colleges. I wish I still had that kind of work ethic.
VM: How has New York influenced you?
EA: I moved here when I was 18 when I got a scholarship to the school. I had never been to New York before, let alone the East Coast. I was just dropped off at the dorms from the airport. It was actually a really easy transition since a lot of kids were in a similar situation. I guess everybody just wanted to be in New York. And I learned that there was a big group of people that decided to go to art school just to live it up in New York and only a small group who were seriously interested in art.
VM: And you belonged to which group?
EA: I took it seriously. Of course, I took it seriously (Laughing).
VM: How do you feel your artwork relates to the theme of good vs. evil?
EA: I don’t know if there is any kind of good and evil. I guess evil is a harsh word. I think that a lot of my figurative stuff has more of a dominant vs. subordinant theme. There is generally a recurring, dark feeling that everybody seems evil, I suppose, but I’m just trying to make an image; to capture a moment that’s in the middle of something mysterious or devious. I try to make it subtle enough so that people can come up with their own idea of what’s really going on. There is definitely some kind of uneasy undertone of what the characters are thinking. The way the viewer reads into it just says something about the viewer. The characters have no fear.
VM: Can you tell me a little bit about the idea behind naming all of your characters, such as in Megan or Chandra. Are they inspired by real people?
EA: Well, when I first started oil painting I was pretty much doing portraits of women only. These were mostly crushes I had and just drew them from out of my head, and lot of times I would try to find out what their actual names were. But none of them knew that I was making paintings of them. And then I met Chandra, she is my girlfriend. So, she has become kind of like…
VM: A muse?
EA: Yeah, a muse (smiling). So things have kind of evolved, and I felt I should get away from only doing portraitures. Megan is a girl who said she liked my artwork, not a crush or anything. I thought there was something wonderful about a particular picture of her so I asked her if I could use it for a painting. It had been a while since I did a straightforward portrait of an actual person.
VM: What’s your relationship to the people you portray, in real life and on paper?
EA: Now it’s mostly out of my head or of Chandra. I collect photos I like and use them as reference when needed. All of this painting out of my head has been steering me towards a weird fairytale theme lately.
VM: It appears to me as if there is a strange sexual attraction between the eerie creatures and the females.
EA: Yeah, there definitely is. I try to push for that. It’s a natural part of creating an uneasy feeling even though nothing sexual ever happens. I try to push it on the viewer to decide what the relationship between the characters are, and what’s going to happen next.
VM: In your most recent works it seems as you have focused increasingly on adding detailed backgrounds. I notice objects in your art, whereas in your previous works you seemed to concentrate more on the character and a simple background. What, if anything, has motivated this decision, and how do you feel these added elements benefit or influence the effect of your art?
EA: Yeah, I’m always eager to evolve or grow. And this is just one more step to add on. I think my paintings needed backgrounds to not be so formulated. I feel like I’m getting better, and I’m eager to aviod getting stuck as an artist that does only one thing. I have my different outlets, and I’m always concerned with trying different things and with seeing how far I can take it.
VM: The painting Corinthia makes me think of the Waltz of the Damned. I feel like I can hear eerie ghostly background music when looking at it. Do you listen to strange music? And/or does the music you listen to when you draw influence you?
EA: Oh yeah, I guess I do. I guess not really strange music though. I listen to a lot of slow stuff. I really like depressing music. I like Elliott Smith a lot and have been pretty much listen to him all the time these days.
VM: Why doesn’t that surprise me?
EA: No, I’m happy. I am a happy person [smiling]. I guess I just can’t listen to stuff that’s too fast because it breaks my concentration.
VM: When looking at your images it feels as if the viewer is able to enter a different kind of universe or world through your imagination. How do you feel about this world you portray? Especially, the one painting with the house on the tree, Treescape; everyone kind of wonders what happens in there.
EA: Good, good [smiling]. I want people to somehow relate to this foreign world I’m creating and include something that makes them question what is going on. I try to choose and place things where they can interpret some kind of story for themselves. Different people have different interpretations on the paintings, but it’s usually similar to what I want them to go for.
VM: Do you think about the person who will be looking at it?
EA: Absolutely, yeah, I feel like the old-school thought that you have to paint for yourself and not worry about what other people think is an outdated look on art from the Abstract Expressionist era. I feel like so many ugly paintings came out of it because people didn’t care. It was about the artist and not the actual art.
VM: You don’t think they did it for the shock value?
EA: When you get a whole bunch of people doing something similar, it loses its shock value. I try my best to set it up to make them feel what I want them to feel about what might be going on without showing it explicitly ‘cause there isn’t anything explicit.
VM: Every person you draw seems to have a different personality, a special mood and attitude. Is it a reflection of yourself?
EA: No, its not. I make a conscious effort to not have every person I do look the same. It would turn into a crutch. So I change it up.
VM: Is there some kind of sexual desire behind your images of naked, skinny woman, who seem innocent, mysterious, and maybe even evil?
EA: Yeah, yeah yeah. I enjoy the skinny girls so I paint them. I guess it is a kind of sexual thing. I don’t like to paint muscular men. There’s no attractiveness in it.
VM: But the two women in the painting The Couple. They seem normal or masculine.
EA: Yeah, but they might be lesbians.
VM: Did anything special happen in your childhood that might have influenced your style?
EA: I was really into cartoons and fantasy movies. Labyrinth is still one of my favourite movies. My parents had taped the English version of Nausicaa when I was little. That is one of the most amazing cartoons ever. I think it had the biggest impact on me even after all of the schooling, museums, and art history I’ve absorbed.
VM: When looking at your earlier works they seem very impressionist with an easier humour to its characters. Tell me more about your recent work and how you and your artwork matured. How do feel about it?
EA: When I was in college I worked in acrylics and focused on editorial illustration as my portfolio. The articles my teacher gave us were usually weird or tragic stories. A lot of times humour seemed appropriate – made it entertaining. I didn’t start seriously working in oils until after I graduated when I decided to not pursue illustration. A friend of mine in school piqued my interest in oils. At the time he was already one of the best painters I’d ever seen. His name is James Jean.
VM: Do you think you are going to look back eventually and think your paintings from right now are still good?
EA: I hope not. I hope I keep looking back at my older stuff and say "Ah Man, this is bad". Even the stuff I’m doing now, I hope that years from now I look at it and think these are terrible. I don’t know, I don’t want to be satisfied.
VM: Where do you think your artistic mind will take you from here on?
EA: I’m not sure, I am thinking about more and more going abstract, which sounds weird. You know, the tree paintings I did? That’s more of the direction I’m going for. I’m trying to incorporate that kind of touch to my figures; not making them look like trees or anything. Maybe a little less stiff and if that doesn’t work out then I’ll figure something else out.
VM: How does it make you feel that I have certain feelings about your pictures, and that they remind me of childhood, ghosts and scary fairytales? They kind of freaked me out when I first saw them.
EA: It is not the first time someone said that. Where are you from? Germany? Someone from Poland said the same thing. Maybe it was from the same book. Anyways…No, I think it is good. I want people to relate to my images and to bring certain feelings out of them.
VM: What are you trying to accomplish with putting your work out there and having it seen?
EA: I guess, it’s to make a living. I guess? For people to go and look at paintings it’s a form of entertainment in a way. So I guess I’m an entertainer of sorts. With that being said, I just want people to enjoy my work.
VM: What are the most common comments on your art?
EA: Hm, your website is cool (laughs). No, I don’t know. There is something that keeps coming up. Yeah, a lot of people say it reminds them of some wicked fairytale.
VM: Is that what you want to hear?
EA: I guess that’s what I want to hear. I mean, I wasn’t always like this, just recently. I’m surprised with myself. Yeah, I’m turning into a fantasy artist, I don’t know if that is good or bad.
VM: Did you get comments that irritated you?
EA: Not really irritated. People usually have good stuff to say. Sometimes I’ll get people that say my work is a cross between so and so’s work and another’s that I’ve never heard of, and when I check them out and don’t see the connection it annoys me.
VM: Who influenced you to create your own website?
EA: It was this guy named Patrick. He had this site called Vector Park. I have never seen such amazing flash work on a site to this day. And when I saw it, I just couldn’t believe it and got super inspired. And so I did my site. I liked how his site was super anonymous; it didn’t even have an email address, nothing. I couldn’t get away with that though (Laughs).
VM: What is your favourite image?
EA: Right now? The guy in the suit with the bird nest. It’s one of my newest ones.
VM: How does your mom react to your paintings?
EA: My mom has never seen any of my paintings.
VM: Why? Oh shit, I’m so sorry.
EA: Oh, no. no. My mom is alive. My mom is great but I don’t know what she would think of it. She likes eagles and wolves; she wouldn’t be impressed with it. So I’ve never bothered.
VM: I bet she would love it.
EA: Maybe, nobody in my family showed any interest or asked about my paintings, I think my brother saw my site once.
VM: How did she react when you said you were going to art school?
EA: She was cool. She doesn’t like paintings of people. But she is proud of me that I went to college and am making a living.
VM: Who is the first person you show your artworks to?
EA: I share a studio space with other people so they see works in progress. I show things to my girlfriend and my friend James.
VM: Does he critique your artworks?
EA: Yeah, sometimes. He is like well… or wow that’s amazing or that looks a little weird. My friends are pretty honest about it, which is great. It keeps me level. I was supposed to have a show in Seattle with James, but we cancelled it because he had been overwhelmingly busy. And it had gotten to the point where I felt like there was no difference between my personal work and my illustration work (for skateboarding or other stuff). I felt I needed some time to re-invent myself.
VM: You grew up skateboarding, did it influence you?
EA: Yes, it did, it did a lot. As they say skateboarding is a lifestyle; I guess it was. I started when I was 11 or 12 years old. I was the typical skateboarder kid. But it was great to come to art school because I thought I could have some kind of future in it, and I wasn’t good enough to skate professionally. I kind of fell out of skateboarding, but I’m also still involved with it.
VM: What do you think about this generation of artists, did it influence you?
EA: It’s all about the generation we are in. You kind of think that our generation looks kinda down on artists—like still being viewed like a pompous guy with a beret and a cup of coffee. And I think using humour, which I’ve been doing occasionally, is used as a defence. It’s like saying "No I don’t take myself seriously", "I’m not artsy fartsy". And I feel like this generation of artists protects themselves by doing silly subjects to make the art seem okay. Deep down or even subconsciously it is kind of like ‘you can’t make fun of me, because I’m not taking this seriously’. But they are taking it seriously in a way. There is nothing wrong with it. I just think it’s been a huge influence on a lot of artists. At least with most low brow ones.
VM: Thanks for your time. Is there anything else you would like to add?
EA: Oh jeez, I don’t even know. I guess not. Besides, you can view Esao’s work at http://www.esao.net/. (laughs)
