Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Gypsy Schindler (EMU)



MTV Family – Papi, Shorty, 2007
Materials
(Suspended throughout the space)

My name is Gypsy Schindler. I’m from Michigan, I grew up in a place where there weren’t very many people in the middle of nowhere. So I think that’s why I’m interested in people. I’m a figurative artist, mostly with oil paint. Large-scale, life-sized, figure painting is pretty much what I do.

I’ve always been interested in the figure ever since I was little, I drew comic book characters, and stuff like that. When I went to college I started out doing self-portraits, just because I’m a readily available model, and then moved onto work that was about self-reflection. I accidentally took a picture in front of a mirror one day, which gave me a double image of myself, which led to ideas about of course self-reflection, but relationships. From there on I moved into work that was more about relationships, about personal relationships, talking about gender issues, and identity issues, and gay issues. From there on I worked into family, the larger domestic setting, scenarios dealing with the roles of family, from traditional roles to contemporary roles, and how we receive information when we’re growing up, and how that forms identity, and what kind of role models we have when we’re children forms who we are I think when we’re adults. So that’s where I am right now. I sort of worked from my own perspective, working my way out to what’s going in the world around me. That’s pretty much what I do.

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