Winter 2026 Artist Mini-Interviews
To give artists a chance to talk more about their process and craft, or just to give us a little more insight into their piece, we provided them with a list of questions from which they could pick one to answer. We hope you enjoy this peek behind the curtain!
Audrey Holmes
Q: Tell us about the place where you do your best creating.
A: My best creating occurs in the company of trees. I am fortunate to live in a reasonably unpopulated rural area and my property is blessed with groves of huge old trees and a winding creek. I spend a lot of time among these trees with my sketchbook, catching ideas and dreaming. My studio is an extension of this environment as it is a treehouse suspended in a stand of redwoods. I can feel the trees moving and hear them creaking while I work. The windows grant me different views of trees: textured redwood trunks and snippets of light stretching into the distance from one, leafy branches and twisted trunks of natives along the creek bank from another, and close-ups of redwood branches and bark from a third. It is my sanctuary and I am never lost for inspiration when I’m up there.
Carella Keil
Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?
A: This piece was conceived while visiting my family overseas. My father had a display of seashells collected from a trip to New Zealand, and I was struck by the iridescence of this shell. I wanted to create a piece capturing the childhood memory of holding a seashell to your ear and hearing the whisper of the ocean. I set the image in grayscale to convey a sense of nostalgia, and kept the shimmery colors of the shell, holding it delicately in my palm like a mermaid scale.
Shanmukh Gollu
Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?
A: I am born with a few identities. Identities that I don't recognize or relate to. Identities that limit and box me. But they refuse to leave me. No matter how much I try, they continue to leave a mark on me all the time. I work all through the night, erasing them. But somehow, they find me in the morning. People identify more with my shadow than my face.
These are some of the thoughts behind the painting. Though all the hours spent on the painting are also spent thinking and churning thoughts around the same. A lot of the identities a person is born with harm them. They act like walls that restrain them. Fortunately a lot of people break these walls down and inspire others too. I was also thinking about how it's not a one day job. One has to constantly shed such identities and replace them with self-proclaimed intellectual identities.
Lilith Acadia
Q: How did you land on the title for this piece?
A: “忠孝東路 Loyalty and Filial Piety East Road” takes its title from the prominent Taipei avenue on which I took the photograph, and off of which my partner grew up. The major road is busy with taxis, busses, scooters, and imported cars. On the wide sidewalks, people on city bikes or foot dodge the occasional busker or advertiser and many vendors selling roasted chestnuts, steamed brown sugar cakes, small tools, and silly socks. You would recognize many international brands on this hyper-capitalist commercial thoroughfare named after loyalty (忠) and filial piety (孝).
Four major streets in Taiwan’s capital are named for the eight virtues (八德) popularized in the early 20th century by the Chinese Nationalist Party (國民黨) founder Sun Yat Sen (孫中山). Under Martial Law, schoolchildren were forced to memorize and recite them. Decades later, my partner can rattle off the eight in order, commenting that while loyalty and filial piety sound intimate and personal, the intent extended loyalty to the state and filial piety to the leader. “What essential concepts for a pyramid scheme,” she quips.
The beauty in this photograph comes from the reflection of random lights illuminating the scratches and dent in a metal column. Were the column as uniform as it was designed and constructed to be, and only government-installed lights visible, then we would see only regular lines; the image would be uninteresting. The unintended lights cast against the distorting scars of wear and chance create the photograph’s hermeneutic and aesthetic value. So to title this imperfect everyday image with nationalist ideals is a critique of the attempted uniform obedience the Republic of China’s leaders wished to instill as a moral basis for national identity. Beauty and meaning do not come from memorized and recited uniform loyalty and obedience to nation and capital.
Nuala McEvoy
Q: What's a helpful art tip that you follow?
A: This painting is of the cathedral in Münster, Germany. I wanted to paint a wintery night scene, but I had no idea how this picture would turn out. Frustratingly for me, at first, the picture I had in my head just wasn't materialising on my canvas. It was so exasperating. When this happens with a painting, it is so easy to give up and to move on to something different, but there's always a nagging little voice in my head saying “keep going! It isn't finished until it's finished!” This mantra encourages me to add layers and layers to my paintings until the painting becomes what I envisaged. Another piece of advice I follow is something my late father told my husband and me when we started thinking about what to do with our first garden. The garden was unruly and needed a lot of work and we didn't really know where to start. He paraphrased Haruki Murakami´s famous quote telling us “where there is light, add shade, and where there is shade, add light.” This advice stuck with us as we dug, pruned and replanted our little plot, watching it absorb colour and form its own canvas. I have never had particularly green fingers in my garden, but it's comforting that I hear my father's words when I paint. Although he has never seen one of my paintings, I know he would be proud that I have followed the advice he shared, as I hope is reflected in the balance of light and shade in this painting.
David Summerfield
Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?
A: One of the instincts I have as an artist is to capture and enhance qualities in a photo which allows communication with what lies beyond the city. My intent for this piece was to show rails through a pristine nightscape where manmade and natural features combine to complement one another and where river and wood converge to entice the dreamer to escape even further into what lie ahead more travel and respite reflection and serenity more charm and beauty leaving only the click of the wheels as the night train fades around the riverbend. My technique was to soften the original photo into a dark hue texturize its key features with a muted glow of primary colors then give the photo a glossy watery and dreamlike effect.
Lauren Suchenski
Q: Tell us about the place where you do your best creating.
A: Outside, surrounded by trees, if at all possible.
Haley Cole
Q: How did you land on the title for this piece?
A: I enjoy creating visual art that tells a story, especially if it draws inspiration from ancient or mythical tales. My drawing “In Pursuit of Eurydice” does just that. As a drawing, it consists of hundreds of little circular strokes of ink, creating overlapping layers that spiral inward. As I drew the piece, I felt myself falling inward, down a tunnel or rabbit hole of madness not too different from Alice in Wonderland. But, unlike Alice, who experienced what I would call a “cutesy madness,” this composition is more akin to the troubling kind. Tiny little circles like the ones in my piece are uncanny, uncomfortable (in fact, there’s even a common phobia called trypophobia, being the fear of holes or a cluster of holes). To match this madness and to create a narrative that falls inward, downward, I decided to name the drawing after one of my favorite Greek myths. It’s a story of a man who travels into the depths of the Underworld in pursuit of his wife, Eurydice, to save her from death. It is a story of obsession, longing, love, and desperation. It’s a story of a man willing to face anything—terrible, uncomfortable madness—to save his love. I named my drawing "In Pursuit of Eurydice" to honor this ancient story and capture the idea of descending madness in juxtaposition with endless hope.