The Bohemia Space

KC “Oh shit”

I tell Katie about my own personal experience I had similar at Uni where tutors would push students to a certain style so get better marks. Myself and Katie where in the same boat during our degrees and wanted to remain true to our art and not to conform to what the tutors wanted for themselves. 

KC “I couldn’t wait to graduate, and be done with, but…just to be free. Freedom. The fact that you and I where true to ourselves, because there is nothing better then that……it’s hard to find a tutor that is very fair and excepting of many different things but also to guide people, because I looked at my tutors and thought….you don’t know any better then me. “

ML “It almost seems like your fine art course where pushing conceptual art?”

KC “Yeah, I like a lot of that style of work but I have to say a lot of it looks exactly the same, there was nothing that was different, the tutors really pushed it onto each student and got there teeth into it, and turned them into conceptual artists.”

ML “I don’t think you should ever push a style on a artist they need to find there own way….I remember your degree show two years ago, and your work standing out, one because of scale, and two really unique painting style…how have you found life like since your degree?.”

KC “Really good, I don’t drink as much!!……erm…life is great, I feel completely free I do exactly what I want to do, I feel now my work is so much more true to myself, I feel quite clouded in my head and I cant express in words how I feel. I find it really difficult, to say how I feel… ever. I don’t know how that makes me look, but I take it and do it with my paintings, and I’ll look at my painting and I’ll know exactly, completely that…that was in my head, I just didn’t know how to get it out. When I was in Uni I felt frustrated and angry all the time, about my work and most things it would really drive me crazy, and now I feel so much better doing what I want, and now I know why I do it and I want to be better, and only today matters who knows what I’ll do in the future, it just about, today.”

ML “You can definitely see emotions in your paintings”

KC “My mum says that,…also no-one expects that it’s me that has done these paintings, they find it a bit of a shock.”

ML “Yes I agree, it’s almost like when people meet you Katie they expect you to draw…flowers, birds, very delicate things…but I like that juxtaposition that you have, because your paintings are far from that preconceived ideas that people might have…your paintings have many different aspects from chaotic, demonic, erotic.”

KC “Yeah! definitely….dirty, I like a bit of dirt.”

ML “If you could describe your paintings in one word what would it be? “

KC “Erm….disturbed…I think I’m a bit of a diva, I don’t like to be told what to do, I hate suggestions, because I will defiantly do the opposite…I don’t like compromise it kills the soul and that’s all we‘ve got.”

ML “Yeah, compromising in anything isn’t a good thing, even in relationships…how far do you go.”

KC “Yeah it’s that line and how far do you cross it?…it’s about instinct, and when your in love with somebody, (instinct) seems to go, you forget it…and then your too far in to find that rope to get yourself out…then when you find your rope your got to dig yourself out, cover yourself in plasters then…something else happens all over again…..I keep wearing nice clothes to paint in.”

ML “I always like to look nice when I’m painting, in a sense when your creating something you have bred, and when your giving birth to it (your work) I want to look and feel good, feel presentable, for the right time.”

KC “ Yeah, and if you feel good you do good…I keep having really good days and then really bad ones, it’s crazy because sometimes I’m like Fuck!! and always shouting… it’s hard to focus out of it, I feel really drained after it, and sometimes unable to speak, I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, is that normal?”

ML “Its’ your normal, its’ your artist way…. Like for myself I like the moment of instant that I can have with painting, predominantly my text paintings. It can take me a while to have the idea but a few seconds to execute the painting. I want to keep the idea with me for as long as it wants to stay until it is ready to be born, I have to let it mature or manifest, and then when it feels right then do it, I like the fact that I can get a painting out in a few seconds, then walking away from it, and its’ that satisfaction from walking away and back into ‘normal life‘, and knowing that you have created something new in life, that’s one of the biggest satisfactions I have with painting.”

KC “Yeah I felt very vulnerable when I had the piece up in Mello. (Katie had a large painting up on display for The Bohemia space’s first show Liverpool Art Now Part One, earlier on this year.) I thought that it might of shown too much about certain things in my head, because you see it in your own environment and then to see it on display it is different, because that piece was so personal.”

ML “Most of your paintings about internal dialogue?”

KC “Yeah, secrets… I mean these recent works are about lack of control. Over the past year, everything is about control, I keep doing people tied up or…like one of them is my darkest fear and its’ darkness in water, deep down….like I feel trapped in my own head…I wrote this down; the fear that we have a lack of control, life is inevitable, we’re all going to die. is like in the end we are all heading in the same way, no matter what we do, I mean anything we do is significant, and every day is so crucial, and we only have control of our own actions and anything can happen outside of that.”

ML “It is almost like a ripple effect, because how you feel could be about someone else’s feelings about you, and so on…inevitability is tricky, like more recently I’ve been feeling more awake and open to question how important everything is to the human condition, and how important is it to me, like for myself being born, at a certain time, certain parents and time and place etc… it is almost like you can say it is all by chance, or fate, but also this makes me question someone else who isn’t as lucky as I am and who is only born to die, like poverty in the third world… was their life by chance or fate?”

KC “I think we are very lucky in our society that everyone is allowed to be special, where on the other side of the world, human life isn’t treated as something important.”

ML”Yes I mean I know I am very lucky to be born at this time and place, and I think most minds in the west could label that fate and something that was meant to be, but its gets more tricky to label the third world as their fate, so one must just say oh its’ all by chance. It then becomes confusing, it seems to change…I think that’s why all of my works are about questioning, that’s the overall theme that I run with…. Life doesn’t have to or shouldn’t be that complicated but it is.”

KC “Yeah I can’t watch the news because there is too much shit going on, and I just think oh my god, how can these things happen to other people…there was this one thing that stuck with me, when I was younger I must have been about fourteen, and I saw in the paper, and kept this one article because was so shocked. You know in China how they are only allowed one child and everyone wants a boy, there was just baby girls in the gutter and people just walking past because no one wanted them, like a dead bird but a baby, it was just insane, like over here that would be like the worst thing that could happen, everyone would go mental.”

ML “It always make me think how primitive humankind still is, that we have such a long way to go, ignorance is still very much everywhere, there is still racism, sexism and homophobic people out there.”

KC “Something happened the other day and my friend phoned me up she was crying and she just said, that she couldn’t believe that people are still so racists, I think it was about the London riots, she just didn’t know that people where still so racists, you might not see it but its still just as bad.”

ML “I just can not get my head around why anyone would be interested in someone else’s life, who cares what skin your in, what sex you are or who you love, why all the hate? Get on with your own life stop trying to hate someone else’s.”

KC “I mean get on with your own life just don’t be a wanker, stop trying to control someone else…like religion because I was brought up with religion in school. I went to a catholic school and high school, but my parents are very open minded, like my dad is not into religion at all, so I had these free parents and was sent to this catholic school, and we had stopped going to church which meant in primary school….I remember being in a line and the teacher asking us who went to church this weekend and I hadn’t but I said I went to St Mary’s, and I remember my teacher saying I know you didn’t go there because I know everyone who goes to that church, ’t allowed in choir and I loved singing, and I had to sit on my own for like an hour and a half because I hadn’t gone to church, as a little girl it’s mental You would punish a child because her parents hasn’t taken her to church, and I wasn’t allowed in choir to do peoples weddings, and I was always left out and treated like I was really bad, for me it was a big deal, and made me rebellious and I just hate the fact that someone was telling me that this is something you have to believe in,…if you take anything to the extreme and to be controlling it destroys your own belief…but over the past few years I have grown up and I am more open minded about religion, but back in high school I wouldn’t even answer a question on my RE exam…the force of something, anything will make someone rebel…….. your gonna do what you wanna do.”

Katie Craven’ s solo show Out Of My Hands will be at The Bohemia Space (Mello Mello - 40-42 Slater St) from 17^{th Sept till the 8th Oct. Mon - Sun 10:00am till Late.}