Katrina Jurjans

BIO

Katrina is inspired by emotional narratives, boundaries in space and of the body and female representation. She graduated from Concordia University with a BFA in Art History and Studio Art, and has exhibited her work in Canada and internationally. Primarily a painter, she has recently begun exploring how concepts inherent to her painting practice might become reconfigured as they shift from flat, pictorial representation into the temporal and spatial realm of painting/installations. She was awarded both the Best of Painting and Best of Student awards at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, as well as being named one of Saatchi Art’s Rising Stars for 2020. She has participated in arts residencies in Copenhagen, Mexico and Canada and is a recipient of artist grants from Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My painting practice explores concepts of memory, transition and emotion within a larger context of female identity and representation. Critically responding to historical female representation within the canon of Western art history, where women – predominately painted by men – were represented as polished, contained and separate from their surroundings – I instead paint women fully immersed in both their physical and emotional environments. Sometimes flesh and blood, other times ghostly outlines – they become the fuzzy, porous boundary between foreground and background; past and present; memory and dream.

Using a formal language of pattern, colour, repetition and layering, I paint poetic narratives heavy with symbolism. Shifting into the realm of magic realism, these narratives – intimate, often nostalgic and heavy – are anchored to the physical world while simultaneously departing into the world of memories, dreams and hallucinations. As a backdrop of floral wallpaper becomes the textile patterns of a woman’s blouse and intricate dot patterns of a cloud slowly transition into tears, I present both the world and the body in a constant state of reshaping and transformation.

Interview with Katrina Jurjans

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist?

I was always drawing from a very young age. When my sister and I would go and visit my dad, he would pick us up in the car and we would drive for a couple hours to his house. The entire time we would be in the back of the car, each with a pen and clipboard of paper, drawing an imaginary world together. It had its own language and all of these different characters, and we would become completely immersed in it.

Communicating that world never really stopped, it just took on different forms. My work today remains highly narrative. The figures I paint are immersed into their own world together, somewhere that exists between dream and reality, past and present.

Although when I look back its clear that art has always been a central part of my life, I sadly bought into the narrative that it wasn’t enough and that I needed balance my artistic practice with something more stable. It took me a long time to feel confident enough to call myself an artist.

Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences?

My parents for divorced when I was young, and although my dad was consistently present in my life, and has added to it in so many incredible ways, I predominantly grew up with my mum and sister. My wonderful mum worked full time as a teacher, so my sister and I grew up taking care of one another from an early age. Our house was always filled with life, lots of pets, chaos, and creativity. We would make movies together, draw, and spend a lot of time in imaginary worlds. Our world was filled with creativity from the beginning, and we both channeled that into our own paths.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

I am currently based in Toronto. Toronto is the city in Canada that everyone loves to hate, but I really love it. Of course it definitely has its problems, mainly affordability which has a huge impact on everything from finding a decent studio space to sustaining smaller creative spaces, and a more business orientated foundation. But I feel like that is starting to loosen up a bit. It’s not an immediately warm city, but reveals itself over time. Because it’s so big and spread out, it has so many little pockets and neigbourhoods with distinct feels. I live in this very quiet neighborhood called cabbagetown. It’s filled with trees and beautiful gardens in the summer, and there is an active farm a few blocks from my house. My home is a full retreat from busyness of the rest of the city, and that helps to ground me. Also Toronto’s food scene is unreal.

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you?

When I first decided to take the leap into becoming a full time artist, I got a studio space in a shared artist collective. This was about 7 years ago, and since then I have always been working out of a studio space. For me, it’s an absolute necessity to have somewhere separate from my home to work in. Right now, I am sharing a space with other artists in Toronto’s West end. It was such a challenge to find, but it’s a beautiful space with great people, and I’m really happy there. It’s on the other side of the city from where I live, but needing to transition into a different part of the city gets me out of my neighbourhood bubble and is helpful in the mental preparation of switching in to work mode.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

I don’t really have a typical day.. I try to get to the studio 5 days a week, but each day looks and feels different. When I have an exhibition coming up, I enter into intense cycles of working where I will be at the studio for 12-14 hours a day. I will work like that for a few months and then totally slow down and sink into a more grounded calmness and take time away from my work for a bit and focus on other parts of my life.

An ideal day is where I am in a flowing rhythm and things are falling into place without much effort or rumination.

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Is there anything that interrupts your creative energy?

I need a constant reminder to be gentle to myself. It is easy for me to get caught up periods of anxiety and rumination, and when I am too in my head, I cannot let go enough to work from my body, which is essential to tap in to the feelings that drive my work. Little routines, like morning coffee and exercise, and good sleep help a lot. I always have an energy dip in the early afternoon, so I just have to ride through that if I want a full day. I also now know when it’s just not the day to work. I inherited an intense work ethic from my dad, which is both a blessing and a curse, and I used to feel super guilty whenever I was not being “productive,” but – for the most part – I have dropped that. There is nothing in particular that causes a creative block, but when it happens, I just try to take it easy on myself.

How do you maintain momentum in your practice?

Through awareness that there are a lot of ups and downs. If you get caught up in the short term roller coaster of uncertainty, than it can be hard to see the longer trajectory of your practice. Especially as a painter, spending so much time alone you can become your own destructive echo chamber. You have to build mental and emotional strength to ride through it all, and this is a process.

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method?

My artistic practice is predominantly painting, although I am in the early stages of exploring the merger of painting/installation practice, which is an exciting challenge. I have used oils before, but have been mostly working with acrylics for the past several years. I find that their quick drying time is conducive to my current way of working, with large blocks of colours and lots of layers. I am sure I will work with oils again as I evolve into a different body of work.

Can you walk us through your overall process in making your current work? Does drawing play a role in your process?

I do very minimal preliminary sketches - normally one 5 minute doodle with a pen just to sketch out a rough composition. From there, I usually cover the whole canvas in a wash of different colours, then draw lines from the top to the bottom of the canvas to dissect it into different sections. These sections become dividing lines in the work, fragmenting otherwise flowing compositions, or determining colour blocking. They act as general guideline. Afterwards, I always roughly sketch a composition onto the canvas using a water colour pencil. This is an important step becausethere are sections of the paitning that I want to leave as the washed out background, so I need to be careful to not cover them up with opaque paint. From here, things flow organically, and the process is always different. I layer a lot, cover sections up, test things out directly on the canvas. If something isn’t working I find a solution to it in some way, and often those struggles become the most interesting part of the piece.

What is exciting about your process currently?

I am starting to feel comfortable breaking free from my own prescriptive rules. I got to a point where I felt like my process was becoming too familiar and rigid. Instead of abandoning things all together, I feel like I am slowly evolving into a space that feels more free. As I previously mentioned, I am also in the early stages of exploring a hybrid painting/installation practice. This interest comes from the desire to explore how concepts inherent to my painting practice might become reconfigured as they shift from flat, pictorial representation into the temporal and spatial realm of a more immersive installation. This transition is not an abandonment of traditional, two-dimensional painting, but instead an exploration on how to incorporate my painting practice, both materially and conceptually, into a more spatial, artistic practice.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

My work is definitely centered around women. On a more art historical level, I took a deep dive into female representation within the canon of (western) art history where women, predominantly painted by men, were always represented as separate, contained and detached from their surroundings. Instead I want to depict women fully immersed in their emotional and physical environments, fluidly embodying different states of being. I have also always been fascinated with boundaries, both of the body and of space and time. I visually explore this idea by implementing formal framing devices of geometric fragmentation to divide my paintings into a myriad of moments that shift between different temporal dimensions and states of being. I also employ a lot of symbolism in my work, using flowers to communicate absence or growth, or rain clouds that become tears to communicate grief. All of these concepts meld together to create a certain visual narrative.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

In addition to my painting practice, I am part of an artist collective called elsewhere, which I formed alongside three close friends who I met in the first year of architecture school. I left in the second year to pursue art full time, and they all finished the program. It has been a really beautiful collaboration, and I feel extremely grateful to be able to work with them. Unlike painting which is such a solitary practice, it is so comforting to be able to work through ideas with other people, and share the roller coaster ride that is the creative process. We work on multi-media installations, and are currently working on an installation that will be exhibited at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche.

There are definitely connections between the work elsewhere does and my studio practice, in that many of the same ideas are being converted over into another medium, and worked through in a different language.

Have you had any epiphanies recently that have changed the course of your work or caused you to shift directions?

Elaborating on what I was saying in the last question, I think one of the largest epiphanies that I have come to is that the foundational core of a creative practice is in the ideas, emotions and concepts you are trying to communicate. For years I have been turning to painting to express the ideas that are important to me and that drive my practice. But these ideas can be converted into a totally different material language. Thinking about it in this way opens you up to full freedom with regards to medium, which is both challenging and exciting.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I have so many different influences! One of the most prominent is literary magic realism. I am completely inspired by the seamless blending of dream/mythical elements into reality to create these hybrid worlds that exist in two places simultaneously. I try to convert that same idea into a visual language in my paintings, where the figures are immersed in worlds that are of this world while also drifting into the world of dreams, memories and hallucinations. Right now I am fully absorbed in Isabelle Allende’s House of Spirits.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

So many incredible artist out there… I have started to very slowly build up my own small art collection and purchased my first large scale painting a couple years ago from the incredible artist Lauren Dela Roche. I am completely in love with her work! Also in awe of the work of Ben Crase, the colours and compositions of Shara Hughes, the figures and textural feeling of Bernadette Despujols and the compositions and surreal nature of Nadia Waheed’s work, among so many more.

As far as exhibitions, I was lucky enough to be in New York when Christina Quarles was having an exhibition at Hauser and Wirth, and I just walked around the gallery with my mouth on the floor. I was totally blown away. I also loved experiencing Nicolas Party’s exhibition L’Heure Mauve at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I really liked a lot of the paintings, but even more, I was in awe of the exhibition’s scenography. Each room was painted in a vivid colour, or covered in a large mural that aesthetically corresponded to one of the paintings hanging on the wall. Standing in one room, the adjacent rooms were visually framed in a way that made them enter into the room you were in. It’s hard to explain, but moving through the exhibition felt like moving through a theatrical set.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Drop conventional ideas of how to work best and find your own rhythm and flow. It took me a long time to realize that I work best in cycles of intensity, which means that, finally, I am not plagued by feelings of guilt when I am period of slowness, and can instead spend my time with all of the essential non-work related aspects of life. I also wasn’t so much taught but more learned through experience that the creative process will take you on an emotional roller coaster, so don’t get caught up too much in the day to day, but instead distance yourself enough to see the larger picture.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I am continuing working on painting and moving through a small waiting list that I have accumulated over the past couple years, and I am also am very excited about continuing to explore creating a hybrid painting/installation practice. For this, I have been working totally outside of my comfort zone, which is an exciting challenge. I have become particularly obsessed with working with two-way mirrors and their magical ability to oscillate between window and reflective surface.. definitely plays into the magic realism inspiration!

Also in the middle of working on an installation with elsewhere collective, which will be exhibited in September.

Anything else you would like to share?

Be kind to yourself and trust in the process ☺

To find out more about Katrina Jurjans check out her Instagram and website.