Embellished Creatures – The Art of Adriane White

Posted on | October 17, 2009 | No Comments

With a personal history rich in dance, theater, musicals, cabaret work, photography and studio art, Adriane White is a creative renaissance woman and lover of the arts. Her current show explores turn of the century performance art and set design, the emotional toll of life on the stage, animals who’ve been forced into show business and spaghetti landscape fantasy.

Your characters seem to inhabit a world unto themselves. Who are they, where are they and what are they doing? The characters are experiencing performance and the weights that often go along with it. Perhaps one of them was raised here in the U.S. and like so many of us, dreamed of being a star one day. Becoming a star has added certain pressures to her (drugs, sex, money) and you can see it in her face. Maybe it’s simply that it wasn’t all that she thought it would be. Another creature may have had no choice and was found in nature and dolled up for someone else’s profit.

There’s a simple beauty and playfulness to your images, then comes a realization that the subject is restrained or stuck. Can you talk about your ideas behind this series? Perhaps we are catching these embellished creatures in a moment of humanness or maybe it has to do with the other weights of performance like money, pressures of having to look a certain way and watching yourself age or just a simple moment of nervousness. Mostly, however, I feel that the restrained or stuck feeling we see is their being forced or tricked into the show business. Also, with media today being such a powerful influence, I think it’s easy to forget that “bigger than life” stars are human.

There’s a real depth and richness of color in your paintings. How do you choose your palettes? Thanks! What I do first is paint the background of each one a different color in the hope that it will inspire a feeling or mood. With some canvases I plan the background and some I don’t. The rest of the painting’s colors usually relate to that original background color. Some of the colors within a painting are pre-planned whereas some are improvised as I go according to the way the painting is unfolding. I try to stay in a balanced state of spontaneous and calculated with the colors.

How does your history of performance art relate to and influence your paintings? The way that I feel about it right now is that there have been times in my performance “career” that were difficult. For 7 and a half years, I worked at a cabaret-esque restaurant where we had to perform hourly. It often took away from the thrill of being a performer. It’s weird when you find yourself thinking, “Well, they’ve bought a couple bottles of wine, I should probably dance and sing for them.”

There are also such crazy nerves involved with performing (for me) at times and I often wonder why I do it to myself. There was once a time when I completely blanked on my line on stage during an important dialogue between me and another actor. It was opening night.

After our extremely uncomfortable (and lengthy) silence where we stared into each others eyes in desperation, we made a pathetic attempt at improvising. The actors who were waiting in the wings for their cue line finally realized how lost we were and entered the stage. It was one of the most terrible and traumatizing moments of my life…and it was in front of an audience.

Maybe you can see or feel some of these thoughts in my paintings. The question that I have for myself is why I chose to focus on those bad aspects of performance instead of the positive, which I also see and feel. Maybe I should paint that next!?!?

What other forms does your creativity take? I still partake in performance occasionally, sing and dance. I play a little guitar, karaoke, take pictures…I want to play more music.

What’s your ideal workspace? My ideal workspace is not the one that I have. My ideal space has sunlight, a big sturdy table, long cubbies for holding various canvases and such, a small record player in the corner. I imagine a heater and a single burner for tea as well as a view of a city. The one that I have involves an old Chinese easel with some wing-nuts missing. I work inside when it’s cold, outside in the yard when it’s warm. I’m not complaining though.

What are you currently working on? I’ve bought a lot of miniature stuff on e-bay. Painting small bits and pieces of things, embroidery thread. These are things on my mind. I don’t want to give away too much (cause I’m not sure what it is).

Anything you would like to add? Thanks for the interview! That was fun.

For more paintings and information, to pick up some prints or get in touch with Adriane, visit her Etsy store at www.hotwaterart.etsy.com

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Embellished Creatures – The Art of Adriane White

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