How do we all begin to understand who we really are? We all are a part of a universe filled with many other universes that have yet to be known. We’re only a small part of a big whole. As humans, our identity is not limited to what others may think, but our identity is truly found when we’re surrounded by the community we choose and those yet-to-be-discovered things that will bring forth the best parts of our lives. Painter Avery M. Michel (they/them) is transforming the way their life has transformed into different outlets of creativity inspired by mythology, graphic novels, and historical art that takes a twist to come into the compositions of their headspace. Combining different forms of bringing to life their internal anxieties with the existential in the use of reflecting on oneself to make a visual tension that utilizes religious, historical icons, queer figures, and friends to display those internal conversations.
I talk with Avery on the fourth floor of JCM (Joann Cole Mitte) after our photoshoot in the painting studio that is filled with the dashes of paint of different colors, music filling the studio, and others quietly painting away in their own world. Avery talks about identity, community, the past, influences and where their future is going.
How did painting come into your life?
I started painting in high school. For one of my classes we had to do an assigned project. After a while, I was the only kid in my grade taking art. At the level I was at in art three and four, I was the only junior and senior, so by that time my art teacher was basically saying, Make your own project; do what you want to do, but run them by me, and they introduced me to oil painting, and then from there I fell in love with painting and only painted at that point.
Did you also experiment with different techniques of painting?
I would use an airbrush every now and then, and I got into acrylic in the way of printing, making, and painting in that way. I found that recently I’ve been playing more with the posca medium, and I’ve always liked the graphic style, so I’ve been incorporating posca and acrylic markers in my college work.
How did you go about working on a large scale?
The first painting I did was a 30x40, and it kept getting bigger from there. I was never presented from the beginning with the option of small-scale painting. I eventually did for the class, but yeah, it was something I was introduced to, and I tend to like going bigger. There’s something monstrous and monumental that sucks you in more so, and it’s just nice doing broader strokes and using your whole arm when you paint than what you would do for a smaller one.
Can you walk me through your artistic process?
I think my work in general is best described as contents in my head dumped out. My process is very eclectic. I hoard pictures, and I’ll dig through them for different historical art references and compositions. Or I’ll take pictures of my friends, and I’ll collage on top of pictures. While I’m collaging, I’m trying to think of different resources of the medium I’m interested in and stories, both historical and mythological contents, and then everything kinda expands upon itself as I’m working on it. Things keep getting added to it layer-wise. So yeah, things just get stacked upon themselves as I work on them and get more layers of references out.
Since coming to university how has finding a community of friends, artist help shape who you are as an artist and in normal everyday setting?
It’s been so important to who I am and what I’m making. Much of my work is dealing with things like identity and the introspective. Things that were a result of a lack of community and trying to find a sense of self within that lack of intrapersonal relationships and outré personal relationships. Once I came here and found a community that I could call as a family as my own, it really changed the trajectory of my work. I went from doing mostly individual self-projects to painting myself with my friends and my loved ones. Exploring what it means as someone who didn’t have community to now be surrounded with people and still have those feelings and anxiety of isolation and loneliness now around people that I feel comfortable with.
Is that hard to deal with at times?
It's push and pull. I think it’s such a melancholy dualistic thing that I kinda got used to but … I hate juxtapose. It’s one of those art words but it’s just like living in constant juxtaposition of like I’m happy but this thing is always in the back of my head.
I was looking at your work and the way its stylized seems to me, in the style and art movement of expressionism and surrealism. Both movements/art forms that has emotive responses, departing from past standard techniques, challenge the mind with the inner emotions of the artist. How did coming into your style develop with you centering yourself in the majority of your work?
I did go through a lot of personal and emotional struggle in high school, and I think the way I came into that headspace in my work was just mainly trauma. It can leave you questioning yourself and how you’re interacting with others. I felt like the two go hand in hand: adolescence and trying to figure out who you are and trauma causing me to not really know who I was, or have a firm grasp on that. I found that self-portraits depicting myself as not necessarily trying to project myself out, but trying to depict myself as who I am. My work helps me see layers of myself that I don’t realize and helps me understand who I am. I’m just going to keep studying myself until I understand who I am. That’s also why I enjoy having a found family and depicting myself with them. If there’s one thing I feel super sure about, it’s that no matter how much I don’t understand myself, or how to describe myself, I think our friends and found family and their projection of kindness and love towards us are just a reflection of what we give back to them. It’s just pouring back and forth. I think that’s been the most grounding thing I’ve found from making my work.
When thinking about queer art in history there is no archival material to where we can definitely say it started in this century on that date etc. Queer art wasn’t seen, or allowed to be shown in the public due to religious scrutiny and political ideologies. How have you learned to resist the need to cater to people who don’t align with you and your identity?
I’ve found that whenever I would try to cater to it, people wouldn’t understand it. In the exact same way when I wasn’t catering it. After a while I just realized they're not liking it when I’m trying to make it for them. Why am I not just making my stuff for me? queer hasn’t always been recorded well, but there’s always a visible hand if you know what to look for. Like cheesecake,and the style of sexualization of Saint Sebastian, and that’s a big queer Catholic saint just by the terms of the way he’s been depicted. Is one that can be relatively moronic, and that’s one of the earliest Christian examples I could think of where queer art is being visible even though it’s not queer art.
Your work is often vibrant, electric, and significantly attributes the motifs of self exploration, love of identity, and love of discovery. How is your thesis work different from that?
I have definitely been playing a lot more. I’ve been mixing a lot of render and unrender of mixing up styles themselves. I’ve wanted to include contours and graphic elements. I am heavily inspired by comic books and graphic mediums, so I’ve been wanting to include contour lines for some things instead of fully rendering them out. Outlying characters, the inclusion of sudden figures being silhouettes instead of actual real people. Some flat backgrounds and some renders are backwards. For my thesis, I’ve departed from just myself and fit exploring identity and found family. I wanted to take a step back and go from the comfort of being surrounded by people to diving back into the anxieties I still have. Even though I have that sense of community. The uncertainty I have even when I’m surrounded by people and tackling that with the ecliptic mixing of styles best exemplifies the push and pull I go through constantly and jumping back and forth mentally.
Who are some of your biggest influences?
Definitely My friends. I love having friends who are creatives. I love meeting other creatives. I look at a lot of contemporary artists. I really love Pierre et Gilles, a French duo that does crazy photography, painting over canvas, and building huge elaborate sets that focus on pop culture and queer icons. They also do self-portraits of the two of them every now and then. They also play off the idea of sailor suits and making up this persona that they put on. Fabian Chairez, a Mexican painter that is up and coming and just had a show in Mexico City. He recontextualizes religious iconography through a queer lens. For instance one of his works depicts a priest blessing someone praying. But there’s a dove coming out of the priest’s robe , and it looks like the person being prayed over is giving head where the dove would be. Which would be a sexually explicit scene if it weren’t two fully clothed people and a glowing dove coming out of a robe. I’m intrigued by things like that. pushing what would be ancient and archaic. religious things that would damn queer people, being directly confronted with over-sexualizing queerness. I think that’s something I’ve been interested in, queer art-wise.
How do you think your artistry will change in the future and what other things do you wish to talk about within your art?
I feel like I will always explore the self. Because we as people are ever-changing. The me yesterday is not the same as me today. I’m sure the me 10 years from now will not be able to stand the me talking right now. Which I’m fully fine with. I want to get into playing with style and doing more harsh transitions of style rather than blending things. I want to consume as much media as possible. pour the love of different kinds of art into my work as well as the love that people around me pour into me. I want to build upon the eclectic and the chaos of what I do, and that’s what makes me love it.
Thank you for doing this Interview with me. Your work is great and makes me think about identity even more so. Just the way that you are able to compose so much variety and the balance and unbalance of just everything that is being seen is such an extraordinary thing to do and it’s valuable and it’s important.
Thank you
Talking with Avery made it a pinnacle, comforting, conversation to have that explores identity, creating, and exploring the self. Striving for a vast self that reminisces the underlings of what can be depicted beneath all of us. It’s important to remember that we are all people living in a world that is filled with both hope and disarray. Living each day being who we are and who we want to be. Artists like Avery are continuing to grow, reflect and be unapologetically ever-changing. Avery is striving to break molds and transform the way their art is seen when manifesting the unlimitedness of what they can do.
Find more from Avery @avemasmic
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