Artist Spotlight – Paul Wilm, 2D Mixed Media
Artist Spotlight Interview
Paul Wilm
Medium
2D Mixed Media
During Moss Rock Festival, you’ll find Paul at Booth 305.
Check out Paul’s artist page on our website
What influenced your career path as a visual artist?
It seems that all of it was pretty accidental.
When I was little, my mother used to have to separate my twin brother Peter and I in church because we kept giggling and cutting up. The best way for her to keep us quiet was giving us pads of paper and pens. These are my 1st memories of seriously drawing and letting my imagination pour out of my head.
Later, in high school I learned about Andy Warhol and his art. I fell in love with not only his paintings, but his mind as well. My brother and I started a rock band called The Warhols.
In college I started out as an art major, but quickly became frustrated by my classes, so I switched to literature, graduating with an English degree. It wasn’t until after college that I found myself seriously painting. I was unemployed at the time and had recently met the Alabama artist, Mose T at his home in Montgomery, which was a truly inspirational experience because he actually explained some of his techniques to me. I was suddenly painting all day long, so I decided to see if my works would sell … and they did! So I just stuck to it! haha
Since then, I’ve allowed painting to sort of be my outer heart, so to speak … my “outlet” … Using my works, I can get things off my chest and laugh (or cry) out loud, thus letting my soul “talk” to other souls … It’s like a silent but very engaging conversation … I’m very happily surprised how it’s all evolved. Life is so playful and so utterly unpredictable.
What kind of work will you be exhibiting for sale at Moss Rock Festival?
Collectively, everything I’ll have at the festival is called “Folk Pop”, which is a kind of a stylistic hybrid of Warhol and Mose T, really … I will be showing a lot of “business beasts” (animal headed people), some “corporate devils” and a lot of environmental pieces with recycle symbols in them. I’m crazy about recycling. In fact, almost everything I use in my paintings is recycled stuff. I’ve always been a bit of a scavenger. haha
Tell us a little bit about your creative process.
Well, 1st I think of an idea for the main image I wanna use, then I collage a bunch of stuff (mostly found stuff like junk mail, envelope insides and things from old magazines), gluing it all down onto a piece of found wood. Then I draw the image over that and paint around it. It’s like a reversed coloring book, really but with paint. Then I ink the drawing and add details like dashes and specks. Last of all, I paint a black “frame” around it and then I put a backing on and clear coat the whole thing with polyurethane to “unify” the whole thing and protect it.
How is your work inspired by nature?
Material-wise my work seems to be borne out of a nature that we ourselves (as humans) have created. It’s made out of things that we’ve previously mass-produced, used and then thrown away … a 2nd nature, maybe? haha … My treasure is another man’s trash!
When I have some of my “characters” speaking (in word bubbles etc) about environmental stuff, or when I incorporate the recycling symbol, in a way I’m trying to tell folks that things can be remade out of all this “2nd nature” stuff and we don’t have to blindly throw away so many things that we do every day.
How can people find out more about you?
My website is at http://www.pcwilm.com
I do commissioned work all the time (via facebook or email) and locally I’ve been showing my work at Jackson’s Bar & Bistro in south Homewood.
Image courtesy of Artist.
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