Joanna Cutri
JOANNA CUTRI, a Los Angeles native, has an extensive visual arts background beginning at the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. She continued her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Art and in Cortona, Italy with the University of Georgia. Joanna received her Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia in 1998. Joanna has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Southeast Asia, Australia, and South Africa as well as in the US and in Europe.
Words &Photography by Joanna Cutri
I was born in Pasadena, California...a suburb of Los Angeles. I was lucky to have been raised in a city that had so much to offer culturally that I always felt exposed to art museums and different art classes. I remember being pulled out of Jr High in the middle of the day to go see the Annenberg collection at LACMA.
When I was 14, I got a scholarship to attend Saturday High at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. It cracked my world wide open. I loved being there. I remember walking into Art Center one day and seeing Keith Haring painting a mural on the wall. I had no idea who he was at the time but it made such an impression to see this guy painting something so dynamic and huge freely on the wall.
I also went to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts which was on the campus of Cal State LA. That's when my whole life changed. I was surrounded by LA's most talented young artists (dancers, musicians, actors and singers) who were dedicated and devoted to their art. This idea that I was an artist and I could do what I wanted was so exciting. I could create anything and this thing I did was mine and it came from me.
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I then went to study art in Italy. My art world just kept expanding. I studied art in Cortona, Italy with the University of Georgia and that's when my globetrotting began. Travel and art became my life.
My creative process is all about my gestation period. Everything I was doing while I was NOT creating; travelling, going to shows, talking with other creatives, watching weather patterns, noticing nature, exploring other art mediums, reading, and listening to music. I soak it all up and it's all in there, and when I'm ready to work it comes out. It's intuitive and cathartic.
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I can go into my studio, show up and not touch the paintings at all until later. My mind is processing, I'm working out my thoughts, how I approach the world and how I feel about my experiences. When the spirit moves me, then I need to work on multiple pieces all at once; 10 to 20 pieces all at once. I can't work on 1 painting alone, it's sheer torture for me.
I get to be completely free, completely wild, everything I want to be in my art studio and then put it into my work. I love the process, the act of creating, the experimenting and the surprises. Nothing is ever really planned either. The sense of surprise and being surprised by the process and outcome is what I love.
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I love collage. I have a massive box of found papers that I have collected that I have been lugging around the world for almost 2 decades. The beginning of a new piece always starts with some form of collage. Then it's just a process of layering. The build-up is a slow process and it's like remnants of faint memories that show themselves in the end. I also love transparency and the contrast of materials on the surface. Bringing it all together is always alchemy.
My work is autobiographical. I'm painting chapters of my life. My paintings are a culmination of where I'm at in my life, it is visual storytelling of my journey. I'm showing the viewer the parts of the mess that I find beautiful and intriguing. To understand my paintings is to know me and the many paths I've been on and the lives I've lived.
For my art career, the pandemic was one of the best things that ever happened. The best years ever in terms of production, sales, pivoting how I approach the business and fine-tuning the business side of things, collaborating with other artists, and re-connecting with other artists. I love the work that I've created in the last 2 years. I just stopped and asked myself what kind of work do I want to be creating? And what I wanted was different from what I had been doing. The response was interesting too. People either absolutely loved it and were super intrigued by this series of white paintings or people were still holding on to the work that I did in the past and were mildly confused by this new direction. When I did an inventory of my older work, it just felt chaotic and complicated and a bit intense, very similar to the pulse of the planet at the time. And I just wanted something different, more quiet, subtle and peaceful. Simple is never easy. Plus it was time for a change. While the world imploded, I painted a ton. I painted a feeling that I wanted and needed.
Aurelia Rocher, a French ceramic sculptor, and I decided to have a joint show this past summer. For 6 months we worked across the world from each other. The big reveal was when we unpacked all the paintings in France and were about to install the show. We both created a body of work, both 21 pieces each, that fit perfectly together, sharing the same energy and were visually congruent. A visual manifestation of connection in mind, spirit and philosophy of life.
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The pandemic taught me that regardless of physical proximity and time between two people, we are connected, we share each other's spirit and energy and it is possible to tap into the other person's creative energy no matter where you are. All this work was not planned, forced or premeditated. Quite the opposite. We never spoke about our work, just the theme and our feelings for the show.
Some of the biggest challenges in this business are that it's inconsistent. Some days are great, some are not. Galleries open, galleries close. Some days I'm crazy busy and some days I want to burn the studio down. But as one of my good friends, Katrin Sasche, said about me, “You are able to recognize when your life needs a change and you are brave enough to leave things, places, countries, people behind if you made this decision. You have got an admirable kind of an instinct to know when it’s time to move on. While many people start complaining about their lives or are stuck in boredom, miserable relationships or jobs – you just move on. Your eyes straight forward with a smile on your face…that’s also a kind of art."
To find out more about Joanna visit https://www.joannacutri.com/ or follow @joannacutriart
