Today’s Artist Interview Is With Ariela Steif From Pittsburgh, PA.

Whopple:  How long have you been an artist?
Ariela: About seven years.

Whopple:  Tell us about your first attempts to be creative.
Ariela: I’ve been drawing on and off most of my life, but I started painting seriously sometime during the middle of high school.

Whopple:  Do you make a living with your art?
Ariela: Not yet, hopefully at some point.

Whopple:  How many hours a day do you create?
Ariela: On a good day, I usually get in five to six hours of painting, but I think that technically I spend much more time than that creating — I draw a great deal, and whatever I’m currently working on is usually churning away in the back of my mind. For better or for worse, it’s hard to turn off.

Whopple:  How did you pick your creative medium?
Ariela: I began as an oil painter, for no particular reason other than that was the medium I wanted to learn at the moment. Over time, however, there seemed to be something about oils that was too heavy, almost cloistering. After about four years of oil painting I switched to encaustic. I have a distant cousin who uses encaustic, and I had tried it once with her when I was a small child. So in college I taught myself how to use encaustic. It is a very challenging medium to learn and to control, given the extreme nature of the materials (for example, my blowtorch, which is required to fuse each layer of paint to the one below it, burns at around 3,000 F. Despite these difficulties, I found that its characteristics — how the paint can be built up while still maintaining a lightness (because of its capacity for extreme translucency), the material resemblance to human flesh, a simultaneous concern with surface and depth — were visually and materially consonant with the thematic concepts I explore.

Whopple:  How do you recharge when your creativity hits the wall?
Ariela: I read Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life”, and the sculptor Anne Truitt’s published journals.

Whopple:  What was your first job?
Ariela: It’s too embarrassing to say out loud.

Whopple:  What are your favorite snacks when you are creating?
Ariela: I tend to work early in the morning, as soon as I get up, so lots of very strong, black coffee.

Whopple:  What has been your most exciting moment as an artist?
Ariela: Probably both my first solo show, and the first juried exhibition I was accepted to.

To See More Of Ariela Steif’s Artwork Please Visit The Following:

Website: http://www.arielasteif.com
Blog: http://www.arielasteif.com/blog

These Interviews With Artists Are Copyrighted To Whopple.com

Classifications:  Abstract Art Artists, Modern Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Painting, Abstract Contemporary Art

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