We met with Michael Markowsky at his garage studio in Mount Pleasant. Michael describes himself as an artist who makes drawings and paintings while moving through the landscape. Several of his projects have taken place while in motion, whether it is as a passenger on a train or getting a friend to drive while he is strapped to the roof of a car. His most recent project was drawing while flying in a Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 hornet fighter jet, an opportunity arranged through the Canadian Forces Artist Program (more commonly known as the War Artists Program). Going back to World War I, civilian artists are embedded with the military in conflict zones and are then able to create (or not create) a project based on their experience. Michael was supposed to go to Afghanistan, but Canadian troops were brought home before his scheduled visit. Instead, he was offered different assignments, including going to an airforce base at the North Pole, but his real goal was to become the first artist to create drawings in a fighter plane. Michael is currently working on translating his experience of movement in the plane into a series of large scale paintings which he plans to exhibit around the country.
You can learn more about Michaels's work on his website and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
Our Q&A with Michael:
I remember always drawing. I have a photograph of me sitting at the dinner table tracing cartoons from the newspaper – my dad suggested that I learn how to draw by tracing. It taught me how to see the building blocks, and then years later I became obsessed with tracing as a method of producing artwork.
What are you working on right now?
I am making five giant 10x20 foot paintings based on the 100 drawings I made while in the fighter plane. Two of them are currently exhibited at the Vernon Art Gallery, and I'm working on three more that are going to be part of The Works Art and Design Festival in Edmonton June 19th-July 1st. The five together will become a 70-80 foot mural that will then travel across the country. My plan is to have it surround a sculpture based on the fighter plane that I want people to be able to climb in and sit inside, so that they can kind of feel what it was like to be in the plane. I've started to think about your field of vision when actually sitting in the plane and it's changed how I'm going to build the sculptural piece and how you can see from it.
What do you like the most about working as a visual/public artist? And what are some of the challenges of working in the visual arts?
I love people, and I love interacting with people. When I'm making art in public it is a performance so I feel a lot of pressure to kind of be 'on' and to make good work, so that kind of makes me go to the next level of my own artwork and not be lazy. My work is directly inspired by specific places and situations and I like to take that work back out and make it with other people around.
It's a big challenge of mine to try and make art part of the regular conversation – I find it frustrating that in wider popular culture visual art is just not talked about. When was the last time you saw a well-known artist on the Tonight Show? I get that there are vested interests in the art world to keep it exclusive, and sometimes it works in my own favour and I understand it, but I don't think it needs to be one or the other.
What moves you as an artist?
I'm motivated by movement because of boredom. I'm a bit of a multitasker and I find it hard to just sit around and do nothing. Originally I started exploring movement through drawings while driving around in LA – I would just be sitting in traffic, hour after hour, listening to talk radio, and I was like "well maybe I can do some doodles", and then I started drawing the cars in front of me. At school, everyone who looked at these doodles told me that there was something in them and to keep exploring - no one that we knew of had actually been creating while moving. We experience the world so much through movement now and do so many things while travelling, and I am trying to convey this thing that is so common to everyone.
Do you think about the relationship between artist and viewer when creating?
I’ve always been really interested in process and watching and interviewing artists in their studios, because we use whatever we can to get the effects we want. Part of my own practice is sharing how my work is made by opening up my studio or creating while in public, so that people can see me struggling and succeeding, and that there are times where everything is coming together and times where things aren't going as smoothly. I also think it's important that it not be intimidating for someone to come up to an artist, so I interact with people who stop and talk with me while I'm working in public. For me, working in public is very theatrical and I start to take on a role – I'm performing as myself making paintings. It can be kind of surreal and quite layered. For example, I've collaborated with musicians and been on stage doing live painting and you start thinking, towards the end of the performance, about how to end the act of painting as well as the painting itself.
What are your thoughts on exhibiting art in non-traditional platforms, outside the formal spaces of art museums and galleries?
I have a show in a gallery right now, so I do feel it's important to be reaching the audience that goes to galleries - as an artist, it's a great audience to have because they are already engaged and know the language. That said, the vast majority of people exist outside of these more formal spaces and to a certain extent exhibiting only in galleries and museums is preaching to the converted. I think it's important to go out there and engage with people directly, try to plant seeds and challenge ideas of what art is so that people aren't so terrified of stepping inside a gallery.
In your view, what are some ways that artists can impact their communities?
I think art should be more visible and I think that artists have a duty to be out as much as possible in public to share their work with people and talk about it. iIt's the only way for things to change.
How do you participate as an artist in your community?
I try to do projects that are as open and accessible as possible. What drives me crazy is meeting people who say that its hard to break into the art community here – there are so many opportunities that exist already or ones that you can create for yourself but they all have to do with getting out there and engaging with people. You have to create opportunities for yourself and that involves engaging with people. I did a recent project up in Dawson City where I tried to draw a portrait of every person in town (I ended up drawing about half). I would approach people to draw their portrait and some would say no, they were hesitant and had never interacted with an artist before. But near the end of the two months they started to come around and became part of my project.
At Papergirl, we are all about the art of giving art. What is the greatest gift you have ever received?
Friendships and my education. These two things have ultimately been the most powerful and important to me in the sense that it really comes down to surrounding myself with people who encourage and challenge me. In the end, all we have is our relationships with people and to me, art is the physical manifestation of my own relationships. I often think about if I would still come to my studio and make art if I were the last person on earth. I'd like to think that I would, but if there is no one to share my artwork with, what is the point?
Tell us about the piece you have donated to Papergirl Vancouver.
I donated sketches for a series of paintings I did called 'Clowns', which will be shown as part of The Works. I wanted to make abstract paintings that behave as clowns, not simply straightforward paintings of clowns. They are paintings that challenge how paintings are supposed to be and act - they're kind of awkward and will be stretched and hung improperly. I produce a vast amount of work leading up to the final product(s) and unfortunately so much of it just sits around in drawers, so I wanted to share some of it.
To wrap up the interview, if you could be a bike what kind of bike would you be?
I'd probably be my bike that I have right now, which is a junky bike I got off Craigslist for $60. I like it because even though it isn't the greatest, someone took the time to spray paint it black and add coloured tape to make unique. It's totally utilitarian but it gets me around.
interview & photos by Julie Nicole Photos