Artist Interview : Samuela Doyle

[This blog will now feature interviews! Samuela is the first, Thanks Sam!]

Can you tell me a little about your current project [working with people + places of whidbey island]? And is the geographical space acting as a muse?

As a Buddhist, really the project of portrait paintings is a very big meditation (if meditations had sizes that is) By painting Whidbey Island I am embracing and accepting the moment. In this moment, this is the place I inhabit and the people I paint are also reflections of this area. Most of the portraits belong to people who have grown up here. I also grew up here (and San Antonio, TX) but I don't think I fully appreciated whidbey Island like I do now. Partly this has something to do with the reason I have returned.
I returned to the island due to extreme trauma. I literally had to leave Seattle overnight for my own safety. The first year on the Island I felt really disoriented and disappointed. A lot of people who return feel like they have failed. I must admit that I felt the same way. Over time, I realized that you could go anywhere, and it depended on you to either be miserable or happy. Your inner self is responsible for your outer self, if you can't find inner peace you won't be happy where ever you go. I went out and decided to find the places I hadn't seen on the island and re-visit the places that I had been and had positive experiences in (there is this amazing tree that stands on it's roots, I took a boy under those roots once and told him I loved him. because I meant it. I am painting that tree too!). Ultimately, without realizing it, the island showed me the way to self-healing and restored my mental stability.

Your work often includes mystical references as visual storytelling. Do you find images to be more effective than written words?

No. Writing in itself is an art form. I think that it largely depends on the participant. Some people are more visual and others are more literal. However, with writing, the story is already in place and the visual is completely up to the participant. They create the images inside of their head, almost like a secret. What one person visualizes when reading a story, another will see entirely different and hardly is it shared. Visual art is just the opposite. The image is there and the participant has to figure out the story for themselves. No story is alike but is often shared. It's like gossip! Perhaps then gossip is an art form in itself....another type of story telling, just as movies and dance are too

(From Spooky Inamorata #1 - read the entirety at Samuela's Flickr)

Spooky Inamorata is a time consuming affair. If there is anything I am a perfectionist about, it seems to be the work of comics. I have been drawing comics since I was a pre-teenager. It has been almost ten years since I drew a full comic.

I have seen you work in many different mediums, are there any others you dream of working in?

Yes! I would love to someday make a film. Artistically, my goal is to reach out in anyway I can possibly.


[If you are in NYC, Samuela has a painting up in Charmingwall Gallery on West 4th until the end of the month - it is of me, in the woods.]