Artist Andrew Leventis
Congratulations to Andrew Leventis who placed as a finalist in our 5th Edition!
Who are you?
I was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. I began painting when I was about 12 years old because I was inspired by my aunt, who is an artist. My decision to pursue an art career developed slowly because I originally thought that when I went to college, I would have to give it up, or at least, treat it as a hobby in order to study something more practical and lucrative, like graphic design. I didn’t decide that I wanted to pursue a career as a full-time artist until I was in my late teens when I discovered an exhibition of Victorian Narrative Paintings at our local museum in Charlotte. There were over 100 oil paintings in this exhibition that included artists such as John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. This show caused me to fall in love with painting, and at this point I started thinking I wanted to be an artist and I decided to go to art school.
“Stocked Refrigerator” (Vanitas Series) [Winning Work]
By Andrew Leventis
Oil on linen diptych
What inspired you to begin utilizing vanitas as a style?
For art students, still-life is such a basic, dull exercise where you perhaps paint a bowl of fruit and this fulfils the requirements of a drawing assignment or class exercise. And you maybe think of it as a genre that you work on before you gain mastery and go on to paint the things that you really want to. But as a student in my art history classes, I began to learn that Dutch still life and vanitas is such a deceptively complicated category of artmaking. As I started learning more about the history of still life, I came to understand that it’s a very fraught genre. Objects themselves are fraught. A simple still life with a pocket watch, a bowl of fruit and a candle can symbolize status, commercialism, bounty, prosperity, decay. A still life such as Franz Snyder’s “Fruit Stall” or Pieter Aertsen’s “Meat Stall” looks nothing like the kind of still life you see in a classroom exercise. It opens the door up to a world of objects that you live in but you never really know.
“Prosperity Fridge” (Vanitas)
By Andrew Leventis
Oil on Linen
What do you hope to communicate with your work?
I hope that my paintings emphasize the adjustments we’ve made to our daily lives since the start of the pandemic. In their use of vanitas, I hope that in some way they might invite viewers to empathize with past human struggles and perhaps even find some solace or encouragement in this.
“Ever Transient”
By Andrew Leventis
Oil on Linen
Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind "Stocked Refrigerator Diptych"?
The “Stocked Refrigerator” painting is a direct result of the pandemic. One morning when I went to my refrigerator and looked in, I saw how densely-packed and over-stocked the items were, and I snapped several pictures with my camera phone. This resulted in the first painting of the new series I’m working on of perishable, refrigerated interiors that I think of as recent reflections on the historic tradition of vanitas. Experiencing the everyday life of the pandemic, especially in March 2020 when we were all disinfecting our foods before putting them away, caused me to see vanitas in my everyday surroundings as I cleaned packages and dried them on my kitchen counter, and as I stocked them inside my freezer.
“Fridge Door”
By Andrew Leventis
Oil on Linen
Can you explain why you choose Painting as a medium for your work and voice as opposed to others?
I’m not sure if I ever chose painting, or if it just hooked me. I grew up watching the public access channel painting programs and when I tried oils for the first time, I loved how they allowed for blending and open handling. As I discovered more painters, I grew to love the luminosity and tonality they could create in oils. Over the years I’ve grown to take comfort in the ritual of painting and also to be pushed and challenged by painters who create amazing works that I didn’t think possible. I somehow also love being part of the trajectory of painting’s history and making paintings that use the historical language of the medium to make current commentary.
Have you experimented with other mediums? If so, which ones and how?
I have involved other media in my work- mainly photography and installation. But I have always focused on painting!
“Prosperity Fridge” (Detail 1)
Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of painting your still lifes?
Perhaps my most recent learning experience is a process I use to finish a painting. I always struggle to determine when a work is finished, because most of my paintings reach a point where they could be complete or I could push them further. These days I pull up artwork by an inspirational artist- Holbein or someone, and I use it to push myself to achieve that level of finish. It seems to help me push the work past that phase of indeterminacy.
“Orderly Refrigerator”
By Andrew Leventis
Oil on Linen
Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?
I think it might simply be to not have given up on it. It’s really easy to give up. It seems that particular stress points are when students have recently graduated with a Bachelor’s or a Master’s degree. Art school involves so much work that culminates in a degree show, and once it’s done, people often take a break and never pick up their studio practice again. I think it helps to be conscious of these difficult junctures in order to get through them. I’ve been really lucky to have a tremendously supportive partner, family, and friends who have continued to make my career possible. I’m so grateful for supportive institutions such as the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I teach, as well as people such as Chantal Boynes, who offer opportunities to artists to advance their careers!
“Prosperity Fridge” (Detail 2)
What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?
I’m collaborating on a series of paintings with my friend Sarah Derer, who is a freelance photographer specializing in food and travel imagery. We have been working together to create vanitas paintings inspired by chefs’ refrigerators. They are quite a bit different from my “Home Refrigerator” painting, in that they are more curated and reminiscent of fanciful Dutch golden century pronkstilleven paintings. I’ve drawn so much inspiration from Sarah’s photography and am looking forward to continuing our collaboration.
“Prosperity Fridge” (Detail 4)
Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?
My advice is very simple. Keep making your work and find a way to be consistent about it. Whether you are facing good times or bad times, insecurity, rejection, disillusionment etc., keep working to find whatever bizarre, strange, or unique thing that you want to create and chase it down the rabbit hole.
To view more of Andrew Leventis’ work