Congratulations to Phoebe-Agnes Mills for earning her place as a Winner in the Boynes Monthly Art Award [March 2024 Edition]!

Who are you?

I always find myself wanting to tell people about my family and my childhood when I want to explain who I am because I am so intensely formed and inspired by it. My mother is a trilingual french professor and analyst of french literature from Berkeley California, and my father was a formalist poet, craftsman, and bohemian Christian raised on a farm in Louisiana. Together, they raised me and my brother in a cabin my father built using repurposed and salvaged materials, partly a necessity due to poverty and a passion project and testament to the possibilities of creativity and hard work. Both of my parents taught me to love beauty, creativity, and culture, and gave me an intense need to study and appreciate the world around me. When I was eleven, my father passed away after a brief battle with cancer, and since then I have fought to understand and honor the rich amalgamation of influences in my life as well as my place in the world. Along with art, I majored in Philosophy in college, another medium that allowed me to seek answers. Experiencing loss gave me a need to hold on to the things I love, as well as study and honor how precious things feel when you know they’re impermanent. It’s a tricky balance, but it drives me and my art. I am a combination of tenuously balanced opposites, somewhere between effervescently optimistic, and existentially burdened; staunchly concrete, and dreamily abstract; structured/ contained, yet visceral and effusive.

What inspired you to utilize painting as a medium?

My first love wasn’t painting, but ballet. I was in a pre-professional ballet company for many years, and combined with my talent and my deep love I was headed for a career in dance. However, when I was sixteen I had to have hip surgery and was told I would have to give up dancing. It left a void in my life, and I needed to redirect creative and emotional energy elsewhere. I drew and drew, teaching myself form and values and one day picked up old crusty water-based oils in my high school art class and just fell in love with the richness of their texture and color. I began to see the world as if it were painted in oils and did everything I could to gain the skills needed to make that a reality. It’s a forgiving medium, one that allows me to balance my spontaneity and expressiveness with my calculated love of rendering.

How would you describe your ARTwork?

I would say my artwork is like myself, gently balanced between chaos and quiet, light and dark, and full of passion, anxiety, and questions. My favorite word to describe my work though is juicy! Whatever I am, I do not want to be watered down or thin. I crave lusciousness, intensity, and power.

What do you hope to communicate to an audience with your work?

I suppose what I would like people to get from my work is a renewed sense of awe from the world, because that’s what I love to paint about. I would love for people to look at light differently, at the mundane differently, because so often we forget to fully appreciate things when they become normalized. I try to keep my eyes open constantly, looking at things through the lens of what could be more beautiful than I realize at first glance.

Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind your winning work?

This piece was inspired by the pandemic, as well as struggles with anxiety that arose in me around that time. I created the image to have dramatic lighting that alienated the figure from her surroundings, yet with a cramped composition that gave a stifled feeling. When I’m anxious I find myself subconsciously twisting my fingers, and I posed myself using those hand motions.

Can you walk us through the technical steps of creating your winning work?

I start by making a rudimentary sketch of the composition and features. Then, I build up the forms very directly, laying down the color as I see it in thick brushstrokes. Once those are in place, I take a palate knife and break the forms apart, dissolving the boundaries between figure and background, adding textures, playing with the paint. Once I’ve had my fun, I reel it back in, rediscover boundaries, and find clarity in the chaos. Every part of the process speaks to me in different ways.

Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your work?

Sometimes I feel that the art world is divided between the conceptual and the technical, the representational and the non-representational. Once in a critique, I was told by a very credible representative of the contemporary art world that if I wanted to be taken seriously in the art world I would have to change the way I worked. She thought I worked in too traditional a medium and style, and that I needed to try to find something to do that had never been done before. I struggled with that advice, and whether to take it. There’s a fine line between challenging yourself to grow and losing your center. When is it right to do something outside your comfort zone, and when is it right to stay true to what comes naturally to you? It’s still something I think about often, but where I’ve landed is that I could do all sorts of crazy inventive techniques and thought provoking installations, but it’s not where my heart is. The thing that drives me at this moment in time is still painting, and painting images from my life that speak to me. Because what I realized is that if I had taken that critic’s advice, my work would’ve been inauthentic and dishonest. What I’m doing isn’t groundbreaking and life changing, but I know it’s honest and full of love.

Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?

When I was in my senior year of college I was chosen, anonymously, to paint a portrait honoring a retired professor. Once they found out that the chosen artist was a student there were questions about my ability to be fully up to the task. It was without a doubt the biggest commission I had worked on but certainly not my first. I was intimidated, but proud to have been chosen and determined to show them they had made the right choice. When I showed the finished portrait to her family, the amount of joy and pride that it gave them strengthened me so much. It reminded me of the power of art, and that the skill that I had could really add to people’s lives.

Can you give us a piece of advice you wish you had known at the start of your career?

I’m still relatively at the start of my career, but I will say the things that have gotten me to this point is finding the way to get past my perfectionism. Perfectionism can be a driving force, it’s something that makes me challenge myself and gain skills, but it can also be paralyzing. There are a lot of things that I like doing, but my love wasn’t greater than my perfectionism. If your love isn’t greater than your perfectionism, you’re never going to get past the uncomfortable beginning stage of being bad at something. Sometimes to conquer that perfectionism you have to step back from it and feed your love. That love will give you the strength to move forward.

What projects are you working on currently?

I’ve been painting photos of light, and its relationship with people in ways I’ve not done in the past. I recently did a painting that was nothing but shadows on a wall- while there's a shadow figure, I wanted the painting to be predominantly about light on a flat surface. Another where the figure is entirely in shadow, with only slight indications of form. I suppose I’m thinking about flatness and darkness where before I was thinking of fullness and light.

What is your dream project or piece you hope to accomplish?

One day when I have a lovely large studio I would love to create large scale semi abstract pieces that I can dance with. I tend to paint on a relatively small scale and I’ve always wanted to fully put my body into a piece and merge my love for dance with painting.

As a winner, do you have any advice for artists who want to submit to awards, competitions, residencies, etc.?

I’ve never regretted submitting my work to something. I’ve gotten equal parts rejections as successes, and every now and then your work will be recognized. Sometimes I think that if something is right it will happen. My inspiration for art is very serendipitous, life gives me better images than I could come up with myself, I just have to have the eyes to see it. But once the art is made it’s not about serendipity it's about really putting your work out there. She who seeks, finds!

Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists, what is your advice?

Don’t neglect your life for the sake of your art. For me at least, my art is fueled directly by my life, and whether my life is a full one determines the fullness of my art. Sometimes time outside the studio is the nutrients you need to fuel your love of art, to give you your next big inspiration.

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