Interview with the artist.

A metaphorical explanation of my creative process, from beginning to end as featured in the 7th Magazine Spring/ Summer 2022 Luxury Art Book themed "The Floral Cycle".

“As the coming of spring ignites a new cycle of growth in nature. What is it that ignites our creative ideas and where do they come from, in a world where nothing is new, and seemingly everything has been done before?

All inspiration and imagination need a foundation, a seed to spark and start the seeding process for the idea to come into existence, germinate, and develop into something that has never existed, made possible purely by something that already existed.

In botanical terms, cross-pollination is the simple transferring of pollen from one species of flower to another species. In art, Innovation comes from cross-pollination, I like to think of it as borrowing from one discipline in the service of another. Bringing together often apposing fields, to forge new possibilities and to reach out to new audiences.

The often-deliberate borrowing of popular culture images in Pop Art and Street Art, to use in a new context or recontextualization, allows me to explicate on an artist’s original intention and meaning of the image and to invite the viewer's association with either the original image or my version. With the rise in popularity of street art, artistic cross pollination is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore and more important to celebrate and utilize.

The dispersal of seeds is very important for the survival of plant species, but most plants don’t have built-in mechanisms to disperse by themselves. Just as plants rely on wind, water, and animals to disperse their seeds, we need to utilize every vice and platform to widely scatter our offspring. Fellow humans, as much as technology, play an important role in dispersing our work globally far from the mother plant.

As a non-intuitive artist mainly creating representational art across mediums, currently with an emphasis on digital art in a Pop Art style with a Street Art influence, I effortlessly absorb existing ideas, restringing them into new decorative showcase editions.

As if arranging a collection of flowers in a bouquet, I arrange and densely fill the canvas with a collection of objects and patterns relating to the context of the work. I use them to break up solid colours and add visual context and interest to the background. I also use it to balance colour, structure, and the composition of the work. Intentionally drawing the viewer in, for them to lose themselves as they explore the explosion of cheap graphics, in the most endearing way. With a lot of pop and a bit of camp, it’s somewhat of a circus act of balancing adult sophistication with a youthful urban edge.

My intent is not to achieve success by continuously reproducing identical, recognizable work. Instead, being able to grow and evolve while being sensitive to similarities and yet find inspiration in new projects is what makes me blossom. It is a continuous growth process intended to develop my visual personality, voice, and aesthetic, but full growth will only be reached when I cease to exist, and then the cycle repeats itself…”

It has been a absolute privilege and honor to contribute the 7th edition of the 7th Magazine Luxury Art Book featuring my work and interview, available now.

Ivan Smith