Interview: Kelly Paige Standard

Kelly Paige Standard

Digital Artist,
Video Game Artist,
Photographer,
and Painter

Kelly Paige Standard's website
Interview by Rebecca McCadney

Copyright 2003    Rebecca McCadney
All Images   Copyright Protected
All Rights Reserved

"I don't feel the need to live in New York."

This statement wasn't the first thing Kelly told me, but believing what I thought an artist was (vintage clothes, cigarettes, and brooding), I found her words frank and hopeful. I'm an artist, too, a writer, and although I've been to New York about a dozen times, I never felt the need to live there. I guess this is why I liked Kelly pretty much on the spot. She reaffirmed something that I, frankly, wanted to be reassured about. We can choose where we live and create art.

"Back in 1992 I was taken with Seattle," Kelly told me as we sat at a small table in the Urban Grind. Paintings framed in bared-wire hung on the walls. Kelly's paintings will eventually replace these when her show is installed (see top of right column for details). "Every once in a while I can see myself in a loft in somewhere like San Francisco. I wanted to stay in Jamaica, but who'd buy a painting from a white chick in Jamaica?"

Kelly with her brother Mark

I laughed when she said that. Not sure I'd buy an authentic island painting from a white chick either; however, when I saw Kelly's paintings inspired from the French movie, Amelie, I was impressed. I have seen Amelie, and Kelly's paintings brought to life–to color–two moments of the movie that I didn't notice before. It was as if the movie was too fast, and Kelly was able to slow it down and capture the one frame that made each scene.

Kelly grew up in Penasquitos, CA and attended Mt. Carmel High School. She played Division I soccer for two years at UC Irvine before changing majors and graduating from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in art, and a focus on painting. As Kelly told me about college, she spoke less of her individual classes and more of the life lessons (such as research and endurance) that she discovered while she was there. Kelly worked in an art gallery for two years before the financial security of corporate livelihood began to loom in her mind.

Those of us who are artists know the dilemma that Kelly faced. Some of us may have felt that pull, like the need to live in New York, and went like scolded children into the corporate structure. Two weeks after starting with a temp agency, Kelly was, well, rescued. She was recast, still a member of corporate society, but she now was a round peg in round hole. A friend lined her up for a job with a video game company as a digital artist. Kelly likes what she does and what she has become. My fianc€, a gaming developer, feels the exact same way. Maybe it is a symptom unique to the gaming industry? Who knows? But he goes to work each day vitalized and energized. He loves his job, and Kelly feels the exact same way about being a digital artist.

WM: What do you do, and do you like what you do?

KPS: I'm a digital artist. I'd like one day to work more freely again, to work on content as complex as the work I got to do on Myst III: Exile. I'd like to do texture work for movies or TV, maybe. In video games I'm constantly squirming to use up as much memory as they'll give me-but it's confining. It's problem solving-so it's rewarding and challenging-but sometimes I just really want the freedom to take it a step (or nine) further.

Of course, more than anything, I'd love to paint at my leisure every day.

Myst III: Exile shot of linking chamber.

WM: So, do you want to paint for a living?

KPS: I guess there was a time in my life that I wouldn't have thought that working on video games was making it, but I love it. I really do. I'd rather do this for money, than paint for money. I want to paint because I need to, emotionally---not because I need to pay my mortgage. I don't want to do anything to "ruin" painting --I'm afraid of not loving it. Maybe I'm just being chicken.

Painting dontated to SART (Sexual Assault Relief Team) and sold at auction.

WM: Got it. You want to keep painting a passion and not a profession. Tell us about your paintings. What is your style?

KPS: I see something that I like-something that affects me, or I have a thought that becomes a kind of picture in my mind. I look for reference to pad my visual library in that particular area (figures, poses, composition ideas), and then I just jump in and paint.

WM: You also work a lot from photos, do you not? Your entire Amelie series was inspired by the vibrant images from the film, right?

Amelie Lumiere, a still from the movie Amelie.

KPS: As I watched that movie, I thought that it should really be a painting. When I look at something and I'm moved, it's easier to trust those pure and reactionary feelings than it is to trust my own artistic decisions. It's hard to be objective inside your own work. I want to make good decisions. And I'm trying to be more confident in myself and my choices. When I paint from outside sources,though, I always credit the photographers.

WM: So, you don't draw from, well, real life?

KPS: I can draw (in the classical sense), but I do not have access to models 24/7, and really, light is my real subject. Light is always changing, making it extremely difficult to paint from my imagination. If I ever did get to the point where I could draw from memory and repetition, I think I'd be bored stiff. It's true that a more complex and permanent knowledge of human anatomy could only help me. And I'm working on it.

Myst III: Exile Fan Palm, in game node shot.

WM: So you use photographs a lot as a reference?

KPS: I rarely have the opportunity to paint from life. I realize that there's a great big world out there, sitting patiently, waiting to be painted. But as a whole, I just don't connect as deeply with landscapes. To me, figures are compelling and wonderful, no matter what style they're painted in. I work from photo reference-usually taken by, given to, or digitally composed by me. Every once in a while, I like the mindless recreation of something found… to create something new that captures, holds, and hopefully offers the same kind of inspiration its inspiration gave to me.

WM: Are you also a photographer?

KPS: I love photography. I am drawn to it. I have a digital camera and a 35mm, which takes gorgeous pictures. I try to shoot all my photos so they become good painting compositions. I also go to good photo places to develop my film, not drug stores.

Painted for Michael, a great friend.

WM: So, what inspires you to paint? Are you inspired solely by the reference, like you were with the Amelie series?

KPS: I'm inspired by the things I see and hear. And tasteless art inspires me in a way that nothing else does. When I see a room full of the kind of art that really doesn't do it for me, I feel like going home and trying to make something beautiful to counteract the icky. [Laughs]...I know it's usually a matter of opinion, but I get a silly notion that I'm helping to appease the eternal balance of things. What else inspires me? Human kindness. Bouncing ideas off of someone that knows you, understands you, and has a viewpoint not unlike your own, but that has a different flavor for certain things. Ideas spawn other ideas, and soon the impossible is possible. Deep emotional contentment. Agonizing pain. I'm driven to do art when I feel I'm in a conversation with that pain. It's the only way to fight back. It's the only way to make it some days.

WM: I can understand those feelings very well. I know that we both share the recent death of a loved one. How has that affected you?

KPS: I wish my brother were still alive. I wish that we'd had more time as friends on the level. I wish this with my entire self and I wish it so hard, regardless of how much that wanting that is tearing a hole in me. I want something so badly and I know I can never have it in this life.

Vinyard, commissioned; made-up landscape.

I consider myself a happy person. I'm grateful for my blessings, determined to learn from my trials and mistakes, and although I have things about me that I will always be trying to reshape, I'm content all the way down into here (over to the left). But there was always great sorrow mixed into my times of great joy, and the other way around, too.

I feel like my happiest time didn't get to happen. I'm at a close second right now, and so now this is the happiest time. I'm in love, I'm making art for a living, and I'm buying a house! I'm playing indoor soccer once a week... If it weren't for my insides being ripped out with the death of the sunshinyest person I've ever known, this would be a perfect time. I don't want to let this destroy me. But I have to try. Every day.

Myst III: Exile, Burning Lens, in game node shot.

WM: Twice now you've made reference to fighting, to making it everyday. If someone wanted to stop you from painting, what would they have to do?

KPS: It seems like they'd have to kill me, because I can think of things that I'm driven to do now that I could continue to do with senses taken or movement impaired. If my spirit stays in tact through the rest of this journey, I'll be fiddling around with something that somebody could call art.

Octopus Rock, painting from a photo Kelly took in Australia.

WM: You did stop painting, though. For about a year and a half, right?

KPS: I did stop when I was in college. I was a sponge and really wanted to learn. I was told by an advanced painting teacher that my paintings were too "Orange County," that I was too far behind to teach. I didn't understand her insult (which, by the way, was all it was), and I believed her. I quit painting for year and a half. I am very embarrassed about that.

In college, when I picked up my brushes again, I didn't find much direction. I was tired of hearing that my work was either too vague or too obvious. I think I am still looking for the middle ground.

Greed character in still shot form cinematic Whacked!

WM: Would you ever consider teaching?

KPS: I'm afraid I'm not a very good teacher. I try so hard to be, but I just can't tell if I'm connecting. I was a teacher's assistant while at UCSB, and I managed to teach some color theory there. I never wanted to be like "Wow, I can't teach." I'm pretty sure I'm a better student than I am a teacher, but I wouldn't turn a student away.

WM: Do you write?

KPS: I write all the time. I've written all the time since I was about 14 years old, and I guess I'm getting to an age where that actually means something. I love words, but I'd never label myself a writer. (Not to other writers, anyway.) Don't trust my own writing in the hands of just anyone. It's too close to home to put out there. But I write because I have to. I write to my brother.

Myst III: Exile, Elevator, in game node shot.

I love to be surprised by the way people use words. The same words that I've got unlimited access to-they string them together just right, enough to grab something untouched in me. It's incredible. It's also really comforting for me to be able to unload my feelings into language. Confined in a cage of simple words, my obstacles seem more surmountable.

WM: Does your writing influence, interact with, or intersect your visual art?

KPS: As far as my writing intersecting with my painting, I wish college had done a better job of teaching me how to get my thoughts down into visual language. I would either hear that my work was cliché and obvious, or that it didn't make any sense. But they couldn't seem to teach me how to find the middle ground. How do you communicate if you don't use a language of known images, without landing on the side of the fence where things aren't too disconnected? I think I like painting figures because, at the very least, they give the viewer an emotion; perhaps even the one I was feeling when painting it.

WM: You do commissioned art, too, right?

KPS: Huskies.

Singer and Briggs, Kelly's cats

WM: Huskies? As in dogs?

KPS: My first commissioned piece was two huskies. I think I'd rather do kitty and doggie portraits instead of people portraits.

WM: So why dogs and cats and not people?

KPS: People have their own tastes and not my own. People want Olin Mills "eyelash" paintings. [Think school portraits for the yearbook-WM] It's also just as bad when a client doesn't know what they want or what they're asking for. I was approached by a woman (a subject of a painting, not a client) two years after I'd finished the piece, asking if I'd add her new born to the painting. For FREE!

Another client asked if I would 'fix' a painting that had been done by another artist. It was a disaster. There was a kid that looked like Andre the Giant must have looked as a child, standing as tall as a backyard fence. I told them it would cost less for me to start from scratch than it would for me to paint on top of the wrong that was already there. They were skeptical, and I don't blame them. After all, they'd just paid someone that seriously didn't deliver. On my own--without any kind of contract or verbal agreement--I painted what they wanted (using the same photo the first artist used). When they saw it, they bought it without hesitation. So, not all experiences are bad. I did a painting from pictures of a couple's honeymoon, and they were so happy they paid me extra.

WM: How much of your work is commissioned work?

KPS: About a fourth.

WM: What was your favorite commissioned piece?

A wedding gift to a friend

KPS: I don't really have a favorite commissioned piece. I haven't had the luxury lately of working with people that want to explore possibilities. I do have a favorite still life that I painted for a great friend of mine. I gave it to her and her husband for their wedding present. I don't know if they know that it's my favorite. Also, the series that was in Urban Grind had one painting in a complimentary palette (oranges and reds), titled Blue. That's my favorite right now (mostly because I love the way the lips turned out).

Blue, inspired by Amelie

WM: So, what advice can you offer to others who would seek or are beginning creative careers, such as writing, art, music, etc?

KPS: I once allowed my intellect to tell me I needed to be a corporate member of society-some nagging, only half-convincing inner voice said I wasn't going to be able to have a career in art. My heart and my will were both kicking and screaming while succumbing to a temp agency, taking typing tests and memory exams. Not two weeks into this office temping, I ran into someone I knew from the gallery, and landed in the video game industry. My only advice (and it's pretty general) is:

Don't lie to yourself.

Oh, and get half up front.

>>Back to top<<