O-A: Who or what inspired you artistically; a person, artist, event, experience.
Barbara Krupp: I am going to answer this question one subject at a time and I will begin with a person. I never had a specific thought to become an artist. When I thought about the future there were many exciting things to do. A cousin, I admired was a X-ray technician so after graduating from an upscale high school, I trained and became a Registered Technician or R.T. I had just finished training and my mother asked me to take her best friends daughter Joan to an art class. She was a slow learner and did not drive. So I took Joan who lasted for six weeks, I am still painting. My teacher’s name was Wilhelm Kuhn and in the first class, he told me I had guts, keep painting. So I did while working as a tech. I worked in that profession for 15 years and one day, I walked into my boss’s office and gave him my 2 weeks’ notice. He asked, ” where are you going to work?” and I said “I am going to be an artist” and he said he would keep my job for a month and I could come back. I never returned. I started doing outdoor art shows, then gallery shows and advanced yearly. My life from then on was totally art. See bio/resume for a partial list.
Artists who have influenced me are many: friends who have encouraged me on my journey. Artists including Richard Diebenkorn, Monet, Rothko, Georgia O’Keefe, Visits to every museum that comes across my path, books about artists, and studying with artists of renown, the most influential one was Graham Nixon.
An event that is one of my future goals is to be in the Venice Biennale. On experience, I could write a book. Travel, life experiences, meeting people, learning about all walks of life are among them. The list is endless. Also one learns how to be alone because painting for me is a solo process. I and my music are all I need when swinging the brush.
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O-A: How do you search for inspiration?
Barbara Krupp: I do not have to search. The thoughts and images run rampantly through my head that I will never get down. In life, there are always exceptions and I will site a few. One of my series, “Ephemeral World” was inspired by reading Italo Calvino book “Invisible Cities”. The book was short stories about Cities, as fictionally spoken by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. It sparked my imagination far beyond words and into paintings. My new series is titled “Interconnection”. It is just in it’s beginning stage. I want it to visualize the new world we live in through media, television, movies, travel, We are totally now global. As with the crisis we are currently in, I want my new paintings to bring out the beauty between people helping, hoping and struggling. Another series shown at the Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio was titled “Restoration, Recycling and Remembering”. I thought of the state of the world, the excess in which we live: old structures are abandoned or torn down; new ones are put up unnecessarily. What would happen if we could take the lumber, steel, metal, etc. and make beauty out of the old steel mills, out of the hurricane damaged structures and even out of the hidden places in our minds. Could we rearrange them?
Painting is my native language, the years have taught me about art and life; they are both the same. One day you think you are at the top of both and the next day, what happened? I have learned that without the bad days, there is no gauge for the good days. We think we are so different, yet look around at the world and realize we are all the same.
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O-A: What is art to me?
Barbara Krupp: Essentially we are all looking for something and my thought is to make each day the best we can and to live in the present. Looking and being thankful for what is around us is important. Making each of the five senses count in the moment is vital. I use them all when I paint and I expect the viewer to respond emotionally when they look at my work.
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