The art of Amy Suha Kuttab, AKA Suhapie, caught my eye a few months ago, and it has been haunting me now for some time. I recently caught up with her and asked her a few questions as she was packing up to leave storm ravaged New Orleans for Portland, OR. After evacuating to flee the hurricane and the resultant rising water, she returned to her second-floor studio to discover her studio unharmed, as the water never rose above a foot in her building, whereas down her street, water had all but engulfed other homes, rising to fifteen feet in some places. Other than a broken window, she found her place and work undisturbed. What I found in interviewing her was an artist every bit as captivating in word as she is on canvas.

 

 

Opening

How long have you been painting?
I've been painting for as long as I can remember, really. I mean really I didn't start getting really serious with painting specifically until around fifth grade, but I'd taken art classes outside of school in first and second grade, and had done some painting there. In fifth grade though, I kind of developed a work ethic of painting on the weekends for hours and waking up early before school to listen to music and paint all kinds of silly pictures. In high school I began drawing and painting to learn about myself and get rid of some of that adolescent aggression. When I was sixteen, I left high school and started really focusing on painting. I put most of my time outside of other work into painting since then.

What art training have you had?
I had some art classes when I was very young outside of school, as well as in-school classes from K-8th grade. In 7th grade, I started doing ballet very intensely and continued until my sophomore year of high school, so I didn’t create as much visual art. But I think that focusing on dance for a while has helped me to become a better artist. My experience with playing the piano, doing high school theatre and studying ballet and modern dance has really given me a much broader perspective on art making. When I lived in Florida, I had a friend and gallery mate who taught me a lot of important basic painting tricks and such, but I have no formal training really.


Vibrant Disorganization

 



From Mud

 Who have been some of your strongest artistic and creative influences?
I have had many, many creative influences, but strangely enough most of them are musical. One painter would be Odilon Redon, who I relate to because his work is very much reliant on feeling and not knowing. His work ranges from the mystical to somewhat horrifying to ecstatic. His work is meant to speak for itself, and say a million different things. They are vague so they may be perceived in a personal way. But that’s just my take on it. Also the band Tool has been a great inspiration to me to start painting seriously in the first place. Their music stirs up so much energy, and they are all about being awake and aware. Egon Sheile and Gustav Klimt have been very influential on my use of color. Egon Sheile's paintings are so rich with emotion and humanity. His paintings are so humble, painful and gorgeous. And as far as creatively there are some artists whose work ethic is extremely inspirational such as Charlie Hunter who plays bass and guitar at the same time. Not a doubled-headed instrument, it's just a bass guitar, a seven-string. Squarepusher is a phenomenal artist who makes interesting music out of noise, basically, and unexpected beats and rhythms that make me want to try something completely different. Chris Ingold, who is really my best friend, is a musician and artist whose work influences me daily. We work together really. Right now we share a studio so while he's recording, I'm painting and his soulful guitar music is really calming. I think Chris and I kind of double our creativity by working nearby and with each other.

 

The image of you painting with Chris playing the guitar is a fascinating image.
Basically it’s just my easel and some chairs set up, along with all of Chris' recording equipment aside from mics, which are in the practice room across the hall. Honestly, lately I've been painting on the floor because it was getting too cluttered in here with my easel.

Describe the process you go through from beginning to end, from when you come up with an idea till the moment you say a painting is finished.
The process I go through varies. My ideas come from all different places. They come from daydreaming, night dreams, feelings, something I've seen, every thing really. Sometimes I have a concept for a painting and I'll do a few quick sketches to get a feel for what I'll be working with. Usually this part is only to map out form and space. I have an idea of the colors I want, but don’t usually do studies for them - that takes part of the fun away. I like to experiment with color in the moment. At times I simply paint and see what happens right then, trying not to hinder myself from expressing anything that comes. It's kind of like dancing, but with color. I like to be spontaneous. Sometimes it allows for more creativity and for the unexpected, and sometimes it creates challenges that are exciting to overcome.

Study

 

Just Sort of Unexpected

 I am looking at a piece you did and titled Opening. This painting is a little different from what you have been doing for the most part. You mention listening to music while you drew this piece. Is this a common practice for you?
It’s very common that I listen to music while making art. It is kind of like my muse. I think that may have something to do with my love for dance, starting at a young age, although I can remember listening to tapes of Raffi and other kids songs when I was really young and drawing with crayons and markers.

Tell me about how you felt as you drew this and how did the music move your pen around?
The night I drew Opening I had been listening to various Radiohead songs and sort of playing with lines and darkness and light. If I got to a song I liked and was inspired by I would just play it over a few times until it lost its luster. Again, it's a feeling kind of like dancing; one can cover a lot of space with one swoop, or stay in a single spot and move in the same way. I guess I felt like I was adjusting to my new mental state and life. Everything has changed lately for me so this was a time for me to just assess it all and get comfortable with what my life is now.
Listening to music and doing free form drawings actually often is like therapy. It’s a wonderful release, and sort of a meditative experience. The music ends up being sort of mapped out on to the page or the canvas or what have you. When I draw this way, the end result is very much affected by the changes the song goes through. "Opening" ended up as it did with round forms, appearing the way it did because the song has this circular feeling to it. The song loops around and around throughout the entire song.

 

You are from a city recently devastated by Katrina. Prior to all the bad weather, there is no doubt you were exposed to some major musical influences in the places you’ve lived. How would you describe your musical tastes?
Actually, I'm from Nashville, which is also a city rich with music (not just rhinestone country though, thank God). I have a fondness for jazz, since I grew up going to jazz clubs with my parents. Nashville is also a wonderful place to find really soulful gospel and mountain music. When I say gospel, I mean like the old fashioned kind. Gillian Welch is a great artist to start with if you've never heard mountain music. Her vocals are haunting and her husband plays guitar for her and he is absolutely phenomenal. I really love very traditional blues such as Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTell. Honestly, I could go on and on, there is so much music I love. I enjoy various sorts of rock, especially Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, as well as heavy hip-hop like Saul Williams who is an amazing poet. Really, I like music with a backbone. Music that feels alive and personal.

 

At least a couple of your paintings are heavily influenced by the improvisational nature of jazz music; some were even created in a jazz club. How has that sort of music influenced your art?
My parents took me to clubs in Nashville, and often had it playing loudly in the house and car. I enjoyed it when I was young, but didn't really have a great appreciation for it until I discovered Billy Holliday. Her voice made jazz very accessible to me, as I'm sure it did many others. Jazz is like a conversation. Musicians bounce of one another's groove and the end result is astounding at times. The way it has influenced me is that it teaches me to accept experimentation, and to accept mistakes, and create something out of it. Jazz is about openness, and the musicians have to be keenly open to what everyone is thinking and playing. My boyfriend Chris has really contributed to my appreciation for jazz because he kind of taught me how to listen. At one point, listening to Miles Davis for me was like meeting my muse. The open attitude of and experimental feeling of the Bitches Brew was perfect.

Bass and Sax Duet

 

The notion of going a jazz club armed with your oil pastels and a stack of paper is a pretty romantic image. Describe that experience.
That night was pretty amazing. We had gone to The Funky Butt, which is this legendary jazz club on the edge of the (French) Quarter. The place is so tiny and it’s been around probably since the twenties or thirties. Jason Marsalis on drums, John Ellis on sax, and a few other New Orleans jazz heroes were playing. I was actually not having the best of nights at first; I was feeling very emotional. When the music started and I began to draw, I tried to let my emotions sort of wash over me. I tried to let them come and go and allow myself to feel however way I did. At this point, the music began to seem to reflect how I was feeling. It would be like raging, the drummer making it all fit, but seemingly out of control absolute craziness, and then it would go way down, or balance itself out. It was hard to tell where I began and ended, whether the band was vibe-ing off the audience so intensely, or if I was just experiencing through my emotions what they were expressing in their conversation. My drawings ended up just being like extensions of the room.

Your works that include recognizable human forms also have a feeling very much of the moment. I can only assume that you must work differently on these paintings. How do you maintain the same level spontaneity in these paintings?
I guess I let accidents happen - that would be part of it. Also, I try not to plan too much. With Dream State Forgiveness I definitely had to draw the pose over and over in studies, but on the canvas I only sketched it maybe twice, so its not perfectly anatomically correct, but I didn't want it to look stiff. I think the spontaneity comes from experimenting with color. Most of the time, I only sort of know what's going to happen, and I may have an idea of what I want exactly, but if along the way a glaze just really brings out the colors underneath nicely and contrasts with the other colors very well, I'll keep it even though it’s not where I was trying to go.


Play That Jazz

 



Dream State Forgiveness

 


I am curious if your approach to the figurative work is that much different from the abstract work.
My approach to figures is usually about expressing a feeling through gestures. I look at the parts of the body and the shadows as shapes, so I guess I treat them somewhat the same. There are so many ways of looking at the human form. Abstraction for me is like raw energy; a figure would be a way of expressing the same energy but in a more focused way. If I'm feeling something finite in my body sometimes a figure is the best way to translate the feeling. The approach is different if I want an anatomically correct figure, because I have to really think about it technically. I'm trying to get to the point soon where I can create anatomically correct figures without having to draw it out so many times.

 

I appreciate the comments that you have made concerning some of your work, when you said that you had planned something a little different or a little bit more, but you ended up liking it the way it was so you left it. So often artists completely disregard this bit of inspiration. What sort of relationship do you have with that inner voice?
Most of the time I find that what I'm really trying to get at is what comes out naturally. There is always a level of control, but I try to allow myself to react to what I see, not what I have in my head. I can stay true to an idea of an image I want to convey without being too rigid about how I go about making it happen. Its really wonderful that usually it ends up absolutely different than what I imagined, and much more vivid. I like to create environments in my work, and many times the way the painting changes is determined by how I feel about the spatial relationships in the painting. Gut feelings are really important factors in this process for me.

Your work is so of the moment: You must always be ready. What do you always have within an arms reach of you will allow you to record the moment, or the feelings of the moment?
I try to have a pencil and a twin-tip Sharpie around always to record basic ideas, or to just play with line and shapes and such in my sketchbook. Lately I've been carrying around soft pastels as well. Basically, I just try to be open and absorb as much life as possible and remember what I can.

Spontaneously Veiny

 

Quiet Anticipation

The painting Quiet Anticipation, a painting you did while waiting for the arrival of hurricane Ivan, is particularly haunting especially given the recent visits of Katrina and Rita. Another painting, Chris' Smell is as ominous. To what do you attribute your keen ability to portray these powerful emotionally intense paintings/images?
I try to really listen to myself and feel strongly what's really going on with me or the situation. I'm surprised that Chris' Smell seemed ominous, but it was a drawing that I had to really look into myself to express well. For example with that drawing I was trying to visually express the way my lover smells. So I had to pay attention to what happened to me when I smelled him, then I could translate that onto the paper. Looking into the layers of my feelings and perceptions really open up the possibility for awareness, truth and release I think.

 

Chris’ Smell, I say it is ominous because you captured what you were going after so well, that it was a ominous feeling as waiting for something as intense as a hurricane. That is the painting is so powerful in that anyone other than Chris’ lover might feel a little intimidated to get that intimately involved. Besides, I have never seen a smell depicted so expertly. Do you feel that such abstract concepts such as conveying non-visual sensations such as smell can be carried out effectively without real-life first-hand experience?
To me, this is my basis for making art. I think that personal sensations and moments can be translated into something universal. When you see Chris' Smell, I don't expect you to experience the olfactory sensation of sniffing Chris body odor, but I would hope that you would get a good idea of how I feel when I smell him. But the scent carries such implications, a whole array of expectation and memory, and in this particular instance the reminder that we are opposites. Any non- visual sensation is the same in that way. Music can make one feel a certain way. A touch can be soothing or uncomfortable and rough, careful or loving. So can a painting. There is always a level where people can relate. Even if someone sees my work and wonders why I am scribbling on a page, or letting the paint muddle together or whatever, they still perceive something and on some level there is connection. Humans are very sensitive and are affected by what they experience. Everything a person experiences is within their realm of understanding and I create art to evoke empathy. Empathy is the most important part of (being) effective, and I think it's a large reason why people create art in general.

Chris' Smell

 

My Favorite Haunts

Tell me about My Favorite Haunts.
I started painting My Favorite Haunts a year ago, but it began as something pretty different. It began without the ethereal figure and was basically just a color field with the only major form being this unfinished shape (the blue lines). I really liked the way the painting felt at that point. It was very basic, but seemed chaotic at the same time somehow. It felt to me like lightning or like a catalyst of some sort. I stopped working on it for a really long time, and when I picked it up again it became sort of like a ghost to me. Sometimes I feel strange energies when I go to certain places. Many times it's just in my head I'm sure, but even then anxious thoughts are as scary as angry spirits. Actually, to me, negative energy and ghosts are the same thing. But when I was a kid, I was not afraid of the dark or being alone, I was afraid of ghosts. When I painted My Favorite Haunts I was playing with the idea of the background and foreground intermingling. This painting to me is about making peace with my spirit, and allowing parts of me I am afraid of to take on new life as aspects to be embraced. But I would like to know what you thought before I said anything.

My Favorite Haunts is a beautiful painting that feels quite sad in that it does not feel like the solution to your quest for peace was realized. I feel like the main figure is looking into the frame and is interacting with the energy in the background, observing, searching. I hear some faint music when I look at this painting; it is difficult to make out but I think it is mostly drumming and chorus of voices. I don't see the background as particularly chaotic myself; maybe it is the force, or being that needs to be dealt with. Regardless, this was obviously an important painting for you personally.

 

I love that you worked on this painting at two very separate times, and that when you came back to it you were able to see and feel things that allowed you to take it to where it is, and have it make the statement that it does. Did this painting help you to overcome or make peace as you say, with your own spirit?
I feel like it did a bit. I remember feeling physically different after painting this one. I put a lot of emotion into it, and not too much thought beforehand. That process is really good for me because it allows me to work outside of set boundaries, and deal with what comes moment to moment. I remember thinking about my experience since I had arrived in New Orleans, which has been fairly tumultuous, and trying to focus on forgiveness. At the time that I painted this I was pretty angry, and felt I had been wronged, and had been insensitive myself. It certainly was a release.

As for New Orleans, everyone here is experiencing a completely different reality than what they were used to before the storm. Many people have lost a lot of their stuff that they have been accumulating all their lives, and in today's society that is like losing yourself. Aside from just "stuff," people have lost family photos, important documents, jobs, friends, homes and what not. The standard of living has changed in some way for everyone here. An older friend of mine whose house was flooded mentioned that he feels like a "teenager" again, able to fit most of his belongings in a trailer. A lot of people are feeling like they've been freed. I read in the paper a strange story about this family that was gutting their house and witnessed the roof of their home crumble to the ground. They literally jumped for joy because beforehand they had only received flood insurance on their home, and now they would receive homeowners as well, or something like that. This is not a regularly fathomable way to react to see one's home fall apart. There’s just a standard of easily distracted people without short-term memory around here due to extreme changes.

Warmth

 

At Long Last

 Do you feel an artist's internal peace or lack there of can effect his or her work?
Certainly! I don't think one state is really better or worse than the other, both are useful tools, especially in terms of artwork. But I do think that that art is a great way to gauge how you're doing. Personally, if I'm worried or confused or afraid, what I make, and the way that I do it will be obviously indicative of that. It might be a different story with people who are more focused technically than me, but I still think that the way a person works differs depending on their mental state.

How might you explain how the process of making a painting such as My Favorite Haunts can help you as an artist to work through or deal with personal issues?
It's kind of like exorcism. Once I create something out of a strong feeling, it somehow weakens. It's important for me to try and acknowledge what it on my mind, and try to get at what's below the surface. Painting for me is a great way to do that and make something tangible to grapple with, rather than just thoughts. Although I think I should say that I try to paint just as much to celebrate the richness of life.

 

Does it help you as an artist to have those that experience your art to tell you how they are moved by what they have seen?
It's definitely one of the most interesting parts of making pretty pictures. It not only helps me as an artist, it shows a new perspective on a part of me that I have attempted to examine by creating art about it. I feel kind of self-centered saying that, but its more that I consider myself and everything and nothing to be one, so I make art to understand myself and the world. When I hear something about my work, it shows me what aspects were the most distinct. I'm usually amazed at how people react to my work, learning something about me, them, and the painting all at once.

My Favorite Demons has a lot going on in it, what is the story?
Sometimes I feel sort of fragmented and I can isolate certain parts of my personality and see how that part affects me. This painting in particular sort of illustrated parts of myself that are a little pained. The major and largest figure sort of represents me as a whole, and the other creatures/figures are my "demons" so to speak. Fear, falling short of my expectations of myself, and isolation are the major ones depicted there for me, but I'm sure that they can all be interpreted many ways.


My Favorite Demons

 

Be My Bodyguard

 Can I assume your whole name is Amy Suha Kuttab? What is the national origin of your name?
My dad's side of the family is Palestinian. My mom's side is Italian. The word kuttab in Arabic means elementary school or writer. Also a kuttab is a place where the Koran is taught to children. Its funny, I thought; wow my dad's so poetic, giving a middle name that shares that of a star, and means sweet dreams, but then I found out that Suha is Yasser Arafat's widow's name. I haven't asked my dad if there is a connection yet though.

Where does the name Suhapie come from?
The name Suhapie comes from my middle name, Suha, which means lots of things including sweet dreams, and from a far away planet. It’s also the name of a very faint star whose myth is that if you can see it you have keen vision. Pie is just something that makes most people and me happy and a pet name my boyfriend likes to call me. It’s really just silly.

 

You sound as you are a very upbeat person... not without troubles I am sure. But you seem to be as content as anyone I have met in a long time... What makes you happy?
Well, I guess possibilities are what keep me going. If I feel trapped in a situation or glum about the world, I just remember how many ways there are of changing the way I'm looking at things: By painting, reading, talking to a friend, taking a nap, fasting, eating, baking, singing, showering, stopping... anything really. There are births and deaths every moment, and I try to live life and change always. I get excited about things when I observe the larger picture. I try to dream up my future too, but leave the important parts of my journey unplanned. Whether you want to call it luck or manifestation or whatever, I manage to experience in my life what that I have really hoped for, and really had a will for. Sometimes, unfortunate things happen, but something perfect always comes out of it. I guess paying attention is what's really key to my happiness.

And do you agree with the notion from the Rolling Stone's song, “You Can't Always Get What You Want?”
I definitely do agree with this philosophy. I really believe that anything is possible, and that we all manifest exactly what we need to learn what we need to. Too much control in my experience has led to a dry life and disappointment. When I've focused on balance, the universe tosses me a better hand than I could have possibly dreamt up with my ego. By better I mean a greater way to learn and grow.

The End.

Someone I Knew

 



Comfort

Amy Kuttab's Artist's Statement
Explosions of spontaneously combustible matter expanding into its natural basic energetic state of formlessness. My work illustrates the moment to moment movement of the intangible and true, in and out of space, time and color. I attempt to capture the infinite scape of interaction occurring constantly (eternally) within an allotted space. The canvas may have boundaries and borders but the way the environment is affected by the lines and colors holds infinite possibilities. Any of these affectations causes ripple effects into the eye of the onlooker. I hope to portray the notion of infinity in relation to the power of the mind, heart and everything in existence.

 

 

 

 

To see more of Amy's work go to her Deviantart page.

Email Amy

 

 

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