Today we’d like to introduce you to Claire Christy-Tirado.
Claire, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I have loved making art for as long as I can remember, and was lucky to have grown up in a family that was often doing creative projects, and always had space and supplies for arts and crafts at the ready. Drawing was a thread that I carried with me through childhood, young adult-hood, and eventually led me to pursue a BFA at the University of Oregon. I focused on printmaking during my BFA, but continued to develop my passions for other media such as painting, calligraphy, visual journaling, and photography. Having a space to transmute ideas or feelings or my surroundings into a visual expression – whether the space is a small journal or a studio space in my home – has always felt necessary to me. This means always having art supplies with me even if it’s something as simple as a bic pen and paper.
Pursuing opportunities to share my work in exhibitions, through teaching, with friends, family, and online is something I began focusing on with more intention within the last several years. I am always striving for art to be a bigger part of my life, yet work hard to maintain a balance where the joy creating brings me is the goal and the thing to actively cultivate and protect. Keeping an influx of inspiration through travel, time in nature, reading, and exploring are an essential part of my ability to maintain creative flow.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I would say the road has been relatively smooth, at least in the sense of me never questioning my need to create. Perhaps a bumpy, sometimes dusty, sometimes muddy, dirt road would be a decent enough analogy – but it’s also a quaint, back-country road with lots of beautiful scenery and waysides. Making the time for inspiration and creation are certainly a challenge when one must make a living and manage the day-to-day tasks, but I think in some ways having free time become more finite in adulthood has challenged me to value and utilize the time I have in much more effective and intentional ways. The inevitable and sometimes frequent changes in schedule, environment, etc have helped me learn how to adapt my creative routines with greater ease so that I can trust myself to always find the time and space I need to create. I’ve also learned, with the support and guidance of others, to build a thicker skin when it comes to getting critical feedback, being rejected from exhibitions etc. Not taking things personally, and recognizing the subjectivity inherent in art makes things so much easier.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
When people ask me what kind of art I do the answer always seems to be a long list. I truly love so many mediums and enjoy dabbling in them all rather than sticking to one or two. I suppose I’m most known for my drawings and calligraphy, and maybe photography (I notoriously take millions of photos). I would always draw on my desk in school and then I wised up to always carrying a sketch book and think in some ways my intricate and sometimes psychedelic doodles paired with my travel water-color set is my most signature work and might set me apart from others. I’m on my 13th sketchbook/visual journal volume now and in some ways these books are what I am most proud of. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve maintained this intimate practice and source of inspiration for so long and since I started Volume I nearly 20 years ago, they show a fascinating breadth in my interests and the evolution of my style. They are a mix of drawings, painting (all media), collage, pressed flowers and plants, embroidery, really anything and everything. They are incredible time capsules that can transport me back to so many forgotten moments and never fail to re-ignite my inspiration.
What matters most to you?
I think having a well of inspiration to draw from and overflow matters to me most. I never want to churn out artwork for the sake of production, or generating income. I want to feel that feeling of necessity. Necessity to get something on paper. To express something I don’t have words for, then in the moment and flow of expressing that thing, gain a deeper understanding and insight into what the “thing” is and means to me. I love not knowing what my next major source of inspiration will be, and letting it just unfold and take me over. I love losing all sense of time in the process of creating, the sense of transmutation, making something intangible tangible simply because I feel it must be done. It’s so important to me to always be able to honor that source of inspiration and give it the time and space it needs to take shape.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.claireeaster.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/c.easter.c/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-christy-tirado-463280124
- Other: https://www.redbubble.com/people/PortalPublishng/shop?asc=u
