Transcript: Cynthia Sitton - Painter

For arts sake
Episode “Cynthia Sitton painter”

Cynthia: It is hard to talk about my work without I guess backing up a little bit and how much it has become informed by psychology in the subconscious. And it is equally as hard to talk about my work without talking about my daughter who became ill. From there I was introduced to psychologists and psychiatrists and just different aspects of the brain and how it worked, and how our mind works. And that began to seep into my work really.
I think what my daughter got sick, she still is but when she was deeply in her sickness and mental illness the work was completely self-involved and completely cathartic. It was the only way I could escape. I could go, I could block out the rest of the world. And even though I intellectually designed the painting there was this powerful emotion that was coming out of it. But I realized that no matter how much I try to make a painting about what I think about someone else, I end up in there anyway. I mean it is impossible not to.
When I think of a picture, it comes in to my mind and I take these adolescents that I have known and I put them where I want them. And I compose it, and I rearrange it, and that is when I know that the subconscious stuff starts leaking through.
And if the images, and if I'm not entirely sure why I am doing the image the way I am. I still try to stay true to it, unless it is of course going aesthetically wrong and then the composition is just not going to work. I mean I have to have formal qualities with it at the same time, so that it is a balance.
But that is what I like, is the multilayered element to it. That is what I've always been attracted to in art. That you look at it, you initially have your, ah it is beautiful. And then you look at it again and it is like oh. And then again and it is like uh, this may be sad, or you might be angry. And it just has more and more depth. And then you find out that it has a connection to literature. You might find out that it has a connection to a movie. It might have a connection to just what is going on that person's life at the time.
I like the hidden quality to art; I like to be left with wondering what somebody put in that. And then being able to fantasize what it is about that, that makes me feel the way it does. And I actually like that when it happens with my own work. And then you know I wonder why it happened the way that it did. And that is kind of a little addictive to because I would like to continue to keep doing that.
I find out about myself, and I think other people do. I hope so when they look at it. When somebody is putting themselves into a piece of work it is always interesting to me how their work matches their personality so much. Do they labor over the work or do they not? Do they express, are they tight? How much detail do they show? And nine times out of 10 the detail oriented painter, is a detailed person in their life, everything that they do down to the smallest. If they are a grand painter, they are a grand person and they do everything grandly.
There are aspects that are exactly, exactly like their work and some people may not like to know an artist connected with their art. But as an artist I love it because it just it adds another depth to it that I would have never known before. A couple of times of being with these people I felt like I had found my tribe. You know there were, there is a commonality, there is an energy level, and there is a creative flow that happens. Whenever I would leave I would feel filled. If you are able to choose a family that would be the family that I chose.