Interview with Tom Prinsell

This is my interview of Tom!

M:When you graduated highschool did you know you wanted to be an artist?

T: I knew I wanted to be an artist I just didn't know what kind.

M: So what kind of art do you do?

T: I like to do abstracted figures and I like to do any art that makes you have to look at it for a long period of time to get the jist of it. I want my viewers to think about it, I want the suspense.

M:What is your favorite work that you've done to date.

T: My favorite work is the one with the chefs and it is my favorite because it was a surprise to me because I didn't do any sketches just sort of doodled on the canvas and it went in a good direction and I followed through with it, and it was more real to me because I just went with instead of planning it out and it got a good response.




M: So you're a painter, when did you start painting?

T: I painted a little bit in highschool here and there, but I mostly worked with colored pencils and other drawing tools in high school. The first time i used oil paint was my freshman year of college.

M: Whats your favorite medium of paint and why?

T: I like using oil because it takes longer to dry and I have alot of it so I'm not going to buy acylic any time soon. It's very fluid and I feel like you can do more with oil. It gives you more room to manipulate the paint. Although it does really suck to clean up and shit.

M: Have you tried any other forms of media

T: Not really although I really like to draw, and I took a few drawing classes when I got to college which was really cool. I really liked figure drawing which i carried over into my paintings.

M: What kind of drawings?

T: I start out just like doodling a shape or something and then turning it into someone or something or some animal like that and just sort of play it off. I stick to weird out there kinda undertones, I like my shit to look sorta wacky.

M: So going off of wacky, are there any artists that influenced your art in that way?

T: I like George Baselitz, he does some cool stuff with figure and form and line and all that. And I also like Brad Kahlhamer. i like his looseness and his gestures and stuff, the scenes are cool too.

M: So whats your second favorite painting that you did?

T: Probably the big green one, i don't have a name for it. Its like a big green figure. I had a good time making this one as well, but unlike the chefs i sketched this out, did some sketches on the canvas. It was a process.

M: You have like a really wide color pallette

T: To be honest i just go into my bag of paints and just pull out a color(which is a bad habit) and put it right on the palette and whatever works with that color or i feel like works with that color is what gets used. I tried to use a lot of colors and stretch it out but i dunno. I need to work on my mixing of colors you could say.

M: What do you see yourself doing after mason gross

T: I have no idea (laughs) trying to paint, get a job and try to paint? and if they could be the same thing that would be really cool.

M: What was your most difficult painting?

T: My most difficult painting this one. It sucked because i went in it like i did to the chefs one thinking i could just sorta like spontaneously come up with something like doodle something, and um i did and it worked out but i had like a pretty big problem with figuring out scale and i can never really get what i had in my head onto the canvas. I had a problem in this one with color versus line and i tried to make it look linear like in my chefs one but it ended up not being like that cause i had a problem figuring out these premeditated lines, how to make them look spontaneous.

M: It was sweet talking to you and I wish you luck in your endevours.