Miha Colner: Interview with Petra Varl, 28 March 2012

For at least two decades, Petra Varl has occupied a special position on the domestic contemporary art scene. Despite numerous tectonic moves, she has always remained loyal to the drawing and graphic media that has enabled the creation of her specific imagery. Her images, based on personal experience and principles, usually display stylized human figures in spacelessness, which represents their everyday environment. The atmosphere is good-natured and positive. To wit, the artist deals with those sides of an individual's life which stay relatively constant and quite universal, despite the instability of the present moment.
In March 2012, when the Ljubljana edition of the exhibition 'I Always Get What I Wish For' was displayed at the Equrna Gallery, I discussed Petra's authorial work at great length with her as well as the maxims that define the guidelines of her expression.

The exhibition title 'I Always Get What I Wish For' is a resume of one of the drawings. It is a double portrait – of which there are many in this series − of a girl who at first appears to be frowning with folded arms and then stands smilingly with an ice cream in her hand. To what extent are the motif and the statement autobiographical?
I depict roles in which I face my past, I live the present, or I reach for the future. This girl is me, and even though she says she gets everything she wishes for, many a time this is not the case. Like me, the girl has doubts too and I have exposed these doubts particularly in the first part − in the drawings of pairs. In the second part, I have drawn motifs in which the protagonists are inclined towards each other and everything looks good and right. Everyone is nice and fond of the other, like a perfect world. Connection and search for love are the underlying theme of the whole exhibition. This is something I also want most: love and connection.

The protagonists in your drawings seem like ordinary people, like a reflection of everyday life that is shown from a positive, kind perspective. Where does this positivism which is actually quite rare in today's art (and life) come from?
I believe that what one wishes for, what one reflects upon and focuses one's attention on really happens; that our attitude towards the world creates our reality and writes our story. In a bizzare way, these drawings are predictions of the future and for this reason I do not depict bad things. I ask myself what kind of images I would want to have around me and I simply follow this paradigm in my works. The motifs I depict are a part of my closest environment and I idealize them at the same time. I think, it makes more sense to create and point out the good than to focus one's energy on something bad and disruptive.

Like in life. These motifs could be common street scenes; while from secondary sources, like the mass media, we learn about traumatic incidents that are rather rarely occuring in our own vicinity.
The media bomb us day by day with negative news. When everything is allright, it is not worth mentioning, it is too normal. I consider myself lucky (she knocks on the wooden table; author's comment); I'm in a good period of life which also reflects in my work. I like to emphasize the good sides of a story and I think, this is the purpose of art − to inspire us to believe again that anything is possible.

The protagonists in your works are actual people, taken form different contexts, but giving the impression of some kind of universality.
I usually draw people who are close to me, while for this project I started to look for motifs of people on photographs on the internet, in books and magazines. I reshaped the motifs in my own manner in order to identify myself with them. Initially, I create them for myself, only later are they for others. The persons in the images are a reflection of this moment, as at the same time I want to create the impression of timelessness. I like it, when the motifs look as if they could have been made in the present or fifty years ago. Older female visitors to the exhibition can easily symphathize with a girl in the drawings, or vice versa, a girl can identify herself with a depicted old woman. The central female protagonist is the woman, regardless of her age.

I actually perceived the principle of iconic reference in your works; meaning you illustrate an idea, which is set up completely out of space and time.
The figures are without background, the drawings without frames and thus the images can float around the space. This elimination of redundancies contributes a great deal to the feeling of timelessness. It took a long time for the drawings to become what they are now. It is a constantly evolving and growing process. I gradually develop the content and the form, either in alternating or parallel processes.

It seems that the formal effect of the drawing stays in the foreground, and yet there is always some, even though non-linear, story behind.
Actually, this is my process of creation. There are always two possible approaches to work; meaning that I first draw a girl who holds a thread in her hands and then I contextualize her. This girl can derive form a completely different story. Some years ago, I was invited to a group exhibition in Austria entitled 'Homeland', for which I made a portrait of my family. The main protagonist was this very girl. Now, I took the motif and the female protagonist from another context and put them into this project. By chance, I drew a red line, which she holds in her hand. Then I realized that it is this very detail that connected everything, although the story happened almost subconsciously.
The second approach is to draw a whole sketchbook of ideas in one evening and thus devise a story. I accomplish this in a drawing, which after some time and interim research gradually becomes the final image that I want. Consequently, this characteristic line is a result of many attempts and failures, even though I reach a satisfying outcome in the end.

How does the work process function? Your drawings are presented (and created) in very different sizes.
It turned out that my works function best as a whole. That the story develops simultaneously on several levels, in several spaces and forms, and in time. I try to complete a work shown in the gallery with another work outside the gallery, on the street, in the park. In the present project, these are the signs with the hugs and kisses motifs. The set up in the gallery is many-layered as well: it encompasses a book containing the whole story, large-scale formats on wooden panels, and small graphics in postcard size as take-aways for visitors. I like it, especially when people tell me how delighted they were in these small graphics and how they gave them away as presents. Thus by chance, I get to know someone who has received one of my graphics. It happens exactly as I want it − my works are circulating.
Like the painter applies colors in layers on the canvas in order to create depth, I populate different forms with my motifs. For me, the whole project is like one picture and when everything is in its place, I feel that I have done a good job.

So you follow the idea that work needs to spread and live an independent life? Yet, reproducibility and mass printing are a kind of deviation from the usual uniqueness.
The images have their own life, I cannot predict where they will end up. Small graphics are made by a screen printing technique, which is actually a traditional graphic art technique and has indefinite reproduction possibilities. I don't number the graphics that I hand out to visitors as gifts, but I do authenticate each copy with my embossed stamp. Here, I want to emphasize that, despite the large number of copies, the images don't lose their value. With the use of quality graphic paper, classic and relief printing, I produce a copy, which could not be created by reproduction and digital printing. When you hold a graphic paper like this in your hands, you know that it's authentic, although not unique. The spiritual value is equal in one or in thousands of copies. 

Art and the art market respectively always hovers between the wish for a unique speciman and the idea of democratization of and broader access to art, meaning that artworks are distributed among people, that they are inexpensive or even for free. You don't exclude anything, since your works can be for sale or for free.
I don't know, where this obsession comes from, but I want to share my drawings by every means. It means a lot to me that anyone can get them, if they want them. When I set up the exhibition at Maribor Art Gallery (2010), I intended to give all the drawings hanging on the walls to all the visitors at the opening. I didn't put this idea into practice, since I realized that only a limited number of visitors, namely equaling the number of drawings, could get one to take home, and I didn't want the others to be discontented. Two years later, I modified this idea somewhat and managed to implement it using the small graphics, I have described.

Let's get back to the work process. Your drawings look as if they are composed of quick, instant strokes, in the manner of a cartoon where lines are drawn with a routine gesture. What does your work process look like? Where do you start, on a small sketch or a large-scale format?
Out of hundreds of small drawings, I pick the most convincing ones. I draw the selected image by the use of a projector onto a bigger format, but I only transfer the basic lines and refine the details for quite some time. I deliberately keep small errors, such as dripping, for instance. When I accidentally dripped some color onto the surface, where I not supposed to, I discovered that I actually liked it. It's a small detail indicating that these drawings are handmade, which, I think, is quite important.
As for the drawings, I'm most engaged in the faces, although they are quite typified. What should a human look like? I don't want him or her to be too sad, or to look stupid or even funny. This is very important, I often make most corrections on the faces. Everything else needs to be drawn in one stroke, simple, even though there is a lot of preparation, of pre-process. You can feel it in the drawing, if the hand "doesn't flow".

The drawings seem very cartoon-like, except they don't have a linear narration that would help to understand them. The typical features of the figures need to be more strongly accentutated in visual art, since they alone indicate the content. The texts accompanying your drawings are quite open too, they have no explicit narration. So, is it your intention to leave things open?
This is exactly what I want to achieve − openness. I often remove a title which at first seems appropriate for certain images, while I keep it with others. It's simple: if the title is good and strong enough, it stands. The drawing of a couple in the car with the caption 'You're Driving Me Crazy' is one of these combinations that I still like. With the caption, the image receives an extra connotation, which preserves the duality − the phrase expresses that you love somebody crazily and at the same time she or he can still drive you mad.
Here one can see the distinctions between the works that I create for a gallery set up or an illustration that refers to a certain story. Some of my drawings belong to the world of fine art, some are caught somewhere in-between and I have no idea where to place them. For instance, some works are not "open", yet they function perfectly. This is how I made 'The Kiss', which is merely a kiss, a sign so to say. There is nothing else to it.

The captions are of key importance in the pair drawings, where the image of the figure does not significantly change, but the captions 'Beatiful/Smart' or 'Strong/Smart' express the content precisely through these opposites. in this case, you thematize social indentities and play with stereotypes.
This is the basic reading: we have two figures which look the same but represent opposing content. When we see a beautiful woman, we first think of her as being beautiful, and maybe even smart as well. Thus, these two characteristics can both pertain to one person. There are more different variants in this series. Some pairs are identical, others differ only insignificantly, in some the difference is obvious. Usually, the latter have some added attributes that exceed the bare readability of advertising design. I consciously search for variatons, which are to present the different methods.

You are using quite diverse supports – drawing on paper, books, wooden panels, postcards, or things in space, on the walls. How do you pick them? Do you know in advance for drawings, for instance, that they need a large-scale format?
I'm not sure I decide it like that; some images certainly function better when they are monumental. I always liked large formats. I enjoy it, when I can draw a huge drawing on a city facade or a museum with large walls and high ceilings. My simple drawings gain added value with size. This year, I drew on the wall of the Law Faculty parking lot in Maribor a huge lips-to-lips 'Kiss'. A happy ending and film kiss. This seemed to follow the first Eskimo kiss 'Nose to Nose', which, in an interesting coincidence, was made at the Metelkova parking lot in Ljubljana (1994).
In the projects 'I Always Get What I Wish For' and 'Hugs and Kisses' I changed the motifs back to a small-scale format which turned the drawings into what they were at the beginning. A reversible process has happened: after the drawings were created and enlarged for some years, I reduced them again and produced a play with pairs (Memory) and stickers that I pasted around New York subway stations. I repeatedly try to accomodate to the space, into which I'm going to place my works.

Do you reckon that you complete and improve yourself throughout the years?
Of course, I want that. I currently produce drawings of things, nudes and portraits − all at once and each of the motifs separately, in many varieties. They all take place at the seasideJ. The portraits, the profiles, are a bit reminiscent of the series 'Zvezda and Odeon' (1995).
This time, I have improved the old strokes, something is pulling me back again. Yet, the drawn faces look prettier, better and smarter. The drawings of the current project are very disciplined, I have been correcting them for a very long time. In recent works, the stroke is commenced directly. It is all quite dim at the beginning, there's just a feeling that I follow almost blindly. Then, there's a lot of work, through which everything becomes clear. It is best when in the end everything looks like it arose from itself.