Sunny Buick
This week for our member interview, we had the chance to hear from Sunny Buick. Sunny Buick likes to play around with lots of different materials. Her process is a joyful one where exploration and variety are essential. Whether she is painting, writing, doing performances or making videos, all of her work is informed by her 27 years experience as a tattoo artist. Her main interest in being an artist is that it enables her to create her own reality. For her making art is to weave a rocambolesque tale with strange, colourful characters that come alive and are better able to express and share her hidden ideas, thoughts, fears and desires. Hopefully these stories will help us to figure out who we are, where we came from and where we are going.
Sunny Buick was born in the back woods of British Columbia, Canada and later cut her teeth in the untamed California Art scene. In 1986 while attending a high school especially for artists she started to hang out in the milieu of San Francisco tattooing. She began to apply pictures to the skin professionally in 1992. She served a formal apprenticeship with Henry Goldfield for 6 1/2 years. In 2003, just before moving to Paris, France Buick organized a gigantic art show and catalog called SCI Fi Western, with over 100 artists, which won an award with the Bay Guardian magazine, and was the subject of a Juxtapoz magazine cover article.
Buick has shown in galleries in many parts of the world and in some museum including: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, Foster Museum, Wisconsin, and MIAM-Musée des arts modeste, Sete, France.
Milagros Red 65cm x 65 cm Mixed Media 2020 Available
PP: Where are you currently living/ working and what are you working on?
SB: I’ve been living in Paris, France, for the last 19 years. Right now I’m working on finishing a new body of work of oil paintings featuring hybrids; two tiger head butterflies, two blue kittens with butterfly wings, Siamese twins with a Leo crown, and a tattooed boxer with a panther head with a firecracker package background. I’m also in the writing stage of five videos, two are documentary, one is about my old manifesto before I bury it to write a new one, another one is a performance piece about the struggles between heart and mind, where heart and mind are embodied in two female wrestlers.
Aztec Eye Heart Earrings, acrylic, 1.2 x 3.14 inches
PP: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your creative practice?
SB: My biggest source of creativity comes from my journey, my past traumas and what I’ve learned to survive informs my work. Even when I’m not aware of it consciously, I’m always working out internal conflicts and questions, through my work. Through art I’m able to express things I don’t always know how to put into words.
My desires, have a big impact on my choices and motivation. I’m strongly driven by some of my desires and I think somehow that it is in the making that will help me achieve what I need. (Like my worthiness come from what I do and not who I am).
Books and other artists make a huge impact on me. I often find the right book at the right moment. I look for answers in books instead of asking for help. I maybe need a mentor because perhaps the answers are not in books. I have a huge collection of monographs and art books that I use for inspiration and reference. Discovering a new artist is so inspiring, I recently discovered Martha Colburn and Suzan Pitt, two video artists. The golden age of illustration has had the biggest influence on what and how I want to paint.
Milagros Silver
PP: What role do you think artists have in society?
SB: Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is an artist’s responsibility to imagine/visualize a positive future. I’ve dressed in vintage clothes and decorated my house with antiques my whole adult life, I’m not nostalgic, I just appreciate old music, old black and white movies, the esthetic of certain periods in history (like the 1950’s and 1930’s). But with MAGA, I started to realize the dangers of nostalgia. I want to study and look more to the future, collaborate with artist who use new technologies, VR, 3-D modeling, animation of my 2-D images. That is why I’m working with hybrids right now. It’s all about metamorphosis, transformation, transcendence. I’m very interested by transhumanism.
PP: How do you balance your art practice with other responsibilities?
SB: Discipline: I learned discipline in University, also I did an apprenticeship with a military man, and it was very rigorous. But maybe it comes naturally to me.
Help from my partner: all of the daily tasks of running our household are shared equally. Sometimes my partner makes the mistake of thinking that I have a lot of free time to do this or that during the day, but I’m such a workaholic that it feels like I barely have any time. I would love to get some help managing my career, I hope I can get to point where I can outsource some parts, have an assistant or mentor.
Compartmentalization of tasks: one day a week I go to the National library for writing, I schedule time in the mornings for computer work, or I schedule getting to the studio first thing in the morning. Right now I’m trying to assign priority to projects, instead of working a little on a few things at once. Like the writing part of my four video projects.
Lists: I make tons of lists, and I love to cross things out, I make monthly goals and also one year, five year and ten year goal.
Hot Rods To Hell
