Generative art in the painting process. Interview with abstract artist Vickie Vainionpää

Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

I am an abstract painter who’s interested in the logic of the machine and our current post-digital condition. I make oil paintings that use data as a starting point, as a way for the computer to make the first move or gesture in the painting. My investigation is a painterly one, I’m thinking about abstraction and what it means to paint today.

This naturally brought me to digital and generative modes of working. I’m trying to figure out what a painting can be and how to make it; also how to reflect the time that I’m living in (which inevitably straddles this digital and physical divide).

I grew up in Waterloo, Ontario Canada, and have lived and worked in Montreal for nearly 8 years now. Growing up, I was always drawn to art making and I was lucky to have parents that encouraged me. After completing my undergrad, I moved to Montreal and did a few residencies that were very formative to my practice.

Specifically, one at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity which yielded some real breakthroughs.

What does your work aim to say?

I’ve always been drawn to abstraction, which in itself is really the logic of life. There’s a sort of romanticism about generative and abstract processes: it’s about creating something entirely new, something unique every time a script runs or every time your brush touches the canvas, which is endearing to me.

I think a lot about Bruce Nauman’s quote: “The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths”. It’s kind of cheesy, but I’m kind of hopelessly chasing some sort of absolute truth about contemporary existence, and I believe that abstraction can reveal it to me.

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