Share the post "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.
![](https://museum-week.org/magazine/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2023/06/Vainionpaa_Soft-Body-Dynamics-109-58x48in-2023-851x1024.jpg)
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.
Continue on MuseumWeek Magazine.