A fragment of the interview given to a cultural blog from San Francisco in May 2018.
How did you get into the art world? Is there any special story about this?
It’s not that one particular moment made me suddenly interested in art. I had been looking for my own way for a long time, although the awareness that I want to create, has been with me since my childhood. As a child I loved drawing women’s characters inspired by my mother’s journals. I was dreaming I would become a fashion designer one day. Later, when came the time to decide on the high school I would attend, I was seriously thinking about art school. But this isn’t what happened, however, I started attending various drawing and painting classes and I was also taught by experienced painters. So, it was a natural step for me to go to the Academy of Fine Arts. But, painting was intended for me, I guess, and it is impossible to escape the one’s destiny:).
More about Ania’s Luk beginnings.
Was it easy to connect your life with your artistic work? Were there any problems that you had to contend with?
For various reasons, I had had to stop my artistic activity for a while and returned to it after a few years’ time, but this time with the certainty that I want to paint. For sure, this has changed a lot in my life so far. It would seem that painting is a light and easy task. However, to be able to grow in any field, you need hard work. In addition to the fact that creating is obviously much fun, there are days when it does not come so easily. That is why it is often necessary to impose stiff hours at the easel to find time for the family, which does not mean that I do not live what I do practically 24 hours a day.
What does your workday look like?
As I mentioned, I try to paint at certain times, usually so as to make the best use of the daylight, hence my work day in spring and summer is significantly longer 🙂 Sometimes I need complete silence and the smallest noise distracts me, sometimes with turn, listen to loud music. It depends on what mood I have, or what painting I’m painting at the moment. Also depending on the stage of work on the image, sometimes I need more slack or focus.
What is your biggest inspiration?
I am always inspired by a man. The female body is extremely vivid, painterly – it is actually a ready subject in the picture. Regardless of whether it is treated more realistically, or like in my last paintings – rather abstractly, it is always surrounded by an elusive aura of sensuality and mystery. That’s why works of such distant artists as Modigliani, Klimt or Nowosielski seem so charming to me.
Which part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
I like every aspect of my work, every phase of it. There is a time for conceptual work, when the general thought, the outline arises in the head, as well as for the work on the easel, which requires more physical effort and is simply more tiring 🙂 There are magical moments, when the image begins to live his own life. It’s a bit like an unruly child who decides to choose a completely different direction – usually better than it was previously assumed. This is probably the coolest moment when the image takes on a real shape and I have the impression, that previously scattered puzzles are beginning to match and a meaningful whole arises from the chaos.
How do you imagine your work in a few years time? In which direction do you intend to develop?
I do not plan so far for my future, in any case, not in a specific way, because the future does not belong to us. I think that the most important thing is to develop, and as an artist and, and perhaps above all as a human, and in what direction it will go – I do not know. Each new painting is a discovery for me, a different view on the world and myself. Nearly eighty-year-old David Hockney, in one of the interviews, stated that when he was painting he was thirty years old. It’s fantastic and I think that’s what it’s all about.
The whole interview can be found at booksandmocha.
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