Happiness Starts with a Scribble: An Interview with Artist Izzy Nova

My Rainbow, Your Rainbow, _______, gesso, acrylic, color pencil, paint marker, crayon on Mylar


            "Art is another kind of door into peoples’ heads," says Izzy Nova, "and we best be learning what’s happening in there." Nova's paintings take on the dark and difficult tangle of subconscious impulses while making important visual statements about violence, loneliness, despair, the quirk in the false perfection of the everyday, all of those forms that take shape from some place else, as Izzy calls the almost unnameable place that first drew her into the power of art and its ability to unleash both the storm and the stillness, the explosion in the street and the quiet hour. "Making art for me is like meeting and bringing a complex stranger to life," Nova says. "Abandoning forethought and expectation recently both in art and in life has given me comfort in my inability to comprehend, control, or at worst, change what is larger than me." On the surface these paintings shore up a feeling of chaos, of things gone beyond one's control, but embedded deeper in, sometimes crawling out of the corners of the canvas, is a very real and solid sense of purpose, a tent pitched in the void mid-storm, lantern light to read the hieroglyphics of promise and possibility by, in a place where, what art can do, is only measured by what we are able to imagine, and if we've closed that door we best be prying it open again.


AHC: What has your own personal evolution towards a life in art been like, are there a series of moments you can recall where this path, this calling, began to become the one clearly marked for you?

Izzy: Happiness for me starts with a scribble that keeps up with how neurotic I’m feeling. I have always liked art making; I identified with it at an early age, and thank it for the security and escape it gave me all these years. Other activities don’t give me the continuous high or challenge that art continues to satisfy me with, also in consideration to the stress that comes along with the creative process.

Growing up, I was the kid that got in trouble for doodling on my notes and tests. I paid attention to my imagination more than I did real life and my interests were related mostly to fantasy and ‘some place else’. It’s safe to say it’s been a long time of weaning off of these pleasures, but at least I have expanded on my doodles.​
​

                                      X-x, 2016, 24 x 33" gesso, acrylic, crayon, and graphite on Mylar


AHC: Could you explore and expand on some of the motivating ideas at work in both the images that you make and the process behind the making of them? There is such anarchic fluidity at work in your pieces, almost as if they take place at the beginning of time when the void was still potent and open to interpretation. How does the idea for you begin and what does its evolution look like during the stages of its development?

Izzy: I allow organic moments to happen, such as when gravity comes to play with wet, dripping paint. Following, I allow some of these instances to lay out what I will do next, often taking two steps back to make room for even more growth. The final product is a foreigner, that’s been roughed up and coddled by me while I shaped it.

Making art for me is like meeting and bringing a complex stranger to life. Abandoning forethought and expectation recently both in art and in life has given me comfort in my inability to comprehend, control, or at worst, change what is larger than me. Instinct drives me to work quickly, chasing after a train of thought or feeling. Whilst, my other job is about connecting dots and enriching relationships in the composition’s space. It’s a balancing act that I have to walk away from sometimes and look at with fresh eyes.

​

Spectrum, 2016 - 2017, 84 x 60", gesso, acrylic, colored pencil, paint marker, and crayon on mylar


AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences? Is there anyone outside of the art world who has had a huge impact on you and your work or who just generally inspire you on some level, writers, filmmakers, comedians, musicians etc?

Izzy: I’m moved by the story of Chuck Palahniuk, who during a hard time in his life decided the pull over to the side of a road and lay face down in front of his car headlights. He’d hoped someone of authority would check on him and tell him everything was okay eventually. No one came and the creative idea for Choke was produced. That’s inspiring.

​

                           Ledge, 2016- 2017, 30 x 42" gesso, paint marker, crayon on Mylar


AHC: What do you consider, personally, to be the most sacred and enduring aspects of art? How does it enrich our world and our cultural memory? How has it enriched or altered your own life? In your opinion, what does art, at its finest moments, bring into the world that would otherwise leave us more impoverished without it?

Izzy: Art has given me a means to express myself in a way that isn’t punctuated and I continue to have the chance to investigate why I need that to be. We would be impoverished without art because we’d be impoverished of perspective and investigation. That kind of freedom to make and view art can’t be understated enough. The more perspectives available to us, the more we know what is out there and are better conditioned to think more openly. It's another kind of door into peoples’ heads and we best be learning what’s happening in there.

​

Target Split, Spring 2015 126 x 60" Mylar, crayon, dry and oil pastel, water color, color pencil, charcoal, and acrylic

​

AHC: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away, that lit a fire in you?

Izzy: I can’t attest to having my breath taken away or having a fire lit in me, but on my first trip to NY when I was sixteen before I had really been exposed to fine art, I saw Woman Ironing by Picasso in the Guggenheim. The image of how this figure looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders and she'd been manipulated by it really stuck with me for a bit, and I have thought about the figure in art differently since then.

                          Intro, 2015-2016, 36 x 46", acrylic, gesso, paint marker, color pencil, and crayon on Mylar


AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for young artists and other creatives who are experiencing self-doubt in their art, frustration or blocks? What are the types of things that have helped you to move past moments where you may have become stuck creatively?

​Izzy: If you don’t know where you are, what exactly it is you are doing, but your intention is growth, you’re likely in the right position. It may be a matter of hitting up the roots from where you started from or deliberately rocking it out in the storm, till it’s clear.

When I am stuck and frustrated while making a piece, I may either need to dig back in the work and make room for new evolutions or try to take a look at the piece less personally, after having a break or working on something else.

Object I Worry About, 2017, 42 x 30", gesso, acrylic, paint marker, crayon on Mylar


AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about?

Izzy: Fall is a super exciting time for art. I’m working on new pieces and incubating about possibly putting up another community show, by the end of the year. 


For more visit www.izzynova.com
All images ​© Izzy Nova
​