Painting a Feeling: An Interview with Artist Trina Hall

            Identity Theft


                   It's often said that creating has the capacity to heal one, but in the case of New York based artist Trina Hall this statement holds literally true. After a series of tiny strokes left her debilitated, Trina found that "No medicines were able to touch the pain but after I started painting for the first time, I noticed I wasn't thinking about the pain. I lost myself in the beauty of color and over time, I was healed." Painting cleared out a space where physical agony could not follow. Such is the kind of art for which traditional commentary must be found lacking. Beyond the veil of truisms and comparisons all one can really say is that the encounter with such an art leaves one humbled and shook, inspired from a place deeper North than the intellect, a felt and unspoken observation deck. Hall's canvas's hold a series of objects on its surface, string, dried flowers, computer wires, hand prints, photographs, buttons, needles, an inventory of daily and uncanny juxtaposition,  the paint sometimes oozing and alive, seemingly edible, flaking, stained. It contains all of the experiences of beauty and the sublime and inevitably of pain and confusion. A kaleidoscopic sensorium of the human experience. Messy, transcendent, life saving, for the artist and, one must hope, for the viewer as well.


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?

Trina: After college, I developed double vision and my left eye was unable to move. There was a pointed pain between my eye brows that left me debilitated.  I was constantly being taken to the ER for testing (spinal taps, CTs, MRIs) to find out what was going on and how to treat it.  No medicines were able to touch the pain but after I started painting for the first time, I noticed I wasn't thinking about the pain.  I lost myself in the beauty of color and over time, I was healed.  I think the creative process healed me where modern medicine couldn't.
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                                             The Shift

AHC: Could you explore and expand on some of the motivating ideas at work in your art and the process behind the making of them? How does the idea for you begin and what does its evolution look like during the stages of its development? 

Trina: I paint a feeling or a philosophy.  It begins with noticing that I'm feeling something specific and my intention is to transfer it onto the canvas. My goal is to turn off the mind and get into the flow of whatever is wanting to be expressed.  A lot of my ideas are about some aspect of the human experience and what that means to me.  I always try to create something I like or something I find beautiful or true. 

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AHC: You've described your relationship with painting as one that has been healing, beyond all that that entails for you personally and the process of creating work that helps define and hold you together in some respects, do you hope it might also have a similar impact on viewers, whatever shape or form that might take on for them as it gets translated into their own lives and perceptions, that it might also be healing or cathartic or transformative for others?

Trina: All art has the potential to transform us.  I do believe that we feel the energy that the artist was experiencing during creation of a piece when we stand in front of it.  I can only hope that some people will connect with what I'm doing.   

                                 Layers of Anger


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?

Trina: Monet was the first artist whose work I stood in front of and thought, "I want to be an artist," so I find a lot of my technique is influenced by his work.  

I painted a series while listening to Peter Gabriel, one while listening to Andrew Bird, and one while listening to Jim James.  I enjoy sonic landscapes and I find that wearing headphones while I paint allows me to be more fully in the moment.  I'm inspired by philosophy and read parts of the Tao and the Yoga Sutras often.  I love biographies and poetry (Mary Oliver, David Whyte) as well.  

People who pursue a creative life in whatever realm inspire me.  Louis CK, Lena Dunham, and Aziz Ansari are my favorite comedian/writer/directors because they are making work in many forms that resonate with and inspire me.

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                                                          Mend


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?

Trina: Art can bring us together to engage in conversation that moves a society forward.  Art point us to ourselves and allows us to open our minds and beliefs.  The latest experience I had when art altered my life was when I went to see Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway.  I went to the show five times because it was holding up a mirror to me so I could examine my own life in a new way.  I simply cannot imagine a world without art.

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                                    Non Stop


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

Trina: Monet was my first love but when I worked at the Dallas Museum of Art, I was able to walk through the galleries when no one was there and I remember being moved to tears by an exhibit of Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat. 

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Looking


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?

Trina: All of the things we experience as humans are part of the process - don't think of frustration or being stuck as bad things.  Allow them to permeate what you create.  Sometimes you need to step away from making things to allow yourself to experience things.  Self-doubt is good... that can be a sign that you're on the right path. 

Aura

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

Trina: I'm looking for a gallery in NYC that wants to show my series called Won Woman where I use mediums such as menstrual blood, human hair, buttons, wax, needles, thread, and oil.  I'm also writing my second play and would love to collaborate on a television series.


For more information visit www.trinatheartist.com/
All images © Trina Hall (courtesy of the artist)

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