This week’s creative space belongs to painter, Kuzana Ogg. Ogg is a multi-talented artist whose work combines the principles of restraint and balance, and incorporates memories of her many travels to communicate visually.
Join us as we learn more about Kuzana's artistic journey, how her childhood memories inspire her work, and discuss choosing the right creative space.
What do you create?
Contemporary oil paintings
What is your background and how did you get started? How long have you been creating art?
The first years of my life were divided between the ancestral home of my grandfather, surrounded by lush gardens and groves of coconut trees, and my grandmother’s exquisite Worli sea face residence. My earliest memories are of temperate weather, fragrant jasmine blossoms, and cascading layers of color.
In time, I along with my infant sister joined our newly immigrated parents in England. The setting changed from streets crammed with disorderly traffic and cows to cars neatly parked in rows, but I preferred the crumbling palatial structures that still lived in my mind to these frilly curtains and tidy brick homes. The new plastic toys at my feet became the rude complement of those of tin and copper that lay beside them.
My tiffin tucked in my luggage, I shuttled in train cars to boarding schools in Cornwall, Surrey, and Kodaikanal. At the age of 10, I and my family relocated to New York, and the American metropolis took shape in my eyes where the Deccan plateau once stood.
It was as an art student at SUNY Purchase that I met my husband and began the work in love and paint of revisiting the garden of my childhood. We married after our graduation in 1995, and moved to South Korea, spending the next six years teaching English in historic Kyung Ju. Returning to the United States in 2001, we lived first in New Mexico and 11 years later, migrated to California's Central Valley. In 2017, we returned to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 2021, I completed a 4 year residency at El Zaguan, and moved to Los Alamos. I have participated in seven residencies in: Minnesota, Sri Lanka, China, Scotland, Latvia and Iceland. I will return to New York to be R&F Handmade Paints’ artist in residence in May 2023. My paintings have been included on the sets of both television shows and feature films—the most recent of which are Where’d You Go Bernadette, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Southpaw and My All-American. My first solo museum exhibition was Oil at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art in 2014. A second solo followed shortly thereafter, Rev Zero at the Bakersfield Museum of Art in 2015. My work continues to be exhibited, published, and collected both privately and publicly, nationally and internationally.
What is your favorite part of your workspace? Do you have a favorite piece you've created in your studio space?
The light; it's clear, bright, and constant.
Are there any new projects or pieces you're currently working on?
Yes. I usually work on 8-10 pieces at a time.
What advice would you give another artist on cultivating a designated art space?
Make it beautiful to you.
Thank you, Kuzana, for sharing your creative space with us! Be sure to check out more of Kuzana's work below:
Instagram: @kuzanaogg
Website: KuzanaOgg.com
We want to know the process behind the pieces we love. Studio Tours provides an intimate setting for visitors to get to know artists where they’re most comfortable — in their creative spaces.
Our Creative Spaces interview series highlights the work of makers and doers across all creative mediums, in an ever changing themed interview format. We want to provide an outlet for creators to share their stories, their process, and most importantly their art, in their own words.
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